From its position it seemed to radiate from the window of a house on the hill-side.

The house had been empty when she was last at home, and she wondered who inhabited the place now.
Her conjectures, however, were not intently carried on, and she was watching the light quite idly, when it gradually changed color, and at length shone blue as sapphire.

Thus it remained several minutes, and then it passed through violet to red.
Her curiosity was so widely awakened by the phenomenon that she sat up in bed, and stared steadily at the shine.

An appearance of this sort, sufficient to excite attention anywhere, was no less than a marvel in Hintock, as Grace had known the hamlet.

Almost every diurnal and nocturnal effect in that woodland place had hitherto been the direct result of the regular terrestrial roll which produced the season's changes; but here was something dissociated from these normal sequences, and foreign to local habit and knowledge.
It was about this moment that Grace heard the household below preparing to retire, the most emphatic noise in the proceeding being that of her father bolting the doors.