stuck to my arm-chair, the fire scorched me to the colour of a new brick.
The chimney-piece was very high, and there was a bad glass--what I may
call a wavy glass--above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my
anterior phrenological developments,--and these never look well, in any
subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood with my back to the
fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on
being looked at; and, in its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten
curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like a
nest of gigantic worms.

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other
men of similar character in _themselves_; therefore I am emboldened to
mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I immediately
want to go away from it. Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl
and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my
arrangements for departure in the morning. Breakfast and bill at eight.
Fly at nine. Two horses, or, if needful, even four.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long. In cases of
nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the
reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green. What had _I_
to do with Gretna Green? I was not going _that_ way to the Devil, but by
the American route, I remarked in my bitterness.

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all
night, and that I was snowed up. Nothing could get out of that spot on
the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by
labourers from the market-town. When they might cut their way to the
Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.