among comfortable surroundings.

'It was murder to bring me here,' he said to his wife. 'If I had gone to
Hastings I should have been a new man by this time. As it is I am a
great deal worse than when I landed.'

Everyone at the hotel noticed his lordship's white and haggard looks. He
had been known there as a young man in the bloom of health and strength,
and his decay was particularly obvious to these people.

'I saw death in his face,' the landlord said, afterwards.

Every one, even her ladyship's firmness and good sense, gave way before
the invalid's impatience. At three in the afternoon they left the hotel,
with four horses, to make the remaining nineteen miles of the way in one
stage. They had not been on the road half an hour before the snow began
to fall thickly, whitening everything around them, except the lake,
which showed a dark leaden surface at the bottom of the slope along the
edge of which they were travelling. Too sullen for speech, Lord
Maulevrier sat back in his corner, with his sable cloak drawn up to his
chin, his travelling cap covering head and ears, his eyes contemplating
the whitening world with a weary anger. His wife watched the landscape
as long as she could, but the snow soon began to darken all the air,
and she could see nothing save that blank blinding fall.

Half-way to Fellside there was a point where two roads met, one leading
towards Grasmere, the other towards the village of Great Langdale, a
cluster of humble habitations in the heart of the hills. When the horses
had struggled as far as this point, the snow was six inches deep on the
road, and made a thick curtain around them as it fell. By this time the