They halted beneath a half-dead oak, hollow, and disfigured with white tumors, its roots spreading out like accipitrine claws grasping the ground.

A chilly wind circled round them, upon whose currents the seeds of a neighboring lime-tree, supported parachute-wise by the wing attached, flew out of the boughs downward like fledglings from their nest.

The vale was wrapped in a dim atmosphere of unnaturalness, and the east was like a livid curtain edged with pink.

There was no sign nor sound of Fitzpiers.
"It is no use standing here," said her father.

"He may come home fifty ways...why, look here!--here be Darling's tracks--turned homeward and nearly blown dry and hard! He must have come in hours ago without your seeing him." "He has not done that," said she.
They went back hastily.