s and villages.

Immediately before her, in strange contrast to this lifeless landscape,
lay the peopled mere, fringed around with dead reeds standing so still
in the frosty air that they might have been painted things. On this mere
half the population of Leyden seemed to be gathered; at least there were
thousands of them, shouting, laughing, and skimming to and fro in their
bright garments like flocks of gay-plumaged birds. Among them, drawn
by horses with bells tied to their harness, glided many sledges of
wickerwork and wood mounted upon iron runners, their fore-ends fashioned
to quaint shapes, such as the heads of dogs or bulls, or Tritons. Then
there were vendors of cakes and sweetmeats, vendors of spirits also, who
did a good trade on this cold day. Beggars too were numerous, and among
them deformities, who, nowadays, would be hidden in charitable homes,
slid about in wooden boxes, which they pushed along with crutches.
Lastly many loafers had gathered there with stools for fine ladies to
sit on while the skates were bound to their pretty feet, and chapmen
with these articles for sale and straps wherewith to fasten them. To
complete the picture the huge red ball of the sun was sinking to the
west, and opposite to it the pale full moon began already to gather
light and life.

The scene seemed so charming and so happy that Lysbeth, who was young,
and now that she had recovered from the shock of her beloved father's
death, light-hearted, ceased her forward movement and poised herself
upon her skates to watch it for a space. While she stood thus a little
apart, a woman came towards her from the throng, not as though she were
seeking her, but aimlessly, much as a child's toy-boat is driven by
light, contrary winds upon the summer surface of a pond.

She was a remarkable-looking woman of about thirty-five years of age,
tall and bony in make, with deep-set eyes, light grey of colour, that
seemed now to flash fiercely and now to waver, as though in memory of
some great dread. From beneath a coarse woollen cap a wisp of grizzled
hair fell across the forehead, where it lay like the forelock of
a horse. Indeed, the high cheekbones, scarred as though by burns,
wide-spread nostrils and prominent white teeth, whence the lips had
strangely sunk away, gave the whole countenance a more or less equine
look which this falling lock seemed to heighten. For the rest the woman
was poorly and not too plentifully clad in a gown of black