woke early on the Sunday morning, and a most dreary morning it
was. I could not lie in bed, and, although no one was up yet, rose and
dressed myself. The house was as waste as a sepulchre. I opened the
front door and went out. The world itself was no better. The day had
hardly begun to dawn. The dark dead frost held it in chains of iron.
The sky was dull and leaden, and cindery flakes of snow were thinly
falling. Everywhere life looked utterly dreary and hopeless. What was
there worth living for? I went out on the road, and the ice in the
ruts crackled under my feet like the bones of dead things. I wandered
away from the house, and the keen wind cut me to the bone, for I had
not put on plaid or cloak. I turned into a field, and stumbled along
over its uneven surface, swollen into hard frozen lumps, so that it
was like walking upon stones. The summer was gone and the winter was
here, and my heart was colder and more miserable than any winter in
the world. I found myself at length at the hillock where Turkey and I
had lain on that lovely afternoon the year before. The stream below
was dumb with frost. The wind blew wearily but sharply across the bare
field. There was no Elsie Duff, with head drooping over her knitting,
seated in the summer grass on the other side of a singing brook. Her
head was aching on her pillow because I had struck her with that vile
lump; and instead of the odour of white clover she was breathing the
dregs of the hateful smoke with which I had filled the cottage. I sat
down, cold as it was, on the frozen hillock, and buried my face in my
hands. Then my dream returned upon me. This was how I sat in my dream
when my father had turned me out-of-doors. Oh how dreadful it would
be! I should just have to lie down and die.

I could not sit long for the cold. Mechanically I rose and paced
about. But I grew so wretched in body that it made me forget for a
while the trouble of my mind, and I wandered home again. The house was
just stirring. I crept to the nursery, undressed, and lay down beside
little Davie, who cried out in his sleep when my cold feet touched
him. But I did not sleep again, although I lay till all the rest had
gone to the parlour. I found them seated round a blazing fire waiting
for my father. He came in soon after, and we had our breakfast, and
Davie gave his crumbs as usual to the robins and sparrows which came
hopping on the window-sill. I fancied my father's eyes were often
turned in my