Lord Mergwain followed; and Cosmo, coming immediately behind, heard him muttering to himself all down the stairs: "Mere confounded nonsense! Nothing whatever but the drink!--I must say I prefer the day-light after all .-- Yes! that's the drawing-room .-- What's done's done--and more than done, for it can't be done again!" It was a nipping and an eager air into which they stepped from the great door.

The storm had ceased, but the snow lay much deeper, and all the world seemed folded in a lucent death, of which the white mounds were the graves.

All the morning it had been snowing busily, for no footsteps were between the two doors but those of Cosmo.
When they reached the kitchen, there was a grand fire on the hearth, and a great pot on the fire, in which the porridge Grizzie had just made was swelling in huge bubbles that burst in sighs.

Old Grizzie was bright as the new day, bustling and deedy.

Her sense of the awful was nowise to be measured by the degree of her dread: she believed and did not fear--much.