He was nearing the edge of the high upland along which he had been walking.

In front of him the long road with its gleaming pools bent sharply to the left, showing pale and distinct against a darkening heaven and the wide grey fields which had now, on one side of his path, replaced the serried growth of young plantations.

Night was fast advancing from south and east over the upland.

But straight in front of him and on his right, the forest trees, still flooded with sunset, fell in sharp steeps towards the plain.
Through their straight stems glowed the blues and purples of that lower world; and when the slopes broke and opened here and there, above the rounded masses of their red and golden leaf the level distances of the plain could be seen stretching away, illimitable in the evening dusk, to a west of glory, just vacant of the sun.

The golden ball had sunk into the mists awaiting it, but the splendour of its last rays was still on all the western front of the hills, bathing the beech woods as they rose and fell with the large undulations of the ground.
Insensibly Raeburn, filled as he was with a new and surging emotion, drew the solemnity of the forest glades and of the rolling distances into his heart.