aylight as still lingered on; the snow lay
several inches deep upon the ground, and the slanting downfall which
still went on threatened to considerably increase its thickness before
the morning. The Prospect Hotel, a building standing near the wild north
coast of Lower Wessex, looked so lonely and so useless at such a time as
this that a passing wayfarer would have been led to forget summer
possibilities, and to wonder at the commercial courage which could invest
capital, on the basis of the popular taste for the picturesque, in a
country subject to such dreary phases. That the district was alive with
visitors in August seemed but a dim tradition in weather so totally
opposed to all that tempts mankind from home. However, there the hotel
stood immovable; and the cliffs, creeks, and headlands which were the
primary attractions of the spot, rising in full view on the opposite side
of the valley, were now but stern angular outlines, while the townlet in
front was tinged over with a grimy dirtiness rather than the pearly gray
that in summer lent such beauty to its appearance.

Within the hotel commanding this outlook the landlord walked idly about
with his hands in his pockets, not in the least expectant of a visitor,
and yet unable to settle down to any occupation which should compensate
in some degree for the losses that winter idleness entailed on his
regular profession. So little, indeed, was anybody expected, that the
coffee-room waiter--a genteel boy, whose plated buttons in summer were as
close together upon the front of his short jacket as peas in a pod--now
appeared in the back yard, metamorphosed into the unrecognizable shape of
a rough country lad in corduroys and hobnailed boots, sweeping the snow
away, and talking the local dialect in all its purity, quite oblivious of
the new polite accent he had learned in the hot weather from the well-
behaved visitors. The front door was closed, and, as if to express still
more fully the sealed and chrysalis state of the establishment, a sand-
bag was placed at the bottom to keep out the insidious snowdrift, the
wind setting in directly from that quarter.

The landlord, entering his own parlour, walked to the large fire which it
was absolutely necessary to keep up for his comfort, no such blaze
burning in the coffee-room or elsewhere, and after giving it a stir
returned to a table in the lobby, whereon lay the visitors' book--now
closed and pushed back against the wal