“Certainly not,” I answered, “’till we have settled something more.  I was so cold when I came in; and now I am as warm as a cricket.  And so are you, you lively soul; though you are not upon my hearth yet.”

“Remember, John,” said Lorna, nestling for a moment to me; “the severity of the weather makes a great difference between us.  And you must never take advantage.”

“I quite understand all that, dear.  And the harder it freezes the better, while that understanding continues.  Now do try to be serious.”

“I try to be serious!  And I have been trying fifty times, and could not bring you to it, John!  Although I am sure the situation, as the Counsellor says at the beginning of a speech, the situation, to say the least, is serious enough for anything.  Come, Gwenny, imitate him.”

Gwenny was famed for her imitation of the Counsellor making a speech; and she began to shake her hair, and mount upon a footstool; but I really could not have this, though even Lorna ordered it.  The truth was that my darling maiden was in such wild spirits, at seeing me so unexpected, and at the prospect of release, and of what she had never known, quiet life and happiness, that like all warm and loving natures, she could scarce control herself.

“Come to this frozen window, John, and see them light the stack-fire.  They will little know who looks at them.  Now be very good, John.  You stay in that corner, dear, and I will stand on this side; and try to breathe yourself a peep-hole through the lovely spears and banners.  Oh, you don’t know how to do it.  I must do it for you.  Breathe three times, like that, and that; and then you rub it with your fingers, before it has time to freeze again.”

All this she did so beautifully, with her lips put up like cherries, and her fingers bent half back, as only girls can bend them, and her little waist thrown out against the white of the snowed-up window, that I made her do it three times over; and I stopped her every time and let it freeze again, that so she might be the longer.  Now I knew that all her love was mine, every bit as much as mine was hers; yet I must have her to show it, dwelling upon every proof, lengthening out all certainty.  Perhaps the jealous heart is loath to own a life worth twice its own.  Be that as it may, I know that we thawed the window nicely.

And then I saw, far down the stream (or rather down the bed of it, for there was no stream visible), a little form of fire arising, red, and dark, and flickering.  Presently it caught on something, and went upward boldly; and then it struck into many forks, and then it fell, and rose again.

“Do you know what all that is, John?” asked Lorna, smiling cleverly at the manner of my staring.

“How on earth should I know?  Papists burn Protestants in the flesh; and Protestants burn Papists in effigy, as we mock them.  Lorna, are they going to burn any one to-night?”