dark and lowering
toward afternoon. Mrs. Little advised Henry to stay at home. But
he shook his head. "How could I get through the night? Work is my
salvation. But for my forge, I should perhaps end like--" he was going
to say "my poor father." But he had the sense to stop.

Unable to keep him at home, the tender mother got his saddlebags, and
filled his flask with brandy, and packed up a huge piece of Yorkshire
pie, and even stuffed in a plaid shawl. And she strained her anxious
eyes after him as he rode off.

When he got among the hills, he found it was snowing there very hard;
and then, somehow, notwithstanding all the speed he made, it was nearly
dark when he got on the moor, and the tracks he used to go by, over the
dangerous ground, were effaced.

He went a snail's pace, and at last dismounted, and groped his way. He
got more than one fall in the snow, and thought himself very fortunate,
when, at last, something black towered before him, and it was the old
church.

The scene was truly dismal: the church was already overburdened with
snow, and still the huge flakes fell fast and silently, and the little
mountain stream, now swollen to a broad and foaming torrent, went
roaring by, behind the churchyard wall.

Henry shivered, and made for the shelter.

The horse, to whom this church was merely a well-ventilated stable, went
in and clattered up the aisle, saddle-bags and all.

Henry locked the door inside, and soon blew the coals to a white heat.
The bellows seemed to pant unnaturally loud, all was so deadly still.

The windows were curtained with snow, that increased the general gloom,
though some of the layers shone ghostly white and crystalline, in the
light of the forge, and of two little grates he had set in a monument.

Two heaps of snow lay in the center aisle, just under two open places
in the roof, and, on these, flakes as big as a pennypiece kept falling
through the air, and glittered like diamonds as they passed through the
weird light of the white coals.

Oh! it was an appalling place, that night; youth and life seemed
intruders. Henry found it more than he could bear. He took a couple of
candles, placed them in bottles, and carried them to the western window,
and there lighted them. This one window was protected by the remains of
iron-work outside, and the whole figure of one female saint in colored
glass survived.

This expedient broke the devilish blackness, and the saint shone out
gloriou