strous boulders;
the peaks (as I say) silver, for already at the higher altitudes the
snow fell nightly; but the woods and the low ground only breathed upon
with frost. All day heaven had been charged with ugly vapours, in the
which the sun swam and glimmered like a shilling-piece; all day the wind
blew on our left cheek barbarous cold, but very pure to breathe. With
the end of the afternoon, however, the wind fell; the clouds, being no
longer reinforced, were scattered or drunk up; the sun set behind us
with some wintry splendour, and the white brow of the mountains shared
its dying glow.

It was dark ere we had supper; we ate in silence, and the meal was
scarce despatched before my lord slunk from the fireside to the margin
of the camp; whither I made haste to follow him. The camp was on high
ground, overlooking a frozen lake, perhaps a mile in its longest
measurement; all about us the forest lay in heights and hollows; above
rose the white mountains; and higher yet, the moon rode in a fair sky.
There was no breath of air; nowhere a twig creaked; and the sounds of
our own camp were hushed and swallowed up in the surrounding stillness.
Now that the sun and the wind were both gone down, it appeared almost
warm, like a night of July: a singular illusion of the sense, when
earth, air, and water were strained to bursting with the extremity of
frost.

My lord (or what I still continued to call by his loved name) stood with
his elbow in one hand, and his chin sunk in the other, gazing before him
on the surface of the wood. My eyes followed his, and rested almost
pleasantly upon the frosted contexture of the pines, rising in moonlit
hillocks, or sinking in the shadow of small glens. Hard by, I told
myself, was the grave of our enemy, now gone where the wicked cease from
troubling, the earth heaped for ever on his once so active limbs. I
could not but think of him as somehow fortunate to be thus done with
man's anxiety and weariness, the daily expense of spirit, and that daily
river of circumstance to be swum through, at any hazard, under the
penalty of shame or death. I could not but think how good was the end of
that long travel; and with that, my mind swung at a tangent to my lord.
For was not my lord dead also? a maimed soldier, looking vainly for
discharge, lingering derided in the line of battle? A kind man, I
remembered him; wise, with a decent pride, a son perhaps too dutiful, a
husband only too loving, one that coul