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parted, as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever
it was.
'What is the matter?' I asked.
'Nothing in the world,' was the reply; and, replacing the paper,
I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin. It
disappeared in his glove; and, with one hasty nod and
'good-afternoon,' he vanished.
'Well!' I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, 'that
caps the globe, however!'
I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save
a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil. I
pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and
being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon
forgot it.
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CHAPTER XXXIII
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WHEN Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling
storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh
and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost
impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent
the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after
sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury
of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down Marmion, and beginning-
'Day set on Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone;
The massive towers, the donjon keep,
The flanking walls that round them sweep,
In yellow lustre shone'-
I soon forgot storm in music.
I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was
St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen
hurricane- the howling darkness- and stood before me: the cloak that
covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in
consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the
blocked-up vale that night.
'Any ill news?' I demanded. 'Has anything happened?'
'No. How very easily alarmed you are!' he answered, removing his
cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again
coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped
the snow from his boots.
'I shall sully the purity of your floor,' said he, 'but you must
excuse me for once.' Then he approached the fire. 'I have had hard
work to get here, I assure you,' he observed, as he warmed his hands
over the flame. 'One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow
is quite soft yet.'
'But why are you come?' I could not forbear saying.
'Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you
ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of
my mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have
experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been