Elizabeth employed herself with reading the signs, one of which appeared over almost every door while the sleigh moved, steadily and at an easy gait, along the principal street. Not only new occupations, but names that were strangers to her ears, met her bewildered gaze, at every step they proceeded. The very houses seemed changed. This had been altered by an addition; that had been painted; another had been erected on the site of an old acquaintance, which had been banished from the earth almost as soon as it made its appearance on it. All were, however, pouring forth their inmates, who uniformly held their way towards the point where the expected exhibition, of the taste of Richard and Benjamin, was to be made.
After viewing the buildings, which really appeared to some advantage, under the bright but mellow light of the moon, our heroine turned her eyes to a scrutiny of the different figures that they passed, in search of any form that she knew. But all seemed alike, as, muffled in cloaks, hoods, coats, or tippets, they glided along the narrow passages in the snow, which led under the houses, half hid by the bank that had been thrown up in excavating the deep path in which they trod. Once or twice she thought there was a stature, or a gait, that she recollected, but the person who owned it instantly disappeared behind one of those enormous piles of wood, that lay before most of the doors. It was only as they turned from the main street into another that intersected it at right angles, and which led directly to the place of meeting, that she recognised a face and building that she knew.
The house stood at one of the principal corners in the village, and, by its well-trodden doorway, as well as the sign, that was swinging, with a kind of doleful sound, in the blasts that occasionally
