V

It was three weeks since he had fetched his flock down from the fell.

After dinner he and his mother sat together in the parlour:  they had done so every Sunday afternoon, year in and year out, as far back as he could remember.

A row of mahogany chairs, with shiny, horse-hair seats, were ranged round the room.  A great collection of agricultural prize-tickets were pinned over the wall; and, on a heavy, highly-polished sideboard stood several silver cups.  A heap of gilt-edged shavings filled the unused grate:  there were gaudily-tinted roses along the mantelpiece, and, on a small table by the window, beneath a glass-case, a gilt basket filled with imitation flowers.  Every object was disposed with a scrupulous precision:  the carpet and the red-patterned cloth on the centre table were much faded.  The room was spotlessly clean, and wore, in the chilly winter sunlight, a rigid, comfortless air.

Neither spoke, or appeared conscious of the other’s presence.  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.  Anthony watched them absently, pursuing his rude meditations.

...  And the succession of bad seasons, the slow ruination of the farmers throughout the country, were but punishment meted out for the accumulated wickedness of the world.  In the olden time God rained plagues upon the land:  nowadays, in His wrath, He spoiled the produce of the earth, which, with His own hands, He had fashioned and bestowed upon men.

He rose and continued his walk along the bridle-path.  A multitude of rabbits scuttled up the hill at his approach; and a great cloud of plovers, rising from the rushes, circled overhead, filling the air with a profusion of their querulous cries.  All at once he heard a rattling of stones, and perceived a number of small pieces of shingle bounding in front of him down the grassy slope.