'the roar That stuns the tremulous cliffs of high Lodore.' I knew that they only can see Lodore aright who will brave storm and tempest, for so swiftly does this splendid cataract pour itself away that an hour after the rains have ceased upon the Watendlath fells it dwindles to its natural size, loses its milk-white charm, and ceases to summon the wanderer to its presence. But this morning its spell was potent to touch all hearts, and that white winter wreath of snow and sound called us from far away. Down by the old monks' path we went, that the hoofs of sumpter-mules in the Middle Ages had worn deep into the soft soil;--it was to-day a torrent-bed of bubbling water. On by the village school, where, instead of the pattering of children's clogs upon the doorstep, to-day the Greta's water gushed and fell in miniature cascade. Over the bridge beneath Greta Hall, on which the pencil-makers hung in enforced idleness, for there was too much water to allow the use of the millwheel. 'Brig is pinched to be {180} large eneuf for t' watter to-day,' they cried; and so to the town. 'Dar bon! but thoo bed better keep to lee-side oop street---slates is fleein' same as leaves i' winter,' said an old friend as he passed me. 'Well, Betty, what such a night have you had?' I said to another old friend at the street corner. 'Loavins me!' she answered, 'but it's been a capper. Cwoal cart was lifted up and clean turned ower befoar my eyes in oor back yard; and I've been up and dressed sin five this morn. What I thowt wi' mysel if anything's goin' to happen, it 'ull not dea fur us _all_ to be naked, and sea I got intil my cleas!' So up the main street--powdered with broken slates and plaster from the house fronts, and out into the Borrodale road we went. Trees were laid by their heels at the church gate, the holly berries gleamed in thousands by the roadside; the wind had done what in this open winter the birds had failed to do. Thence on to the Great Wood. Fine spruces lay across the road, and the roadmen and woodcutters were busy making passage possible for the cart traffic. Such a scent of Christmas trees they made as they hewed away at the spruce branches {181} one felt oneself a child again, and so with a child's heart forward. All through the purple woodland were white patches in top-most boughs, the wounds that the fierce wind had given them. Only one thing the tempest had been powerless to touch; these were the tender lichens and the velvet mosses on trunk and wall. How they gleamed and shone in the forest twilight! And whilst the boughs clashed and the wood was filled with groans and shrieks and cries, there, by the wall and on the ground and on the tree-stems, in quiet restfulness and silent beauty the fearless mosses grew.