d the ancient
oak at the cross was rent, and many score of ash trees. But why should
I tell all this? the people who have not seen it (as I have) will only
make faces, and disbelieve; till such another frost comes; which perhaps
may never be.

This terrible weather kept Tom Faggus from coming near our house for
weeks; at which indeed I was not vexed a quarter so much as Annie was;
for I had never half approved of him, as a husband for my sister; in
spite of his purchase from Squire Bassett, and the grant of the Royal
pardon. It may be, however, that Annie took the same view of my love for
Lorna, and could not augur well of it; but if so, she held her peace,
though I was not so sparing. For many things contributed to make me less
good-humoured now than my real nature was; and the very least of all
these things would have been enough to make some people cross, and rude,
and fractious. I mean the red and painful chapping of my face and hands,
from working in the snow all day, and lying in the frost all night. For
being of a fair complexion, and a ruddy nature, and pretty plump withal,
and fed on plenty of hot victuals, and always forced by my mother to sit
nearer the fire than I wished, it was wonderful to see how the cold ran
revel on my cheeks and knuckles. And I feared that Lorna (if it should
ever please God to stop the snowing) might take this for a proof of low
and rustic blood and breeding.

And this I say was the smallest thing; for it was far more serious that
we were losing half our stock, do all we would to shelter them. Even the
horses in the stables (mustered all together for the sake of breath and
steaming) had long icicles from their muzzles, almost every morning.
But of all things the very gravest, to my apprehension, was the
impossibility of hearing, or having any token of or from my loved one.
Not that those three days alone of snow (tremendous as it was) could
have blocked the country so; but that the sky had never ceased, for more
than two days at a time, for full three weeks thereafter, to pour fresh
piles of fleecy mantle; neither had the wind relaxed a single day from
shaking them. As a rule, it snowed all day, cleared up at night, and
froze intensely, with the stars as bright as jewels, earth spread out in
lustrous twilight, and the sounds in the air as sharp and crackling as
artillery; then in the morning, snow again; before the sun could come to
help.

It mattered not what way the wind was. Oft