The frost was still in the shade within 10 degrees of zero; on Chestnut Hill it had been registered in the early morning as being within 4 degrees. People as they went about the roads felt their feet almost ring upon the snow, and children who tumbled into the powder rose and shook the fine dust from their hair and laughed to find they were as dry as a bone. The rooks above were silent {111} and grave as they sat in solemn conclave on the ash tree at the stable-end and waited for such happy chances as the cook or chicken-man might give them. They were frozen out. Their tools were useless. But the tits were merry enough--blue tit, great tit, and cole tit; how they clung and spun and scooped at the cocoanuts and bones upon their Christmas tree! How the thrush pecked at the suet; how the starling and blackbird gobbled at the softened scraps upon the ground; and how the chaffinch and the robin partook of the crumbs that fell from the rich bird's table, as those crumbs came floating down from suet-lump or cocoanut above! But we are off for a walk up to that old burial ground of the Viking chieftains from the land of the Frost Giants, which we still call the Ridge of Death--Latrigg of to-day. There, beside the path that leads from the main road, is the golf ground, but golf has been dispossessed by a fitter game for this season, and down the long slide shoot the tobogganers, and up the hill, with glowing faces and in silver clouds of their own breath, the happy people move. As one gazes into the valley another group of people in the {112} neighbouring hollow may be seen hard at work with brush and curling stones, for the Keswick folk are some of them devotees to the rink, and the noise of the curlers fills the air to-day. We climb Latrigg, noting how the blizzard has swept some of the snow from Skiddaw's western flank, and let the long yellow grasses and umber-coloured heather once more give their beauty of pencilling to the otherwise snow-white damask of their winter cloak. Thence, after far sight of the snow upon the Scotch hills sacred to the name of Cuthbert and the memory of his mission in Strathclyde, and near sight of the island hermitage, like a black jewel in the snow-field of the lake, which keeps the memory of St. Cuthbert's friend Herebert safe in mind, we descend to the vale. [Illustration: ARCTIC SPLENDOURS AT THE LAKES.]