Read "The Dragon of Wantley" by Owen Wister online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Around the sullen towers of Oyster-le-Main the snow was falling steadily. It was slowly banking up in the deep sills of the windows, and Hubert the Sacristan had given up sweeping the steps. Patches of it, that had collected on the top of the great bell as the slanting draughts blew it in through the belfry-window, slid down from time to time among the birds which had nestled for shelter in the beams below. From the heavy main outer-gates, the country spread in a white unbroken sheet to the woods. Twice, perhaps, through the morning had wayfarers toiled by along the nearly-obliterated high-road.
"Good luck to the holy men! " each had said to himself as he looked at the chill and austere walls of the Monastery. "Good luck! and I hope that within there they be warmer than I am. " Then I think it very likely that as he walked on, blowing the fingers of the hand that held his staff, he thought of his fireside and his wife, and blessed Providence for not making him pious enough to be a monk and a bachelor.