how the world looked from the moor. I entreated him not to go far,
telling him how easy it was to lose the way when all outlines were
changed in a way that would baffle even a black fellow; but he listened
with a smile, took a plaid and a cap and sallied forth. I played at
shuttle-cock for a good while with Dora, and then at billiards with
Eustace; and when evening had closed darkly in, and the whole outside
world was blotted out with the flakes and their mist, I began to grow a
little anxious.

The hall was draughty, but there was a huge wood fire in it, and it
seemed the best place to watch in, so there we sat together, and
Eustace abused the climate and I told stories--dismal ones, I
fear--about sheep and shepherds, dogs and snowdrifts, to the tune of
that peculiar howl that the wind always makes when the blast is
snow-laden; and dinner time came, and I could not make up my mind to go
and dress so as to be out of reach of--I don't know what I expected to
happen. Certainly what did happen was far from anything I had pictured
to myself.

Battling with the elements and plunging in the snow, and seeing,
whenever it slackened, so strange and new a world, was a sort of sport
to Harold, and he strode on, making his goal the highest point of the
moor, whence, if it cleared a little, he would be able to see to a vast
distance. He was curious, too, to look down into the railway cutting.
This was a sort of twig from a branch of the main line, chiefly due to
Lord Erymanth, who, after fighting off the railway from all points
adjacent to his estate, had found it so inconvenient to be without a
station within reasonable distance, that a single line had at last been
made from Mycening for the benefit of the places in this direction, but
not many trains ran on it, for it was not much frequented.

Harold came to the brow of the cutting, and there beheld the funnel of
a locomotive engine, locomotive no more, but firmly embedded in the
snowdrift into which it had run, with a poor little train of three or
four carriages behind it, already half buried. Not a person was to be
seen, as Harold scrambled and slid down the descent and lighted on the
top of one of the carriages; for, as it proved, the engineer, stoker,
and two or three passengers had left the train an hour before, and were
struggling along the line to the nearest station. Harold got down on
the farther side, which was free of snow, and looked into all the
carriages.