. It was when they
had left the wooded land behind them and the moors lifted up their
naked shoulders, one after another, darker than dark, into a sky
already whitening above the hidden moon. And she saw Morfe, gray as
iron, on its hill, bearing the square crown and the triple pendants of
its lights; she saw the long straight line of Greffington Edge, hiding
the secret moon, and Karva with the ashen west behind it. There was
something in their form and in their gesture that called to her as
if they knew her, as if they waited for her; they struck her with the
shock of recognition, as if she had known them and had waited too.

And close beside her own wonder and excitement she had felt the deep
and sullen repulsion of her companions. The Vicar sat huddled in his
overcoat. His nostrils, pinched with repugnance, sniffed as they drank
in the cold, clean air. From time to time he shuddered, and a hoarse
muttering came from under the gray woolen scarf he had wound round
his mouth and beard. He was the righteous man, sent into uttermost
abominable exile for his daughter's sin. Behind him, on the back seat
of the trap, Alice and Mary cowed under their capes and rugs. They had
turned their shoulders to each other, hostile in their misery. Gwenda
was sorry for them.

The gray road dipped and turned and plunged them to the bottom of
Garthdale. The small, scattering lights of the village waited for her
in the hollow, with something humble and sad and familiar in their
setting. They too stung her with that poignant and secret sense of
recognition.

"This is the place," the Vicar had said. He had addressed himself
to Alice; and it had been as if he had said, This the place, the
infernal, the damnable place, you've brought us to with your behavior.

Their hatred of it had made Gwenda love it. "You can have your old
Garthdale all to yourself," Alice had said. "Nobody else wants it."

That, to Gwenda, was the charm of it. The adorable place was her own.
Nobody else wanted it. She loved it for itself. It had nothing but
itself to offer her. And that was enough. It was almost, as she
had said, too much. Her questing youth conceived no more rapturous
adventure than to follow the sheep over Karva, to set out at twilight
and see the immense night come down on the high moors above Upthorne;
to get up when Alice was asleep and slip out and watch the dawn
turning from gray to rose, and from rose to gold above Greffington
Edge.

As it ha