As we descend we have a friendly crack with a shepherd from the high fells, whose dog has cleverly found and 'crowned' a handful of the Herdwick sheep prisoned by a snowdrift against a wall. How did he do this? 'Naay, I cannot tell tha, but I suppose t' dog nosed 'em, ye kna; dogs is wonderful keen scented.' And had the sheep taken hurt? 'Naay, naay; they were {113} safe and warm as could be; they hedn't even begun to woo' yan anudder.' Wool one another, what's that? 'Oh, sheep, poor things, when they git snowbound and hev nowt to eat, teks to eatin' woo' off t' backs, to prevent pinin', ye kna.' So saying, the shepherd goes off, to quest for more, up to the land of loneliness and wintry wild, and I go down into the cheery vale. How blue the snow is; you might have supposed the fields out 'Wythop' way had been washed with ultramarine; but one's eyes are caught back by the beauty of the snowdrifts by the roadside. These snowdrifts are for all the world as if great waves of milk had curled over to breaking, and at the moment had been fixed or changed into crystalline marble. And now the sun is gathering its glory back into itself, and hangs a globe of flame above 'Whinlatter' Pass. Suddenly the light goes out from all the valley meadows. The day star has sunk behind the hills. But still old Skiddaw flashes back the flame, and shepherds, out Newlands way, can see the bastions of Blencathra glow like molten gold. For us, as we gaze out south, the range of Helvellyn is the miracle of beauty that {114} holds our eyes. Far off and ghostly for the haze, it lies upon a background of rosy flushing afterglow, and seems to faint into a kind of impalpable phantom of its former strength--becomes no longer solid mountain, but spectral cloud. A light wind blows, and the oak leaves in the hedge tinkle like iron; the farmer calls the horse to get his hay, the wren chirrups or scolds from the wayside bank, and a partridge cries from the near field. Then all is silent and hushed for the coming of the queen. Over the dark pines upon Skiddaw, and above the silver shoulder of the hill, clear-faced and full, the February moon swims up to rule the night. And such a reign of splendour was then begun as I have no words to chronicle. For the heaven above Helvellyn was rosy pink, melting into blue, and the sky above Skiddaw was, or seemed to be, steel azure, and the west beyond the Wythop range was gleaming amber. There, in the midst of that golden sea, shone Venus like a point of silver fire. Sirius rose and scintillated above Helvellyn's ridge, Jupiter looked clear from near the zenith, and Orion girt his starry sword about him in mid-heaven; but it was the Moon who was the queen of all our hearts. It was she who {115} laid her mystery upon the lakes, the hills, the valleys, white with snow; she who made one feel that if sunrise and sunsetting had been fair to-day, the moon-rising in a land of Arctic splendour had been fairer still. {116}