Sometimes the fences at the side of the road were wholly hidden, more often they showed the top of their posts or upper bar; sometimes he could see cross-fences, as if outlining fields, so that he supposed he still walked through lands farmed from the lonely stone house, that he was still upon his lady's domain.

He meditated upon her, judging that she was sweet beyond compare, although why he thought so, after her mistrust and derision, was one of those secrets which the dimpled Cupid only could explain.

He was forced to acknowledge the fact that thus he did think, because here he was walking, whither he hardly knew, how he hardly knew, battling with the gale, hustled roughly by its white wings, in danger at every turn of falling off the two small moving rafts of his shoes into a sea in which no man could swim very long.

He wondered, should his snow-shoes break, if he would be able to flounder to the rim of the fence?
How long could he sit there?
Certainly it would seem, looking north and south and east and west, that he would need to sit as long as the life in him might endure the frost.
At length a shed or small barn met his eye.

His own approach seemed to have been heard and answered from within; the neigh of a horse greeted him.