CHAPTER VIII.
When the blueberry bushes are dry, all the life in them, sucked into their roots against another summer, the tops turn a rich, brownish red; at this time, also, wild bramble thickets have many a crimson stalk that gives colour to their mass, and the twigs that rise above the white trunks of birch trees are not grey, but brown.
Round the new railway station at the cross-roads near Turrifs Settlement, the low-lying land, for miles and miles, was covered with, blueberry bushes; bramble thickets were here and there; and where the land rose a little, in irregular places, young birch woods stood.

If the snow had sprinkled here, as it had upon the hills the night before, there was no sign of it now.

The warm colour of the land seemed to glow against the dulness of the afternoon, not with the sparkle and brightness which colour has in sunshine, but with the glow of a sleeping ember among its ashes.

Round the west there was metallic blue colouring upon the cloud vault.

This colouring was not like a light upon the cloud, it was like a shadow upon it; yet it was not grey, but blue.
Where the long straight road from Turrifs and the long straight road from the hills crossed each other, and were crossed by the unprotected railway track with its endless rows of tree-trunks serving as telegraph poles, the new station stood.
It was merely a small barn, newly built of pinewood, divided into two rooms--one serving as a store-room for goods, the other as waiting-room, ticket office, and living-room of the station-master.