THE SPECKSIONEER A few days after, Farmer Robson left Haytersbank betimes on a longish day's journey, to purchase a horse.

Sylvia and her mother were busied with a hundred household things, and the early winter's evening closed in upon them almost before they were aware.

The consequences of darkness in the country even now are to gather the members of a family together into one room, and to make them settle to some sedentary employment; and it was much more the case at the period of my story, when candles were far dearer than they are at present, and when one was often made to suffice for a large family.
The mother and daughter hardly spoke at all when they sat down at last.

The cheerful click of the knitting-needles made a pleasant home-sound; and in the occasional snatches of slumber that overcame her mother, Sylvia could hear the long-rushing boom of the waves, down below the rocks, for the Haytersbank gulley allowed the sullen roar to come up so far inland.

It might have been about eight o'clock--though from the monotonous course of the evening it seemed much later--when Sylvia heard her father's heavy step cranching down the pebbly path.