But it never did that, until the house it came from was two miles away, and no other to be seen; and so why should it go any further?
At the head of this road stood the old gray house, facing toward the south of east, to claim whatever might come up the valley, sun, or storm, or columned fog.

In the days of the past it had claimed much more--goods, and cattle, and tribute of the traffic going northward--as the loop-holed quadrangle for impounded stock, and the deeply embrasured tower, showed.

At the back of the house rose a mountain spine, blocking out the westering sun, but cut with one deep portal where a pass ran into Westmoreland--the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, a bar of slanting sunset entered, like a plume of golden dust, and hovered on a broad black patch of weather-beaten fir-trees.

The day was waning now, and every steep ascent looked steeper, while down the valley light and shade made longer cast of shuttle, and the margin of the west began to glow with a deep wine-color, as the sun came down--the tinge of many mountains and the distant sea--until the sun himself settled quietly into it, and there grew richer and more ripe (as old bottled wine is fed by the crust), and bowed his rubicund farewell, through the postern of the scaur-gate, to the old Hall, and the valley, and the face of Mr.
Jellicorse.
That gentleman's countenance did not, however, reply with its usual brightness to the mellow salute of evening.

Wearied and shaken by the long, rough ride, and depressed by the heavy solitude, he hated and almost feared the task which every step brought nearer.