he battlements, carved pinnacles and images of
saints or devils, stand up with clear glittering outlines, or clustered
about and overhung with fantasies of ice and snow. Behind, the deep-blue
sky itself seems to glitter too. The frozen floods glitter in the
meadows, and every little twig on the bare trees. There is no color in
the earth, but the atmosphere of the river valley clothes distant hills
and trees and hedges with ultramarine vapor. Towards evening the mist
climbs, faintly veiling the tall groves of elms and the piled masses of
the city itself. The sunset begins to burn red behind Magdalen Tower,
all the towers and aery pinnacles rise blue yet distinct against it. And
this festival is not only one of nature. The glittering ice is spread
over the meadows, and, everywhere from morning till moonlight, the
rhythmical ring of the skate and the sound of voices sonorous with the
joy of living, travel far on the frosty air. Sometimes the very rivers
are frozen, and the broad, bare highway of the Thames and the
tree-sheltered path of the Cherwell are alive with black figures,
heel-winged like Mercury, flying swiftly on no errand, but for the mere
delight of flying.

It was early on such a shining festival morning that Mildred, a willowy,
brown-clad figure, came down to a piece of ice in an outlying meadow.
Her shadow moved beside her in the sunshine, blue on the whiteness of
the snow, which crunched crisp and thin under her feet. She carried a
black bag in her hand--sign of the serious skater, and her face was
serious, even apprehensive. She saw with relief that except the sweepers
there was no one on the ice. A row of shivering men, buttoned up to the
chin in seedy coats, rose from the chairs where they awaited their
appointed prey, and all yelled to her at once. She crowned the hopes of
one by occupying his seat, but the important task of putting on the
bladed boots she could depute to none. Tims, whom no appeal of
friendship could induce to shiver on the ice, had told her that Milly
was an expert skater. She was, in fact, correct and accomplished, but
there was a stiffness and sense of effort about her style, a want of
that appearance of free and daring abandonment to the stroke of the
blade once launched, that makes the beauty of skating. Mildred knew only
that she had to live up to the reputation of a mighty skater, and was
not sure whether she could even stand on these knifelike edges. She
laced one boot, happy in