He suited the action to the word. Two or three billiard balls, which had been floating about in her head all night, clashed together with a horrid shock. She hung limp against Ninian while she waited for the resulting tumult to subside. The perpendicular attitude seemed to restore her scattered wits. For the first time pride and a desire to make the best of things awoke within her. Up to that moment she had been too badly hurt to care.
"That’s—better," said she clearly. "I—I think I can get along. I’ll do my best. You are so good."
"Come on, then," he replied, pushing open the door. He said nothing to Olwen of his struggle, half an hour earlier, with that same door.
It had taken him twenty minutes to force it wide enough for his arm and stick to operate upon the drift without: in fact, there had been a moment during which he had feared that the weight was too great for him to move alone. In the end, however, he had succeeded in cutting a path out through the doorway of the mile-castle, inside which the snow had piled itself.
Outside there was a more or less uniform depth of something more than a foot. Before them, as they faced south, the cliff, so precipitous on its northern face, sloped gently downwards to the level of the old coaching road that runs from Carlisle to Newcastle, and is, of late years, almost deserted.
Not only was there a glimmer of dawn in the east, but a belated moon hung over this white and lonely world. They could see quite well enough to make progress possible, but the distance was hidden. Ninian wanted to descry a house, that they might make a beeline for it, but they could see nothing in all the snowy wilderness. At last the girl spoke.
"Do you see that black little grove of trees to our right, lower down, not quite so far as the road, I should think?"
"Isn’t there something light against the black trees that looks like a line of smoke going up?"
"Jove, the porcelain rogue has done it! That’s smoke right enough. They’re astir early enough over there. Cheer-o, partner! We can hit that clump of trees without having to take such a very steady aim. Better keep along the top for a bit, in the lee of the wall; the snow is not half so thick there as it is just beyond."