red and hungry,
when we returned to Mr. K----'s hut, took a hasty meal, and mounted our
chilled steeds. Mr. C. H---- insisted on bringing poor Mr. K---- back
with us, though he was somewhat reluctant to come, alleging that a
few days spent in the society of his kind made the solitude of his
weather-board hut all the more dreary. The next day and yet the next
we returned to our gloomy skating ground, and when I turned round in my
saddle as we rode away on Friday evening, for a last look at Lake Ida
lying behind us in her winter black numbness, her aspect seemed more
forbidding than ever, for only the bare steep hill-sides could be seen;
the pine forest and white distant mountains were all blotted and blurred
out of sight by a heavy pall of cloud creeping slowly up.

"Let us ride fast," cried Mr. K----, "or we shall have a sou'-wester
upon us;" so we galloped home as quickly as we could, over ground that
I don't really believe I could summon courage to walk across, ever so
slowly, to-day,--but then one's nerves and courage are in very different
order out in New Zealand to the low standard which rules for ladies in
England, who "live at home in ease!" Long before we reached home the
storm was pelting us: my little jacket was like a white board when I
took it off, for the sleet and snow had frozen as it fell. I was wet
to the skin, and so numb with cold I could hardly stand when we reached
home at last in the dark and down-pour. I could only get my things very
imperfectly dried, and had to manage as best I could, but yet no one
even thought of making the inquiry next morning when I came out to
breakfast, "Have you caught cold?" It would have seemed a ridiculous
question.

Chapter V: Toboggon-ing.

I cannot resist the temptation to touch upon one of the winter
amusements which came to us two years later. Yet the word "amusement"
seems out of place, no one in the Province having much heart to amuse
themselves, for the great snow storm of August, 1867, had just taken
place, and we were in the first days of bewilderment at the calamity
which had befallen us all. A week's incessant snow-fall, accompanied by
a fierce and freezing south-west wind, had not only covered the whole of
the mountains from base to brow with shining white, through which not
a single dark rock jutted, but had drifted on the plains for many feet
deep. Gullies had been filled up by the soft, driving flakes, creeks
were bridged over, and for three week