I say that we had best turn about if we would not walk into some snare." "Turn you, then," grumbled Sir John indifferently.

"I am cold and weary, and seek my rest." "Pray God that you may not find it when you are colder," muttered Jeffrey, spurring his horse.
They went on through the dead winter silence, that was broken only by the hoots of a flitting owl hungry for the food that it could not find, and the swish of the feet of a galloping fox as it looped past them through the snow.

Presently they came to an open place ringed in by forest, so wet that only marsh-trees would grow there.

To their right lay a little ice-covered mere, with sere, brown reeds standing here and there upon its face, and at the end of it a group of stark pollarded willows, whereof the tops had been cut for poles by those who dwelt in the forest farm near by.

Sir John looked at the place and shivered a little--perhaps because the frost bit him.