to west, were black and melancholy fields, half reclaimed from the peat
moss, fields where the water stood in the furrows, or a plough driven
deep and left, showed the nature of the heavy waterlogged earth, and the
farmer's despair of dealing with it, till the drying winds should come.
Some of it, however, had long before been reclaimed for pasture, so that
strips of sodden green broke up, here and there, the long stretches of
purple black. In the great dykes or drains to which the pastures were
due, the water, swollen with recent rain, could be seen hurrying to join
the rivers and the sea. The clouds overhead hurried like the dykes and
the streams. A perpetual procession from the north-west swept inland from
the sea, pouring from the dark distance of the upper valley, and blotting
out the mountains that stood around its head.

A desolate scene, on this wild March day; yet full of a sort of beauty,
even so far as the mosslands were concerned. And as Alan Helbeck's glance
travelled along the ridge to his right, he saw it gradually rising from
the marsh in slopes, and scars, and wooded fells, a medley of lovely
lines, of pastures and copses, of villages clinging to the hills, each
with its church tower and its white spreading farms--a laud of homely
charm and comfort, gently bounding the marsh below it, and cut off by the
seething clouds in the north-west from the mountains towards which it
climbed. And as he turned homewards with the moss country behind him, the
hills rose and fell about him in soft undulation more and more rich in
wood, while beside him roared the tumbling Greet, with its flood-voice--a
voice more dear and familiar to Alan Helbeck perhaps, at this moment of
his life, than the voice of any human being.

He walked fast with his shoulders thrown back, a remarkably tall man,
with a dark head and short grizzled beard. He held himself very erect, as
a soldier holds himself; but he had never been a soldier.