Dawn overtook them at the lodge-gates of Damelioc; a still dawn, with a clear, steel-blue sky and the promise of a crisp, bright day. It had been freezing all night, and was freezing still; the snow as yet lay like a fine powder, and so impetuously had they hurried, hand in hand, that along the uplands they scarcely felt the edge of the windless air. But here in the valley bottom, under the trees beside the stream, they passed into a different atmosphere, and shivered. Here, too, for the first half-mile--road and sward being covered alike with snow--Myra had much ado to steer, and would certainly have missed her way but for the black tumbling stream on her right. She knew that the drive ran roughly parallel with it, and never more than a few paces distant from its brink. Twice in her life she had journeyed with her grandmother in high June to Lady Killiow's rose-show, and she remembered being allowed to kneel on the cushions of the 'car' and wonder at the miniature bridges and cascades. By keeping close beside the water she could not go wrong. They halted by a bridge below the lake where the woods divided to right and left at the foot of the great home-park. A cold fog lay over the water and the reedy islands where the wild duck and moorhens were just beginning to stir, but above it a glint or two of sunshine touched the wintry boughs, and while it grew and ran along them and lit up their snowy upper surfaces as with diamonds, a full morning beam smote on the facade of the house itself, high above the slope, uplifted above the fog as it were a heavenly palace raised upon a base of cloud. Daunted by the vision, Myra glanced at Clem. His face was lifted towards the sunlight. "The house!" she whispered. "Oh, Clem, it's ever so much grander than I remembered!" She began to describe it to him, while they divided and munched the crusts she had fetched from Susannah's bread-pan. "If her palace is as fine as that," said Clem, with great cheerfulness, "she must be a very great lady, and can easily do what we want." They took hands again and mounted the curving drive to the terrace and the cavernous _porte-cochere_, where hung a bell-pull so huge that Myra had to clasp it in both hands and drag upon it with all her weight. Far in the bowels of the house a bell clanged, deep and hollow-voiced as for a funeral. A footman answered it--a young giant in blue livery and powder. Flinging wide the vast door, he stared down upon the visitors, and his Olympian haughtiness gave way to a broad grin. "Well, I'm jiggered!" said the footman. "You may be jiggered or not," answered Myra, with sudden _aplomb_ (a moment before, she had been ready to run), "but we wish to see Lady Killiow. Will you announce us, please?"