moment, and then to have the sharp freezing silence in one's ear, was
piercingly weird. It all tossed the mind in my head like hay on a
pitchfork. I forgot the existence of everything but what I loved
passionately,--and that had no shape, was like a wind.

Up on a knoll of firs in the middle of a heath, glowing rosy in the
frost, we dismounted to lunch, leaning against the warm saddles, Temple
and I, and Uberly, our groom, who reminded me of a certain tramp of my
acquaintance in his decided preference of beer to champagne; he drank,
though, and sparkled after his draught. No sooner were we on horseback
again--ere the flanks of the dear friendly brutes were in any way cool--
than Temple shouted enthusiastically, 'Richie, we shall do it yet! I've
been funking, but now I'm sure we shall do it. Janet said, "What's the
use of my coming over to dine at Riversley if Harry Richmond and you
don't come home before ten or eleven o'clock?" I told her we'd do it by
dinner-time: Don't you like Janet, Richie?--That is, if our horses' hic-
haec-hocks didn't get strained on this hard nominative-plural-masculine
of the article road. Don't you fancy yourself dining with the captain,
Richie? Dative huic, says old Squire Gregory. I like to see him at
dinner, because he loves the smell of his wine. Oh! it's nothing to
boast of, but we did drink them under the table, it can't be denied.
Janet heard of it. Hulloa! you talk of a hunting-knife. What do you say
to a pair of skates? Here we are in for a frost of six weeks. It
strikes me, a pair of skates . . .'

This was the champagne in Temple. In me it did not bubble to speech, and
I soon drew him on at a pace that rendered conversation impossible.
Uberly shouted after us to spare the horses' legs. We heard him twice
out of the deepening fog. I called to Temple that he was right, we
should do it. Temple hurrahed rather breathlessly. At the end of an