The wagons had cut
the snow into great ruts which made walking difficult, and where it was
smoother it was exceedingly slippery. But her weariness soon vanished
under the stimulus of the fresh morning air. Even the exertion of
dancing the evening before and the night of excitement which followed
had left no trace. She was, indeed, a tireless creature and supple as a
whalebone. So, after a few moments' exercise in the exhilaratingly pure
air, the sparkle returned to her eye, the color to her cheek, and her
step had regained its usual light buoyancy.
Although March had come with its thaws, there was no suggestion of
spring in the landscape. From the white, monotonous expanse of snow rose
bleak, skeleton shapes of trees lifting bare, black boughs to the
snow-sodden clouds. Upon either side of the road lay a forest of
desolation--varied only by the sad, dull green of the wind-blown
pines--which stretched away and away until it became a mere blue shadow
as unsubstantial as smoke on the mountain horizon; and yet spring, still
invisible and to be denied by the doubting, was in the air, with all its
soft intimations of bud and blossom and joyous life; and spring was in
Pearl's heart as she hastened up the hill toward Seagreave. It brushed
her cheek like a caress, it touched her lips like a song.
When she was about a quarter of a mile up from the village she crossed a
little bridge which spanned a deep and narrow crevasse, a gash which
cleft the great mountain to its foundation.
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