is son's time. Many gude qualities have
they got, chiefly along o' living so much in the awpen air."

"An' gude appetites for the same cause! Go after Tim, wan of 'e. He've
trotted down the road half a mile, an' be runnin' arter that blue
concern as if't was a circus. Theer! Blamed if that damned gal in the
thing ban't stoppin' to let un catch up! Now he'm feared, an' have
turned tail an' be coming back. 'Tis all right; Ship be wi' un."

Presently the greater of Will's two ricks approached completion, and all
the business of thatch and spar gads and rush ropes began. At his
mother's desire he wasted no time, and toiled on, long after his party
had returned to Newtake; but with the dusk he made an end for that day,
stood up, rested his back, and scanned the darkening scene before
descending.

At eveningtide there had spread over the jagged western outlines of the
Moor an orange-tawny sunset, whereon the solid masses of the hills burnt
into hazy gold, all fairy-bright, unreal, unsubstantial as a
cloud-island above them, whose solitary and striated shore shone purple
through molten fire.

Detail vanished from the Moor; dim and dimensionless it spread to the
transparent splendour of the horizon, and its eternal attributes of
great vastness, great loneliness, great silence reigned together
unfretted by particulars. Gathering gloom diminished the wide glory of
the sky, and slowly robbed the pageant of its colour. Then rose each
hill and undulation in a different shade of night, and every altitude
mingled into the outlines of its neighbour. Nocturnal mists, taking grey
substance against the darkness of the lower lands, wound along the
rivers, and defined the depths and ridges of the valleys. Moving waters,
laden with a last waning gleam, glided from beneath these vapoury
exhalations, and even trifling rivulets, now invisible save for chance
splashes of light, lacked not mystery as they moved from darkness into
darkness with a song. Stars twinkled above the dewy sleep of the earth,
and there brooded over all things a prodigious peace, broken only by
batrachian croakings from afar.

These phenomena Will Blanchard observed; then yellow candle fires
twinkled from the dark mass of the farmhouse, and he descended in
splendid weariness and strode to supper and to bed.

Yet not much sleep awaited the farmer, for soon after midnight a gentle
patter of small stones at his window awakened him. Leaping from his bed
and looking into