this state of things began to change, and a worse one to succeed it; for now the snow came thundering down from roof, and rock, and ivied tree, and floods began to roar and foam in every trough and gulley.  The drifts that had been so white and fair, looked yellow, and smirched, and muddy, and lost their graceful curves, and moulded lines, and airiness.  But the strangest sight of all to me was in the bed of streams, and brooks, and especially of the Lynn river.  It was worth going miles to behold such a thing, for a man might never have the chance again.

Vast drifts of snow had filled the valley, and piled above the river-course, fifty feet high in many places, and in some as much as a hundred.  These had frozen over the top, and glanced the rain away from them, and being sustained by rock and tree, spanned the water mightily.  But meanwhile the waxing flood, swollen from every moorland hollow and from every spouting crag, had dashed away all icy fetters, and was rolling gloriously.  Under white fantastic arches, and long tunnels freaked and fretted, and between pellucid pillars jagged with nodding architraves, the red impetuous torrent rushed, and the brown foam whirled and flashed.  I was half inclined to jump in and swim through such glorious scenery; for nothing used to please me more than swimming in a flooded river.  But I thought of the rocks, and I thought of the cramp, and more than all, of Lorna; and so, between one thing and another, I let it roll on without me.

[Illustration:  399.jpg Jump in and swim]

It was now high time to work very hard; both to make up for the farm-work lost during the months of frost and snow, and also to be ready for a great and vicious attack from the Doones, who would burn us in our beds at the earliest opportunity.  Of farm-work there was little yet for even the most zealous man to begin to lay his hand to; because when the ground appeared through the crust of bubbled snow (as at last it did, though not as my Lorna had expected, at the first few drops of rain) it was all so soaked and sodden, and as we call it, “mucksy,” that to meddle with it in any way was to do more harm than good.  Nevertheless, there was yard work, and house work, and tendence of stock, enough to save any man from idleness.

As for Lorna, she would come out.  There was no keeping her in the house.  She had taken up some peculiar notion that we were doing more for her than she had any right to, and that she must earn her living by the hard work of her hands.  It was quite in vain to tell her that she was expected to do nothing, and far worse than vain (for it made her cry sadly) if any one assured her that she could do no good at all.  She even began upon mother’s garden before the snow was clean gone from it, and sowed a beautiful row of peas, every one of which the mice ate.