culties increased. The keen air seemed to make her easily
breathless. But at all events she felt comfortably warm, and the sun
felt hot on her cheek.

She had at length persuaded herself that she was anxious about Singing
Sal's safety. Many people must have perished in that snowstorm--caught
unawares on the lonely downs. At all events, she could ask at one or
two of the coastguard stations if anything had been heard of Sal. It
was just possible she might meet her, if the entertainment at Updene
farm had come off.

At Black Rock station they had heard nothing; but she went on all the
same. For now this was a wonderful and beautiful landscape all around
her, up on these high cliffs; and the novelty of it delighted her,
though the bewildering white somewhat dazzled her eyes. Towards the
edge of the cliffs, where the wind had swept across, there was
generally not more than an inch or two of snow--hard and crisp, with
traceries of birds' feet on it, like long strings of lace; but a few
yards on her left the snow had got banked up in the most peculiar
drifts, resembling in a curious manner the higher ranges of the Alps.
Sometimes, however, the snow became deep here also; so that she had to
betake herself to the road, where the farmers' men around had already
cut a way through the deeper stoppages; and there she found herself
going along a white gallery--yellow-white on the left, where the
sunlight fell on the snow, but an intense blue on the right, where the
crystalline snow, in shadow, reflected the blue of the sky overhead.
And still she ploughed on her way, with all her pulses tingling with
life and gladness; for this wonder of yellow whiteness and blue
whiteness, and the sunlight, and the keen air, all lent themselves to a
kind of fascination; and she scarcely perceived that her usual
landmarks were gone: it was enough for her to keep walking, stumbling,
sinking, avoiding the deeper drifts, and farther and farther losing
herself in the solitariness of this white, hushed world.

Then, far away, and showing very black against the white, she perceived
the figure of a woman, and instantly jumped to the conclusion that that
must be Singing Sal. But what was Sal--if it were she--about? That
dark figure was wildly swaying one arm like an orator declaiming to an
excited assemblage. Had the dramatic stimulus of the previous night's
entertainment--Nan asked herself--got into the woman's brain? Was she
reciting poetry