"Ah, we all know how brave you are, dear Zak. And perhaps you wouldn't like to leave me, brother?"
"No, no; of course not. How could I do it? All by yourself, and the weather getting dark. Hup! Hup! Dobbin, there. Best foot foremost kills the hill."
But Esther was even more strongly set to tell the story and relieve her mind, than Zacchary was to relieve his mind by turning a deaf ear to all of it. Nevertheless, she might have failed, if it had not been for a lucky chance. Dobbin, after a very fine rush, and spirited bodily tug at the shafts, was suddenly forced to pull up and pant, and spread his legs, to keep where he was, until his wind should come back again. And he stopped with the off-wheel of the cart within a few yards of the gap in the hedge, where Esther began her search that night. She knew the place at a glance, although in the snow it looked so different; and she ran to the gap, and peeped as if she expected to see it all again.
In all the beauty of fair earth, few things are more beautiful than snow on clustering ivy-leaves. Wednesday's fall had been shaken off; for even in the coldest weather, jealous winds and evaporation soon clear foliage of snow. But a little powdery shed of flakes had come at noon that very day, like the flitting of a fairy; and every delicate star shone crisply in its cupped or pillowed rest. The girl was afraid to shake a leaf, because she had her best bonnet on; therefore she drew back, and called the reluctant Zacchary to gaze.
"Nort but a sight of snow," said he; "it hath almost filled old quarry up. Harse have rested, and so have we. Shan't be home by candlelight. Wugg then! Dobbin—wugg then! wilt 'a?"
"Stop, brother, stop! Don't be in such a hurry. Something I must tell you now, that I have been feared to tell anybody else. It was so dreadfully terrible! Do you see anything in the snow down there?"
"As I am a sinner, there be something moving. Jump up into the cart, girl. I shall never get round with my things to-night."
"There is something there, Zak, that will never move again. There is the dead body of a woman there!"
"No romantics! No romantics!" the Carrier answered as he turned away; but his cheeks beneath a week's growth of beard turned as white as the snow in the buckthorn. No living man might scare him—but a woman, and a dead one——
"Come, Zak," cried Esther, having seen much worse than she was likely now to see, "you cannot be afraid of 'romantics,' Zak. Come here, and I will show thee."