CHAPTER XXXI.
The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter--and the Bird is on the wing.
-- OMAR KHAYYAM.
It was the third week of November.

Winter, the destroyer, was late, but he had come at last.

There was death in the air, a whisper of death stole across the empty fields and bare hill-side.

The birds heard it and were silent.

The November wind was hurrying round Westhope Abbey, shaking its bare trees.
Lord Newhaven stood looking fixedly out eastward across the level land to the low hills beyond.