ill was done; and to see the
feeble priest chanting, over the dead form, words the living would
have laughed at, sprinkling with his little broom drops that could not
purify; while the children, robed in white, swung their smoking censers
slowly over the cold and twilight grave; and after seeing all, to ask,
with a shudder unexpressed, "Is this the end that God intended for a man
so proud and strong?"

Not a tear was shed upon him, except from the sweetest of all sweet
eyes; not a sigh pursued him home. Except in hot anger, his life had
been cold, and bitter, and distant; and now a week had exhausted all
the sorrow of those around him, a grief flowing less from affection than
fear. Aged men will show his tombstone; mothers haste with their infants
by it; children shrink from the name upon it, until in time his history
shall lapse and be forgotten by all except the great Judge and God.

After all was over, I strode across the moors very sadly; trying to
keep the cold away by virtue of quick movement. Not a flake of snow had
fallen yet; all the earth was caked and hard, with a dry brown crust
upon it; all the sky was banked with darkness, hard, austere, and
frowning. The fog of the last three weeks was gone, neither did any
rime remain; but all things had a look of sameness, and a kind of furzy
colour. It was freezing hard and sharp, with a piercing wind to back it;
and I had observed that the holy water froze upon Sir Ensor's coffin.

One thing struck me with some surprise, as I made off for our fireside
(with a strong determination to heave an ash-tree up the chimney-place),
and that was how the birds were going, rather than flying as they used
to fly. All the birds were set in one direction, steadily journeying
westward, not with any heat of speed, neither flying far at once; but
all (as if on business bound), partly running, partly flying, partly
fluttering along; silently, and without a voice, neither pricking head
nor tail. This movement of the birds went on, even for a week or more;
every kind of thrushes passed us, every kind of wild fowl, even plovers
went away, and crows, and snipes and wood-cocks. And before half the
frost was over, all we had in the snowy ditches were hares so tame that
we could pat them; partridges that came to hand, with a dry noise in
their crops; heath-poults, making cups of snow; and a few poor hopping
redwings, flipping in and out the hedge, having lost the power to fly.
And all the ti