She lingered over each duty with a dreary sense of the emptiness of the house haunting her, and of the silence of the hearth where all the long evening must be spent alone.
It was late in February, and though the fern and heather and gorse were not yet in bud, there was a purple tinge upon the moor fore-telling the quickly coming spring.

The birds that had been silent all winter were chirping under the eaves, or fluttered up from the causeway where she had been scattering corn, at the sound of her footsteps across the little farm-yard.

The sun, near its setting, was shining across the uplands, and throwing long shadows from every low bush and brake.

Phebe mounted the old horse-block by the garden wicket, and looked around her, shading her eyes with her hands.

The soft west wind, blowing over many miles of moor and meadows and kissing her cheek, seemed like the touch of a dear old friend, and the thin gray cloud overhead appeared only as a slight veil scarcely hiding a beloved face.