delight I found that the weather, not often friendly to
lovers, and lately seeming so hostile, had in the most important matter
done me a signal service. For when I had promised to take my love from
the power of those wretches, the only way of escape apparent lay
through the main Doone-gate. For though I might climb the cliffs myself,
especially with the snow to aid me, I durst not try to fetch Lorna up
them, even if she were not half-starved, as well as partly frozen;
and as for Gwenny's door, as we called it (that is to say, the little
entrance from the wooded hollow), it was snowed up long ago to the level
of the hills around. Therefore I was at my wit's end how to get them
out; the passage by the Doone-gate being long, and dark, and difficult,
and leading to such a weary circuit among the snowy moors and hills.

But now, being homeward-bound by the shortest possible track, I slipped
along between the bonfire and the boundary cliffs, where I found a caved
way of snow behind a sort of avalanche: so that if the Doones had been
keeping watch (which they were not doing, but revelling), they could
scarcely have discovered me. And when I came to my old ascent, where I
had often scaled the cliff and made across the mountains, it struck me
that I would just have a look at my first and painful entrance, to wit,
the water-slide. I never for a moment imagined that this could help me
now; for I never had dared to descend it, even in the finest weather;
still I had a curiosity to know what my old friend was like, with so
much snow upon him. But, to my very great surprise, there was scarcely
any snow there at all, though plenty curling high overhead from the
cliff, like bolsters over it. Probably the sweeping of the north-east
wind up the narrow chasm had kept the showers from blocking it,
although the water had no power under the bitter grip of frost. All my
water-slide was now less a slide than path of ice; furrowed where the
waters ran over fluted ridges; seamed where wind had tossed and combed
them, even while congealing; and crossed with little steps wherever the
freezing torrent lingered. And here and there the ice was fibred with
the trail of sludge-weed, slanting from the side, and matted, so as to
make resting-place.

Lo it was easy track and channel, as if for the very purpose made, down
which I could guide my sledge with Lorna sitting in it. There were only
two things to be feared; one lest the rolls of snow above shou