morning, noon
Those days are very sacred to me , and if I speak lightly of them , trust me , 't is with lip alone ; while from heart reproach peeps sadly at the flippant tricks of mind . Although it was the longest winter ever known in our parts -LRB- never having ceased to freeze for a single night , and scarcely for a single day , from the middle of December till the second week in March -RRB- , to me it was the very shortest and the most delicious ; and verily I do believe it was the same to Lorna . But when the Ides of March were come -LRB- of which I do remember something dim from school , and something clear from my favourite writer -RRB- lo , there were increasing signals of a change of weather . One leading feature of that long cold , and a thing remarked by every one -LRB- however unobservant -RRB- had been the hollow moaning sound ever present in the air , morning , noon , and night-time , and especially at night , whether any wind were stirring , or whether it were a perfect calm . Our people said that it was a witch cursing all the country from the caverns by the sea , and that frost and snow would last until we could catch and drown her . But the land , being thoroughly blocked with snow , and the inshore parts of the sea with ice -LRB- floating in great fields along -RRB- , Mother Melldrum -LRB- if she it were -RRB- had the caverns all to herself , for there was no getting at her . And speaking of the sea reminds me of a thing reported to us , and on good authority ; though people might be found hereafter who would not believe it , unless I told them that from what I myself beheld of the channel I place perfect faith in it : and this is , that a dozen sailors at the beginning of March crossed the ice , with the aid of poles from Clevedon to Penarth , or where the Holm rocks barred the flotage .