that, to love you, man."

Instead of keeping on the Durham side of Tees, as he would have done in
fair weather for the first six miles or so, Jordas crossed by the old
town bridge into his native county. The journey would be longer thus,
but easier in some places, and the track more plain to follow, which
on a snowy night was everything. For all things now were in one
indiscriminate pelt and whirl of white; the Tees was striped with
rustling floes among the black moor-water; and the trees, as long as
there were any, bent their shrouded forms and moaned.

But with laborious plunges, and broad scatterings of obstruction, the
willing horse ploughed out his way, himself the while wrapped up in
white, and caked in all his tufty places with a crust that flopped up
and down. The rider, himself piled up with snow, and bearded with a
berg of it, from time to time, with his numb right hand, fumbled at the
frozen clouts that clogged the poor horse's mane and crest.

"How much longer will a' go, I wonder?" said Jordas to himself for the
twentieth time. "The Lord in heaven knows where we be; but horse knows
better than the Lord a'most. Two hour it must be since ever I 'tempted
to make head or tail of it. But Marmaduke knoweth when a' hath his head;
these creatures is wiser than Christians. Save me from the witches, if
I ever see such weather! And I wish that Master Lance's oysters wasn't
quite so much like him."

For, broad as his back was, perpetual thump of rugged and flintified
knobs and edges, through the flag basket strapped over his neck, was
beginning to tell upon his stanch but jolted spine; while his foot in
the northern stirrup was numbed, and threatening to get frost-bitten.

"The Lord knoweth where we be," he said once more, growing in piety as
the peril grew. "What can old horse know, without the Lord hath told
'un? And likely he hath never asked, no more than I did. We mought 'a
come twelve moiles, or we mought 'a come no more than six. What ever is
there left in the world to judge by? The hills, or the hollows, or
the boskies, all is one, so far as the power of a man's eyes goes.
Howsomever, drive on, old Dukie."

Old Dukie drove on with all his might and main, and the stout spirit
which engenders strength, till he came to a white wall reared before
him, twice as high as his snow-capped head, and swirling like a billow
of the sea with drift. Here he stopped short, for he had his own rein,
and turned his clouted