Old Mrs.
Garstin, wrapped in a woollen shawl, sat knitting: Anthony dozed
fitfully on a stiff-backed chair.
Of a sudden, in the distance, a bell started tolling. Anthony rubbed his
eyes drowsily, and taking from the table his Sunday hat, strolled out
across the dusky fields. Presently, reaching a rude wooden seat, built
beside the bridle-path, he sat down and relit his pipe. The air was very
still; below him a white filmy mist hung across the valley: the
fell-sides, vaguely grouped, resembled hulking masses of sombre shadow;
and, as he looked back, three squares of glimmering gold revealed the
lighted windows of the square-towered church.
He sat smoking; pondering, with placid and reverential contemplation,
on the Mighty Maker of the world--a world majestically and inevitably
ordered; a world where, he argued, each object--each fissure in the
fells, the winding course of each tumbling stream--possesses its
mysterious purport, its inevitable signification....
At the end of the field two rams were fighting; retreating, then running
together, and, leaping from the ground, butting head to head and horn to
horn.
Pages:
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103