A WINTER LANDSCAPE. 77 



of her slumber, but not, as yet, of her wakefulness ; and she 

 was too kind to rouse them, knowing she should thereby only 

 bring them into the same strait of hunger as herself. How to 

 get out of it she hardly knew, but instead of sitting or lying 

 down again to consider, she stept up to the entrance of her 

 dwelling, or, we should rather say, one of them, since it had 

 almost as many as the far-famed residence of John o' Groat. 

 These, however, had been (according to custom) all carefully 

 barred up on the setting in of the frost, so that, all alone, she 

 had to take down one of the barricades she had assisted to 

 erect ; and this done, though not without some effort, she was 

 able to take a peep at the outward world, from which she had 

 been so long retired. And a beautiful world it was, all dressed 

 in white and begemmed with diamonds sparkling in the noon- 

 day sun, as they fell from the boughs faster than leaves in 

 autumn. Strange as it may seem, our sleeper awakened had 

 never in all her life seen it so dressed out before, and if she 

 had not been rather cold and very hungry, she might, perhaps, 

 have stood lost in admiration at the fine " dissolving views '' 



* } 



around her yet perhaps not either, for she had always a 

 better eye for business than for the picturesque. Besides, she 

 had been thinking of what to do, and in so doing had be- 

 thought her of a certain large family, with whom her own had 

 long been upon the most intimate and social footing, and by 

 whom, indeed, both herself and friends, had often been regaled, 

 even when they had gone in a large party to claim hospitality. 



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