Earth! The sun shows all their disfiguring, but the friendly night comes
at length to hide her disgrace; and that well hidden, slowly descends
the brooding moon to unveil her beauty.

For there was a _thriving_ town full of awful chimneys in the valley,
and the clouds that rose from it ascended above the Colmans' farm to the
great moor which stretched miles and miles beyond it. In the autumn sun
its low forest of heather burned purple; in the pale winter it lay white
under snow and frost; but through all the year winds would blow across
it the dull smell of the smoke from below. Had such a fume risen to the
earthly paradise, Dante would have imagined his purgatory sinking into
hell. On all this inferno the night had sunk like a foretaste of
cleansing death. The fires lay smoldering like poor, hopeless devils,
fain to sleep. The world was merged in a tidal wave from the ocean of
hope, and seemed to heave a restful sigh under its cooling renovation.




CHAPTER III.


A PENNYWORTH OF THINKING.

"A penny for your thought, Walter!" said the girl, after a long silence,
in which the night seemed at length to clasp her too close.

"Your penny, then! I was thinking how wild and sweet the dark wind would
be blowing up there among the ringing bells of the heather."