Anna of Strathallan Read Free Page B

corner sharply a few miles further west and met swirling snow in a white-out sort of skiff. It was most alarming by its very strangeness and lack of visibility but lasted only a few moments. The light came through again, wanly, but reassuringly.
    The moment she could see again, she was enchanted... it lay like a filmy veil over everything. Nevertheless, she kept to a crawl. Common sense, if not experience, dictated that. A hundred yards or so and the road was clear again, though the wind-driven snow lay in flakes against the dry grass tufts of the verge, the dead stalks of last autumn above the sweet green of the new season's grass.
    Well, it wasn't far to Roxburgh now. She might make it before any more snow fell. She'd stop there. It was larger, so she could get a good choice of accommodation. She was beginning to feel hungry.
    Around the next corner snow was sheeting the road thinly. The car skidded a little. What an alarming feeling! Your hands were on the wheel, but there was no control. Conditions like these were right out of her ken. This road was so winding. The enormous Clutha River must be on her right - she couldn't see it - she just hoped it didn't swirl near the road on any of these bends. Visibility was getting nil and in this half-light one's lights were of little use. You needed full dark for contrast. She wished she had asked more about any hazards to expect. But then locals never recognized hazards unless they were really startling ones. Custom dulled the edge of danger.
    The darkness deepened and now her headlights showed up fruit orchards and a lighted window or two. If the snow came on really heavily, she might have to knock someone up and ask a bed for the night. How ghastly! You wouldn't know who might answer your knock. It was a terrifying thought. Even apart from fears, it could be vastly embarrassing. No one would relish having to put a stranger up. You could get a busy mother, already harassed by many things, or an elderly, frail wife, put out by this descent upon her by a feckless, ignorant stranger. Anna pressed on, the wiper only just coping with the sleety snow driving against the windscreen, but still giving her a fan of clearish glass through which to peer.
    Her lights were good, but the whitening of the landscape was somehow diluting their strength now, rendering the terrain almost featureless. She hoped she was still driving to the left side of the white line that had long since disappeared, yet not too far to the left, or she might tilt off the verge into a ditch. She set her teeth and ground on, tense with anxiety.
    She carefully steered round a left-bearing corner of the hillside and then, with ghastly suddenness, into her vision loomed a horrible sight - a man, staggering from side to side, with his face covered with blood. Anna turned left instinctively and stopped dead as he lurched almost unseeingly towards the right of her. He put out a hand as if to ward off the obstacle and fell across the bonnet.
    She got out on the passenger side as less risky and was round the car in a jiffy, clutching him. 'What's happened? No, don't tell me. I'm too near the corner. Come on, come on! Move! Get into the car, and I'll drive on a bit, then stop, so you can put me in the picture.'
    She guided and tugged him to the door, wrenched it open, he half fell in and Anna heaved him the rest of the way. She bent down, lifted his legs, thrust them in, whipped round the front of the car, tried to slide in under the wheel, found he had fallen over into her seat, managed to lever him up, knew her suit would be covered in blood, but that didn't matter, and she got her door shut smartly. Great relief. She'd made it before anything else came round the corner.
    She drove on a few yards, peering out anxiously in case another victim was on the road, or their presumably smashed car, saw a wider curve that seemed to snuggle in under some crooked willows and very gingerly eased the car on to the verge.
    He hadn't said one