at the falling snow and the
branches of the trees must now hinder her from seeing him distinctly.

In a moment he was glad of this, for, becoming incautious, he fell.

Both arms, put out to save himself, were embedded to the very shoulder
straight down in snow that offered no bottom to his touch; when his next
impulse was to move knees and feet he found that the points of his
snow-shoes were dug deep, and his toes, tied to them, held the soles of
his feet in the same position.

What cursed temerity had made him confess to a criminal act in order to
be allowed to come on this fool's errand? Fool, indeed, had he been to
suppose that he could walk upon a frozen cloud without falling through!
Such were Courthope's reflections.

By degrees he got himself up, but only by curling himself round and
taking off his snow-shoes. By degrees he got the snow-shoes put on
again, and mounted out of the hole which he had made, with snow
adhering to all his garments and snow melting adown his neck and wrists.
He now realised that he had spent nearly half an hour in walking not a
quarter of a mile. With this cheerless reflection as a companion he went
doggedly on, choosing now the drifted main road for a path.

Having left behind him the skeleton forms of the trees, he was trudging
across an open plain, flat almost as the surface of the lake which he
had traversed yesterday. Sometimes the fences at the side of the road
were wholly hidden, more often they showed the top of their posts or
upper bar; sometimes he could see cross-fences, as if outlining fields,
so that he supposed he still walked through lands farmed from the lonely
stone house, that he was still upon his lady's domain. He meditated upon
her, judging that she was sweet beyond compare, although why he thought
so, after her mistrust and derision, was one of those secrets which the
dimpled Cupid only could explain. He was forced to acknowledge the fact
that thus he did think, because here he was walking, whither he hardly
knew, how he hardly knew, battling with the gale, hustled roughly by its
white wings, in danger at every turn of falling off the two small moving
rafts of his shoes into a sea in which no man could swim very long. He
wondered, should his snow-shoes break, if he would be able to flounder
to the rim of the fence? How long could he sit there? Certainly it would
seem, looking north and south and east and west, that he would need to
sit as long as the life in him