noon
Within half an hour I discovered that I was laboring at a hopeless task . There was great danger that I would be the first to succumb ; so I , expressing a wish to sleep off the liquor before the ladies should return , made my escape from the tap-room , mounted my horse , and galloped furiously after Dorothy and Madge . John was riding by the coach when I overtook it . It was two hours past noon when I came up with John and the girls . Snow had been falling softly earlier in the afternoon , but as the day advanced the storm grew in violence . A cold , bleak wind was blowing from the north , and by reason of the weather and because of the ill condition of the roads , the progress of the coach was so slow that darkness overtook us before we had finished half of our journey to Rowsley . Upon the fall of night the storm increased in violence , and the snow came in piercing , horizontal shafts which stung like the prick of a needle .