and by-and-by, I got not to care for that
weird rolling music, which did one no harm, if we did not know where it
came from.

That winter was very cold. In the middle of October the frosts began,
and lasted many, many weeks. I remember one day, at dinner, Miss
Furnivall lifted up her sad, heavy eyes, and said to Mrs. Stark, 'I am
afraid we shall have a terrible winter,' in a strange kind of meaning
way. But Mrs. Stark pretended not to hear, and talked very loud of
something else. My little lady and I did not care for the frost; not
we! As long as it was dry, we climbed up the steep brows behind the
house, and went up on the Fells, which were bleak and bare enough, and
there we ran races in the fresh, sharp air; and once we came down by a
new path, that took us past the two old gnarled holly-trees, which grew
about half-way down by the east side of the house. But the days grew
shorter and shorter, and the old lord, if it was he, played away, more
and more stormily and sadly, on the great organ. One Sunday
afternoon--it must have been towards the end of November--I asked
Dorothy to take charge of little missy when she came out of the
drawing-room, after Miss Furnivall had had her nap; for it was too cold
to take her with me to church, and yet I wanted to go. And Dorothy was
glad enough to promise, and was so fond of the child, that all seemed
well; and Bessy and I set off very briskly, though the sky hung heavy
and black over the white earth, as if the night had never fully gone
away, and the air, though still, was very biting and keen.

'We shall have a fall of snow,' said Bessy to me. And sure enough, even
while we were in church, it came down thick, in great large flakes,--so
thick, it almost darkened the windows. It had stopped snowing before we
came out, but it lay soft, thick and deep beneath our feet, as we
tramped home. Before we got to the hall, the moon rose, and I think it
was lighter then--what with the moon, and what with the white dazzling
snow--than it had been when we went to church, between two and three
o'clock. I have not told you that Miss Furnivall and Mrs. Stark never
went to church; they used to read the prayers together, in their quiet,
gloomy way; they seemed to feel the Sunday very long without their
tapestry-work to be busy at. So when I went to Dorothy in the kitchen,
to fetch Miss Rosamond and take her upstairs with me, I did not much
wonder when the old woman told me that the ladies had kept