This thought quickened me so much that I touched my
darling reverently, and told her in a few short words
how I hoped to manage it.
“Sweetest, in two hours’ time, I shall
be again with you. Keep the bar up, and have
Gwenny ready to answer any one. You are safe while
they are dining, dear, and drinking healths, and all
that stuff; and before they have done with that, I
shall be again with you. Have everything you care
to take in a very little compass, and Gwenny must have
no baggage. I shall knock loud, and then wait
a little; and then knock twice, very softly.”
With this I folded her in my arms; and she looked
frightened at me; not having perceived her danger;
and then I told Gwenny over again what I had told
her mistress: but she only nodded her head and
said, “Young man, go and teach thy grandmother.”
[Illustration: 378.jpg Tailpiece]
BROUGHT HOME AT LAST
[Illustration: 379.jpg Illustrated Capital]
To my great 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.
