louds--gray they would have been by day; by night they looked
sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her
changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles
on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of
earth and heaven--never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, making
them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding
their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He
did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared--a
muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the
furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the
horizon--with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not
trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were
gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which
those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser
element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his
way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the
back of his head, as his Irish manner was. "Tramp, tramp," he went along
the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an
accommodation; "splash, splash," through the mire-filled cart ruts,
where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain
landmarks--the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of
Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire
through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table,
and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate
from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water.
In a strange place he would instantly have realized the dream; but the
company assembled in that kitchen were Mr. Helstone's own parishioners;
they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.

The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to
Hollow's Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across
fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct
course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building
here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could
see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick,
lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark;
not a candle shone from any window. It was absol