ht see a hundred
of them almost any morning, come for warmth, and food, and comfort, and
scarce willing to move away. And many of them were so tame, that they
quietly presented themselves at our back door, and stood there with
their coats quite stiff, and their flanks drawn in and panting,
and icicles sometimes on their chins, and their great eyes fastened
wistfully upon any merciful person; craving for a bit of food, and a
drink of water; I suppose that they had not sense enough to chew the
snow and melt it; at any rate, all the springs being frozen, and rivers
hidden out of sight, these poor things suffered even more from thirst
than they did from hunger.

But now there was no fear of thirst, and more chance indeed of drowning;
for a heavy gale of wind arose, with violent rain from the south-west,
which lasted almost without a pause for three nights and two days. At
first the rain made no impression on the bulk of snow, but ran from
every sloping surface and froze on every flat one, through the coldness
of the earth; and so it became impossible for any man to keep his legs
without the help of a shodden staff. After a good while, however, the
air growing very much warmer, this state of things began to change, and
a worse one to succeed it; for now the snow came thundering down from
roof, and rock, and ivied tree, and floods began to roar and foam in
every trough and gulley. The drifts that had been so white and fair,
looked yellow, and smirched, and muddy, and lost their graceful curves,
and moulded lines, and airiness. But the strangest sight of all to me
was in the bed of streams, and brooks, and especially of the Lynn river.
It was worth going miles to behold such a thing, for a man might never
have the chance again.

Vast drifts of snow had filled the valley, and piled above the
river-course, fifty feet high in many places, and in some as much as a
hundred. These had frozen over the top, and glanced the rain away from
them, and being sustained by rock and tree, spanned the water mightily.
But meanwhile the waxing flood, swollen from every moorland hollow
and from every spouting crag, had dashed away all icy fetters, and
was rolling gloriously. Under white fantastic arches, and long tunnels
freaked and fretted, and between pellucid pillars jagged with nodding
architraves, the red impetuous torrent rushed, and the brown foam
whirled and flashed. I was half inclined to jump in and swim through
such glorious scenery;