Explore "John Burnet of Barns" by John Buchan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was dawning morn, grey and misty, with a thaw setting in on the surface of the snow. Down the narrow, crooked streets, with a wind shivering in our teeth, we went at a breakneck gallop. I lashed my horse for its life, and the poor brute, wearied as it was by the toils of the night, answered gallantly to my call. Sometimes, in a steep place, we slipped for yards; often I was within an ace of death; and at one street-turning with a mighty clatter Nicol came down, though the next minute he was up again. A few sleepy citizens rubbed their eyes and stared from their windows, and in the lighted doorway of a tavern, a sailor looked at us wonderingly.
In less time than it takes to tell, we were at the water-edge. Here there is a rough quay, with something of a harbour behind it, where lie the sugar-boats from the Indies, when the flood-tide is too low to suffer them to go up stream to the city. Here, also, the ferry four times daily crosses the river.