and ivied tree, and floods began to roar and foam in
every trough and gulley. The drifts that had been so white and fair,
looked yellow, and smirched, and muddy, and lost their graceful curves,
and moulded lines, and airiness. But the strangest sight of all to me
was in the bed of streams, and brooks, and especially of the Lynn river.
It was worth going miles to behold such a thing, for a man might never
have the chance again.

Vast drifts of snow had filled the valley, and piled above the
river-course, fifty feet high in many places, and in some as much as a
hundred. These had frozen over the top, and glanced the rain away from
them, and being sustained by rock and tree, spanned the water mightily.
But meanwhile the waxing flood, swollen from every moorland hollow
and from every spouting crag, had dashed away all icy fetters, and
was rolling gloriously. Under white fantastic arches, and long tunnels
freaked and fretted, and between pellucid pillars jagged with nodding
architraves, the red impetuous torrent rushed, and the brown foam
whirled and flashed. I was half inclined to jump in and swim through
such glorious scenery; for nothing used to please me more than swimming
in a flooded river. But I thought of the rocks, and I thought of the
cramp, and more than all, of Lorna; and so, between one thing and
another, I let it roll on without me.

It was now high time to work very hard; both to make up for the
farm-work lost during the months of frost and snow, and also to be ready
for a great and vicious attack from the Doones, who would burn us in our
beds at the earliest opportunity. Of farm-work there was little yet for
even the most zealous man to begin to lay his hand to; because when the
ground appeared through the crust of bubbled snow (as at last it did,
though not as my Lorna had expected, at the first few drops of rain)
it was all so soaked and sodden, and as we call it, 'mucksy,' that to
meddle with it in any way was to do more harm than good. Nevertheless,
there was yard work, and house work, and tendence of stock, enough to
save any man from idleness.

As for Lorna, she would come out. There was no keeping her in the house.
She had taken up some peculiar notion that we were doing more for her
than she had any right to, and that she must earn her living by the
hard work of her hands. It was quite in vain to tell her that she was
expected to do nothing, and far worse than vain (for it made her cry
sadly) if a