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It was the Big Day of the mid-winter festival, and Post Lac Bain, with a population of twenty in times of quiet, was a seething wilderness metropolis of two hundred excited souls and twice as many dogs.
At sunrise we sat down to a hearty meal, and amid the clamor of voices and rattling of platters, the elder Raoul unfolded to us his plans for reaching the valley, which both he and his brother had recognized as the higher level of the Arblen, several thousand feet above our present altitude, and in mid-winter a perilous place to visit.
Had the disease attacked him in summer it is quite probable that this story would never have been written, for his nature was essentially a high-strung and tragic one; but fortunately he met his beautiful cousin in mid-winter, and 'tis a despairing lover indeed who breaks the ice.
In her short, woolly hair she had pinned a wreath of artificial orange blossoms, which looked like a diadem of snow on a mid-winter mudheap. Down her broad back there hung a great gauzy lace veil, big enough to make a fly-net for a cow camel in summer.
The air was keen to-day, and we were at the very season of mid-winter, but in the waggon which the four slow oxen dragged through the streets of Janenne were a dozen lofty shrubs reaching to a height of eight or nine feet at least, the which shrubs were one mass of exotic-looking blossom.
With an altered purpose in his heart, and a brave smile on his lips, the young man went away, leaving the child with another happy memory, to watch the cross upon the old church tower. It was mid-winter; and in the gloomy house reigned suffering and want. Sister Bess worked steadily to earn the dear daily bread so many pray for and so many need.
Long after the last sound had died away his heart continued to beat painfully, and he breathed as if recovering from a hard run. How beautiful were these lanes and hills, even in mid-winter! Once more he sang aloud in his joyous solitude. The hope he had nourished was not unreasonable; his boldness justified itself.
While yet on her way to the London railway station she had lost her tam-o'-shanter. So perforce, she travelled in a large picture-hat which, although pretty and becoming, was hardly suitable headgear for channel-crossing in mid-winter. It was a wild night; wet, with a rising north-west gale.
After the day's work was done, I used to go down to the shores of the bay, and lie at full length on the cool sand for two or three hours before bedtime. The soft pale light, resting on broad sandy beaches and palm-thatched huts, reproduced the effect of a mid-winter scene in the cold north when a coating of snow lies on the landscape.
And from his words it was plain that some of the Danish chiefs had broken away from Guthrum, and were making this unheard-of mid-winter march to surprise Alfred. Most likely they were newcomers into Mercia, and had nought to do with the Exeter host. "Maybe it is true," I answered; "but I am no Dane." He laughed loudly. "Why, then, you are one of Alfred's Norsemen!
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