Mechanically I threw up the sponge; it struck hard against the ceiling,
and fell back a mass of brittle, jingling icicles, so severe was the
iron frost that had bound it.

I gathered up a handful of snow from the window-sill. It crumbled in
my fingers like patent camphorated tooth-powder, for which purpose I
instantly proceeded to use it. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Then I turned, as a final test, to my bath. Oh, joy! it was frozen
ten inches thick! No tub for me today! I ran downstairs gleefully,
and glanced at the thermometer outside my study window. Hooray, it
registered twenty degrees below zero! It registered! That reminded me of
my oath! I registered it once more, regardless of legal expenses.

My spirits rose as rapidly as the glass had fallen. The wind was due
east, not generally a matter for indecent exultation.

But while the wind was due east, so long the frost would last, and that
white mass on the roadside would remain _in statu quo_.

So long, Philippa was safe.

After that her fate, and mine too, depended on the eccentricities of a
jury, the chartered libertinism of an ermined judge, the humour of
the law, on a series of points without precedent concerning which no
monograph had as yet been written; and, as a last desperate resource,
on the letters of a sympathetic British public in the penny papers.
The penny papers, the criminal's latest broadsheet anchor! Under the
exasperating circumstances, Philippa remained as well as could be
expected. She spoke little, but ate and drank a good deal. Day after day
the brave black frost lasted, and the snowy grave hid all that it would
have been highly inconvenient for me to have discovered. The heavens
themselves seemed to be shielding us and working for us. Do the heavens
generally shield accessories after the fact, and ladies who have
shortened the careers of their lords? These questions I leave to the
casuist, the meteorologist, the compilers of weather forecasts, and
other constituted authorities on matters connected with theology and the
state of the barometer.

I have not given the year in which these unobtrusive events occurred.

Many who can remember that mighty fall of snow, exceeding aught in the
recollection of the oldest inhabitant, and the time during which the
frost kept it on the earth, will be able and willing to fix the date.

I do not object to their thus occupying their leisure with chronological
research.

If they feel at al