It was a day for exhilaration if one were happy, and, despite the load of care which hung heavy upon me, I found myself walking less languidly than I had done of late.

The boughs were now all bare; and where one had only seen leaves one saw a network of trees and branches against a blue sky, and beyond the trees the Purple Hill, which is hidden from one on our tree-hung road so long as the trees are in leaf.

The little robins sang cheerfully in many trees, and the air was so still that a beech-nut falling from the tree made quite a great noise.
As I came down the hilly road to where the village smoked in its hollow, I had an idea that a stillness lay upon it like the blue mists of autumn that were over all the countryside.

Araglin is usually the noisiest of villages--cocks crowing, hens cackling, dogs barking, children shouting at their play.

But this morning it was silent.
Nora's uncle's house lay almost outside the village, quite at its beginning.