It was a very famous alpenstock, which this guide and his father before him had used all their lives, one that had been planted in the topmost snows of every peak in Switzerland.

Indeed the names of the most unclimbable of these, together with the dates of their conquest by its owners, sometimes followed by crosses to show that on such or such an expedition life had been lost, were burnt into the tough wood with a hot iron.

As the first of these dates was as far back as 1831, Godfrey valued this staff highly, and did not like to leave it to the chances of the carrier's cart.
His road through the fields ran past Hawk's Hall, of which he observed with a thrill of dismay, that the blinds were drawn as though in it someone lay dead.

There was no reason why he should have been dismayed, since he had heard that Isobel had gone away to somewhere in "Ameriky," as Mrs.Parsons had expressed it in a brief and illspelt letter, and that Sir John was living in town.

Yet the sight depressed him still further with its suggestion of death, or of separation, which is almost as bad, for, be it remembered, he was at an age when such impressions come home.
After leaving the Hall with its blinded and shuttered windows, his quickest road to the Abbey House ran through the churchyard.