kind; she was like my mother, strangely like, always sweet and gentle,
always helpful and wise. I think she was the dearest woman who ever
lived. I was always proud when she asked me to do something for
her. Once, I remember (in the winter after Mrs Cottier came to us),
she drove to Salcombe to do her Christmas shopping. It came on to snow
during the afternoon; and at night-time the storm grew worse. We put
back supper, expecting her to come in at any minute, but she did not
come. The hours went by, and still she did not come, and still the
storm worsened. The wind was not very high, but the air was full of a
fine, powdery, drifting snow; the night seemed full of snow; snow fell
down the chimney and drifted in under the door. My uncle was too lame
with sciatica to leave his bed; and my aunt, always a woman of poor
spirit, was afraid of the night. At eight o'clock I could stand it no
longer, so I said that I would saddle the pony, and ride out along the
Salcombe road to find her. Hugh was for going in my place; but Hugh
was not so strongly built as I, and I felt that Hugh would faint after
an hour in the cold, I put on double clothes, with an oilskin jacket
over all, and then lit the lantern, and beat out of the house to the
stable. I put one or two extra candles in my pockets, with a flint and
steel, and some bread and meat Something prompted me to take a hank of
cord, and a heavy old boat-rug; and with all these things upon him old
Greylegs, the pony, was heavy-laden.

When we got into the road together, I could not see a yard in front of
me. There was nothing but darkness and drifting snow and the gleam of
the drifts where the light of the lantern fell. There was no question
of losing the road; for the road was a Devon lane, narrow and deep,
built by the ancient Britons, so everybody says, to give them
protection as they went down to the brooks for water. If it had been
an open road, I could never have found my way for fifty yards. I was