The sadness of last night was neither in his face nor in his voice.

He was even quieter than usual, but he appeared to have grown older in the few hours that had intervened.
Nevertheless, he went through his ordinary morning's work about the homestead with the air of one whose mind was with him in what he did.
After breakfast he took his staff out of the corner and set out for the hills, his dog beside him.
During the day, Rotha, with such neighborly help as it was the custom to tender, did all the little offices incident to the situation.

She went in and out of the chamber of the dead, not without awe, but without fear.

She had only once before looked on death, or, if she had seen it twice before this day, her first sight of it was long ago, in that old time of which memory scarcely held a record, when she was carried in her father's arms into a darkened room like this and held for a moment over the white face that she knew to be the face of her mother.

But, unused as she had been to scenes made solemn by death, she appeared to know her part in this one.
Intelligence of the disaster that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite Moss was not long in circulating through Wythburn.