A shift of wind blew a gust of dry snow against the window-pane with a little sleety noise.

" In bygone times the appearance of the berries of the elder was held to indicate the proper season for sowing wheat: "With purple fruit when elder branches bend, And their high hues the hips and cornels lend, Ere yet chill hoar-frost comes, or sleety rain, Sow with choice wheat the neatly furrowed plain.

Now thou's turned out, for a' thy trouble, But house or hald, To thole the winter's sleety dribble, An' cranreuch cauld!

Oh! when the sleety showers her path assail, 270 And like a torrent roars the headstrong gale; No more her breath can thaw their fingers cold, Their frozen arms her neck no more can fold; Weak roof a cowering form two babes to shield, And faint the fire a dying heart can yield!

sleety showers ... 1827.]

All night a sleety, wind-driven drizzle beat upon them.

The pirates of the Baltic were wrestling with the storms of the wild Cattegat and braving the sleety squalls of the Skager Rack, stretching far out from the land to colonize Iceland and the Faroes, to plant a mysteriously lost nation in Eastern Greenland, and to leave strange traces of themselves by the vine-clad shores of Narraganset Bay.

Early one morning in March the dawn came with a roaring wind, sleety snow drove down over the hill, the house creaked and complained in every clapboard.

Surely men that have escaped so many swords and so many sleety arrows shall escape the years and Time.'

Stockings are to be worn, this year, under the boots, and although a different arrangement may be allowed to old gentlemen, in icy and sleety weather, it is not considered proper to wear woollen or other stockings over the boots at evening parties or other social reunions.

During the night the sleety drizzle had ceased, and the sun streamed with brilliant coldness upon a city which shone in a glare of ice.

The crime seemed to have lost itself in the sleety cold of the December midnight upon which it was committed.

The thermometer, at 2 P.M. to-day, stood at 48°, Some snow, of a moist, sleety character.

The sleety blasts of a cold afternoon turned to great, moist flakes by dark, eddying thick out of a windless night.

Suppose yourself to have spent the first half of a foggy, sleety, chill, moist, melancholy, English winter at some miserable country village in Kent.

"It was a fierce, wild night in March, and the blustering wind was blowing, accompanied by the sharp, sleety snow.

The wind remains in the north helping us, the sky is overcast and slight sleety drizzle is falling; the sun has made one or two attempts to break through but without success.

The weather was terrible; the wind blew with great violence, the sleety snow fell in large flakes, the lamps emitted a feeble light, the streets were deserted; from time to time a sledge drawn by a sorry-looking hack, passed by on the lookout for a belated passenger.

It was such a disgustingly sleety, blowy, snowy, windy, raspy, muddy day, as you never saw.

The wall, too, must be so placed on the summit of the crag that, as it faces the direction in which the lad is looking for his palfrey, it shall afford shelter to him against 'the sleety rain, And all the business of the elements.' It is evident that the lad would be looking out in a north-easterly direction, i. e. towards the head of Windermere and Ambleside.

Next day another crowd was seen In the dark weather's sleety spleen.

With his flapping coat and hat he drifted into the lighted hall before the driving blast, and, roused to instantaneous action, I slid from the niche I filled to the icy platform without, and swift and silent as a spectre sped down the sleety steps to the outward darkness.

The sleety storm drove sharply in my face, rendered doubly sensitive to its rigor by long absence from outward air.

The noisome alley was threaded, and again we emerged into the sleety, lamp-lit street, a few doors from the corner of that block, in the centre of which Dr. Pemberton resided.

I ran up the sleety steps in advance of him, and rang the bell with convulsive energy.