long."

Against the restless alders turning their white lining to the storm the
house looked singularly desolate. The paint was almost gone from the
clap-boards, the window-panes were broken and patched with rags, and the
garden was a poisonous tangle of nettles, burdocks and tall swamp-weeds
over which big blue-bottles hummed.

At the sound of wheels a child with a tow-head and pale eyes like Liff
Hyatt's peered over the fence and then slipped away behind an out-house.
Harney jumped down and helped Charity out; and as he did so the rain
broke on them. It came slant-wise, on a furious gale, laying shrubs and
young trees flat, tearing off their leaves like an autumn storm, turning
the road into a river, and making hissing pools of every hollow. Thunder
rolled incessantly through the roar of the rain, and a strange glitter
of light ran along the ground under the increasing blackness.

"Lucky we're here after all," Harney laughed. He fastened the horse
under a half-roofless shed, and wrapping Charity in his coat ran with
her to the house. The boy had not reappeared, and as there was no
response to their knocks Harney turned the door-handle and they went in.

There were three people in the kitchen to which the door admitted
them. An old woman with a handkerchief over her head was sitting by the
window. She held a sickly-looking kitten on her knees, and whenever
it jumped down and tried to limp away she stooped and lifted it back
without any change of her aged, unnoticing face. Another woman, the
unkempt creature that Charity had once noticed in driving by, stood
leaning against the window-frame and stared at them; and near the stove
an unshaved man in a tattered shirt sat on a barrel asleep.