CHAPTER III 



The Beach in Winter 



''The wind blew east; we heard the roar 

 Of ocean on his wintry shored 



— Emerson 



THE winter of the great frost, so vividly 

 described in Lorna Doone was a memo- 

 rable one. The country people in the 

 Doone Valley, depressed by the snow and cold, 

 heard a hollow moaning sound which they at- 

 tributed to a witch "cursing all the country from 

 the caverns by the sea" and believed that the 

 snow would last until they could catch and down 

 her. "But the land being thoroughly blocked 

 with snow, and the inshore parts of the sea with 

 ice (floating in great fields along) Mother Will- 

 drum (if she it were) had the caverns all to her- 

 self, for there was no getting at her." 



Severe winters are sure to recur either singly 



or in a series and they are apt to shake the faith, 



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