A Dozen Ways Of Love

by L. Dougall

Gradually, as he thought less about his snow-shoes, he found that the wide lateral swing which he had been giving to his leg was unneeded. Strange as it seemed, the large rackets did not interfere when he took an ordinary step. Having made this pleasant discovery he quickened speed. He did not know whether the girl had stopped laughing and had gone into the house again, but he knew that the falling snow and the branches of the trees must now hinder her from seeing him distinctly.

In a moment he was glad of this, for, becoming incautious, he fell.

Both arms, put out to save himself, were embedded to the very shoulder straight down in snow that offered no bottom to his touch; when his next impulse was to move knees and feet he found that the points of his snow-shoes were dug deep, and his toes, tied to them, held the soles of his feet in the same position.

What cursed temerity had made him confess to a criminal act in order to be allowed to come on this fool's errand? Fool, indeed, had he been to suppose that he could walk upon a frozen cloud without falling through! Such were Courthope's reflections.

By degrees he got himself up, but only by curling himself round and taking off his snow-shoes. By degrees he got the snow-shoes put on again, and mounted out of the hole which he had made, with snow adhering to all his garments and snow melting adown his neck and wrists. He now realised that he had spent nearly half an hour in walking not a quarter of a mile. With this cheerless reflection as a companion he went doggedly on, choosing now the drifted main road for a path.

Having left behind him the skeleton forms of the trees, he was trudging across an open plain, flat almost as the surface of the lake which he had traversed yesterday. 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. At first he supposed that some horses belonging to the house were stabled here, and neglected because the roads were impassable; then he judged that so slight a shed could not be intended for a stable.

He answered the animal's cry by seeking the door. Against it the drift was not deep, for, as it opened on the sheltered side, he had only the snowfall to scrape away. The door, which had very recently been freed from its crust of frost, yielded easily. He found a brown shaggy horse tied within, and beside it a sleigh, such as he had frequently seen, a mere platform of wood upon runners. Otherwise the shed was empty. Courthope was quickly struck by the recognition of something which set his memory working. The old buffalo-skin on the sleigh was such as was common, but the way it was stretched upon a heap of sacks made him remember the sleigh that he had yesterday passed upon the river, and the keen sinister face of the driver, which had ill contrasted with his apparent sleep and stupidity.

Courthope tossed aside the skin with a jerk. A rum bottle, a small hoard of frozen bread and bacon, a heavy blanket folded beneath, all seemed to prove that the driver had made provision for a longer journey. The horse had no food before it; no blanket was upon its back. Probably its driver had not intended to leave it here so long. Where was the driver? This quickly became in Courthope's mind the all-important question. Why had he been skulking on the most lonely part of the lake? And now, recalling again the man's face, he believed that he had had an evil design.

Courthope pursued his way; for, whether the thief had gone farther or remained in this vicinity, it was evidently desirable to have help from the nearest neighbours to seek and capture him. Courthope soon reached what seemed to be a dip or hollow in the plain; in this the wind had been very busy levelling the surface with the higher ground. At first he supposed that, for some reason, road and fences had come to an abrupt ending; then he discovered that he merely walked higher above the natural level. The thought came to him that if here he should break his snow-shoes there would not even be the neighbouring fence-top on which to perch and freeze.