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A shock of terror blanched her cheek and caused her heart to stand still. She could not move or cry for a few seconds, then she uttered a loud shriek and shrank backwards. There chanced to be a stout bush or tree growing on the face of the cliff, not ten feet below the spot where the snow-wreath had broken off. Roy caught at this convulsively, and held on.
‘I know she was a little plump lassie then, with a pretty pink and white face: now she’s a poor little bit of a creature, fading and melting away like a snow-wreath. But hang it!—that’s not my fault.’ ‘What is the cause of it then? Not years, for she’s only five-and-twenty.’
On like the little snow-wreath that the storm-wind sends dancing before the storm, on like a whirlwind over the shoulder of Suletind, over the knees of Torholmenbrae the Giants that sit at the gateway.
Then, to be sure, you froze your back while you burned your face; your water froze nightly in your pitcher; your breath congealed in ice-wreaths on the blankets; and you could write your name on the pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in through the window-cracks.
Jerry laid his finger on his lips, nodded at his visitor, and stepped swiftly out of sight along the cleared shelf of rock. Ruth left the fire to peer after him. She saw him bend the bow and saw the swift flight of the arrow as it shot out of the chasm and curved out of sight beyond the broken edge of the snow-wreath which masked the summit of the cliff.
His stern resolution to stifle and trample upon his love melted like a snow-wreath, and every interest of life centred in the darkened room where Christine tossed and moaned in the deeper darkness of uncertainty and doubt. The longing to go to her with comfort and help was so intense that it required the utmost effort of reason and will to prevent such rash action.
The work was too hard, and the daylight in which to do it too brief, to admit of needless delay. A frozen bird thrown to each of the dogs, and a junk of equally frozen pemmican cut out of the bag with a hatchet for the travellers, formed the repast. The latter ate it sitting on a snow-wreath.
The animal proceeded cautiously, and safely for some time, till coming to a ravine, horse and rider sunk in a snow-wreath several fathoms deep. "Stunned by the suddenness and depth of the descent, the gentleman lay for some time insensible. On recovering, he found himself nearly three yards from the dangerous spot, with his faithful horse standing over him and licking the snow from his face.
"Upon my word, Slingsby," said he, "such observations come strangely from the lips of a man, who only a day or two ago was caught sketching on a snow-wreath over the edge of a crevasse." "Ah, but I didn't know it," retorted the other, "and even if I had known it, the ledge of snow was immensely stronger than that on which we have just stood."
Nothing could be more touching than the sight of her worn and almost transparent figure, hanging on her father's dark and muscular form, like a frail snow-wreath on some bleak mountain.
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