noon
He looked at the bride and the mistakenly happy mother caressing the evil-looking child , and a sickening disgust of the whole was over him . The car started , and proceeded at a terrific speed along the straight road . Carroll stared past the bulk of the German woman at the flying landscape . Since noon the sky had become clouded ; it threatened snow if the wind should go down . The earth , which had been sodden with rain a few days before , the mud from which showed dried on the countryman 's boots , was now frozen in a million wrinkles . The trees stood leafless , extending their rattling branches , the old corn-fields flickered with withered streamers ; a man was mournfully spreading dung over a slope of field . His old horse stood between the shafts with drooping head .