The old woman, surprised at his audacity, went to the casement and with all the pride of possession, opened it and inquired his business.
“Good woman,” the stranger began, “I only want a seat at your fire.”
“Nay,” said the old woman, giving effect to her words by her uncouth dialect, “thou’ll get no shelter here; I’ve nought to give to beggars—a dirty, wet critter,” she continued wrathfully, slamming to the window. “It’s a wonder where he found any water, too, seeing it freeze so hard a body can get none for the kettle, saving what’s broken up with a hatchet.”
The stranger turned very hastily from her door and waded through the deep snow towards the other cottage. The bitter wind helped to drive him towards it. It looked no less poor than the first; and when he had tried the door and found it bolted and fast, his heart sank within him. His hand was so numbed with cold that he had made scarcely any noise; he tried again.
A rush candle was burning within and a matronly looking woman sat before the fire. She held an infant in her arms and had dropped asleep; but his third knock aroused her, and wrapping her apron round the child, she opened the door a very little way, and demanded what he wanted.
“Good woman,” the youth began, “I have had the misfortune to fall in the water this bitter night, and I am so numbed I can scarcely walk.”
The woman gave him a sudden earnest look and then sighed.
“Come in,” she said; “thou art so nigh the size of my Jem, I thought at first it was him come home from sea.”
The youth stepped across the threshold, trembling with cold and wet; and no wonder, for his clothes were completely encased in wet mud, and the water dripped from them with every step he took on the sanded floor.
“Thou art in a sorry plight,” said the woman, “and it be two miles to the nighest house; come and kneel down afore the fire; thy teeth chatter so pitifully I can scarce bear to hear them.”