In one place a little walking funeral was laboring across the fields from a lonely cottage, in the direction of the church, high on the hill, the bell of which was tolling through the quiet air.

The sound reached us as we passed, and seemed to accompany us on our way.

I heard the men talking among themselves that there had been no snow-storm like to this for thirty years; and as they spoke some of them began shading their eyes, and trying to look in the direction in which we were going.
We had now reached a low waste of unenclosed land, with sedge and gorse pricking up everywhere through the snow, and with long lines of pollards marking the bed of a frozen stream.

Near the line was a deserted brick-kiln, surrounded by long uneven mounds and ridges of ice, with three poplars mounting guard over it.

Flights of rooks hung over the barren ground, and wheeled in the air with discordant clamor as we passed--the only living moving things in the utter desolation of the scene.