As the house rose higher and higher against the red sky, and grew darker, and as the sullen roar of blood-hounds (terrors of the neighborhood) roused the slow echoes of the crags, the lawyer was almost fain to turn his horse's head, and face the risks of wandering over the moor by night.

But the hoisting of a flag, the well-known token (confirmed by large letters on a rock) that strangers might safely approach, inasmuch as the savage dogs were kennelled--this, and the thought of such an entry for his day-book, kept Mr.Jellicorse from ignominious flight.

He was in for it now, and must carry it through.
In a deep embayed window of leaded glass Mistress Yordas and her widowed sister sat for an hour, without many words, watching the zigzag of shale and rock which formed their chief communication with the peopled world.
They did not care to improve their access, or increase their traffic; not through cold morosity, or even proud indifference, but because they had been so brought up, and so confirmed by circumstance.

For the Yordas blood, however hot and wild and savage in the gentlemen, was generally calm and good, though steadfast, in the weaker vessels.

For the main part, however, a family takes it character more from the sword than the spindle; and their sword hand had been like Esau's.
Little as they meddled with the doings of the world, of one thing at least these stately Madams--as the baffled squires of the Riding called them--were by no means heedless.