ave known it but for what it looked on. And even to
know this last again required all the eyes of love, soever sharp
and vigilant. For all the beautiful Glen Doone (shaped from out
the mountains, as if on purpose for the Doones, and looking in the
summer-time like a sharp cut vase of green) now was besnowed half up
the sides, and at either end so, that it was more like the white basins
wherein we boil plum-puddings. Not a patch of grass was there, not
a black branch of a tree; all was white; and the little river flowed
beneath an arch of snow; if it managed to flow at all.

Now this was a great surprise to me; not only because I believed Glen
Doone to be a place outside all frost, but also because I thought
perhaps that it was quite impossible to be cold near Lorna. And now it
struck me all at once that perhaps her ewer was frozen (as mine had been
for the last three weeks, requiring embers around it), and perhaps her
window would not shut, any more than mine would; and perhaps she wanted
blankets. This idea worked me up to such a chill of sympathy, that
seeing no Doones now about, and doubting if any guns would go off, in
this state of the weather, and knowing that no man could catch me up
(except with shoes like mine), I even resolved to slide the cliffs, and
bravely go to Lorna.

It helped me much in this resolve, that the snow came on again, thick
enough to blind a man who had not spent his time among it, as I had done
now for days and days. Therefore I took my neatsfoot oil, which now was
clogged like honey, and rubbed it hard into my leg-joints, so far as
I could reach them. And then I set my back and elbows well against a
snowdrift, hanging far adown the cliff, and saying some of the Lord's
Prayer, threw myself on Providence. Before there was time to think or
dream, I landed very beautifully upon a ridge of run-up snow in a quiet
corner. My good shoes, or boots, preserved me from going far beneath it;
though one of them was sadly strained, where a grub had gnawed the ash,
in the early summer-time. Having set myself aright, and being in good
spirits, I made boldly across the valley (where the snow was furrowed
hard), being now afraid of nobody.

If Lorna had looked out of the window she would not have known me, with
those boots upon my feet, and a well-cleaned sheepskin over me, bearing
my own (J.R.) in red, just between my shoulders, but covered now in
snow-flakes. The house was partly drifted up, though not so