nd shadow, step by step, wandered over the furzy
cleves. All the sides of the hilly wood were gathered in and out with
green, silver-grey, or russet points, according to the several manner of
the trees beginning. And if one stood beneath an elm, with any heart to
look at it, lo! all the ground was strewn with flakes (too small to know
their meaning), and all the sprays above were rasped and trembling with
a redness. And so I stopped beneath the tree, and carved L.D. upon it,
and wondered at the buds of thought that seemed to swell inside me.

The upshot of it all was this, that as no Lorna came to me, except in
dreams or fancy, and as my life was not worth living without constant
sign of her, forth I must again to find her, and say more than a man can
tell. Therefore, without waiting longer for the moving of the spring,
dressed I was in grand attire (so far as I had gotten it), and thinking
my appearance good, although with doubts about it (being forced to
dress in the hay-tallat), round the corner of the wood-stack went I very
knowingly--for Lizzie's eyes were wondrous sharp--and then I was sure of
meeting none who would care or dare to speak of me.

It lay upon my conscience often that I had not made dear Annie secret to
this history; although in all things I could trust her, and she loved me
like a lamb. Many and many a time I tried, and more than once began the
thing; but there came a dryness in my throat, and a knocking under the
roof of my mouth, and a longing to put it off again, as perhaps might be
the wisest. And then I would remember too that I had no right to speak
of Lorna as if she were common property.

This time I longed to take my gun, and was half resolved to do so;
because it seemed so hard a thing to be shot at and have no chance of
shooting; but when I came to remember the steepness and the slippery
nature of the waterslide, there seemed but little likelihood of keeping
dry the powder. Therefore I was armed with nothing but a good stout
holly staff, seasoned well for many a winter in our back-kitchen
chimney.

Although my heart was leaping high with the prospect of some adventure,
and the fear of meeting Lorna, I could not but be gladdened by the
softness of the weather, and the welcome way of everything. There was
that power all round, that power and that goodness, which make us come,
as it were, outside our bodily selves, to share them. Over and beside us
breathes the joy of hope and promise; un