’I told you,’ said the old woman, ’that I had dreamed; but it weren’t a dream, but a vision, falling into a trance, but having my eyes open. I thought, Master John, that it were a wisht’ (wild) ’night, and the wind were a tearing and a ramping over the hills and driving of the snow before it in clouds. And I saw how that, in the whirl of the wind, the snow heaped herself up like the pillar of salt between Zoar and Sodom. And I saw how you, Master John, thought it were wonderful and beautiful, that you stood before it mazed. And when the night were gone, and the sun came out, and it glittered like a pillar of diamonds, then you cast your arms round it, to hold it to your heart; and you looked up to it for all the world as though expecting something as never came and never could come. And you laid your heart against that pillar of snow, and when I would have drayed you away you sed, "See, Jenny, how fair and pure she be!" But I could not take you away; and still you looked up into the snow, asking wi’ your eyes for something that never came, and in nature never could come. But wi’ the warmth of your heart it all began to melt away; and still you looked; and it ran between your fingers, and dripped in streams from your heart, and trickled down your face like tears; and so it thawed slowly away, and still you held to the snow, and looked, and nothing came. That be the way the heat went out of your heart, and the colour died from your cheek, and your lips grew dead, and your hands stiff, and the tears on your cheeks were frosted to icicles, and your hair waxed white as wool; and when all had melted clean away still you was the same, wi’ your arms stretched out and your eyes uplifted—not now to the snow bride, for that were gone, but to a star that twinkled aloft over where she had been, and I touched you, for I were troubled, but could not move you—you were hard ice.’ *CHAPTER XL.* *NOEL! NOEL!* Christmas had come, not a day of frost or snow, but of warm south breezes charged with rain; no sun shining, but grey light struggling through piles of vapour. Mirelle was so much better that she was able to go in a coach to Trecarrel to mass. A priest was staying there for a few days. The mass was early, and she left before dawn, but the day broke while she was at Trecarrel, and there was as much light in the sky, when she prepared to leave, as there would be throughout the day. Captain Trecarrel came to her, to insist on her coming into the house and having some breakfast. It would not do for her, in her delicate condition, recovering from illness, to remain so long without food. She declined, gently, and the utmost he could bring her to accept was a cup of coffee and some bread, brought to the carriage in which she had seated herself, wrapped in shawls, for her return journey.