Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/95

 lamp, and read the timepiece. It wanted twenty minutes to three at present.

"Faugh!" I pondered, "these lonely speculations are so unendurable that I will fetch Emblem to bear me company the remainder of the night."

But everything outside seemed muffled in such silence as with the hush of snow, that ere I started for her chamber I drew the blinds up of my own and looked out into the park.

Snow indeed! Quite a fall of it, though it now had ceased. The moon was shining on the breadths of white; every tree stood up weird and spectral, and such a perishing cold presided over all that the whole of Nature seemed to be succumbing to the blight of it. The lamp I held against the pane struck out for a quarter of a mile across the meadows and revealed the gaunt, white woods of Cleeby sleeping in the cold paleness of moon and snow. The night appeared to hold its breath in awe at the wonderful fair picture the white earth presented. And very soon I did also, but for a different reason.

To my left hand a hedge that stood a distance off was plainly to be seen. Suddenly a figure emerged stealthily from under it. 'Twas that of a man, who after looking cautiously about him began in a crouching and furtive fashion to approach the house.

He came creeping slowly through the snow, and at every yard he made it seemed as much as ever he could do to drag one leg behind the other. Once he stopped to listen and observe, and apparently