The sky hangs soft and very dark overhead, the tree-tops are all but lost in it, and one can almost fancy he hears the drifting of the coming snow. But all is silent, not a branch in the forest stirs, and between the black tree-trunks the white sheet can be seen stretching stainless and undisturbed on either hand into the mysterious depths of the woods. The trees themselves, unshaken all these weeks by wind or squirrel or woodbird, raise into the night their branches robed to the remotest twig in the matchless lacework of the frost.
But see! Along the hollow, to the left, can be caught a glimpse of the manor-house, its windows, most of them, aglow with light. A grey, stately old place it is, in the midst of its woods, eloquent with the memories of long-past centuries. Royalty has been entertained there in bygone days, and in the woodland aisles around has echoed merrily the laughter of many a gay party from the Court, distant only a morning’s ride. But storm after storm has swept the land since then; that gay Court’s palace lies a ruin now; and while the race of the humble peasant still thrives in the manor woods, the race of the manor lord and the race of the kings themselves of those days have passed from the earth for ever.
There is no spot in so old a land but has its memories, sad and gay. Somewhere in these woods, in days still farther gone, a national hero was betrayed, and on the moorland ridge, a mile away, a king’s army suffered defeat. But the minister passes on. His errand to-night is neither to palace nor castle, yet it may be that the simple hearts he is presently to unite will beat as happily under a lowly roof of thatch as do those of the gentle owners in their mansion yonder.
By degrees, as he presses on, the path becomes rougher, the trees deepen the darkness overhead, and hardly a former footstep has left its trace in the undrifted snow. The solitude might almost be primeval, so absolute is the silence in these untrodden recesses. The solitary snapping, once, of a rime-laden branch has only testified amid the stillness to the intensity of the frost. At last, however, the path widens somewhat, there is a little clearing and a forsaken lodge, and beyond, here and there in the open, gleam the scattered lights of the village. A sequestered spot it is, bowered in summer by the whispering woods, and in winter buried in the forest solitudes by the swathing snow.