The house was in sight, a long white building with blinds down at some of the windows, and some wide open, some showing unclean glass:  the three aspects and signs of a house’s emptiness when they are seen together.

Carinthia remarked on their having met nobody.  It had a serious meaning for them.  Formerly they were proud of outstripping the busy population of the mine, coming down on them with wild wavings and shouts of sunrise.  They felt the death again, a whole field laid low by one stroke, and wintriness in the season of glad life.  A wind had blown and all had vanished.

The second green of the year shot lively sparkles off the meadows, from a fringe of coloured glovelets to a warm silver lake of dews.  The firwood was already breathing rich and sweet in the sun.  The half-moon fell rayless and paler than the fan of fleeces pushed up Westward, high overhead, themselves dispersing on the blue in downy feathers, like the mottled grey of an eagle’s breast:  the smaller of them bluish like traces of the beaked wood-pigeon.

She looked above, then below on the slim and straightgrown flocks of naked purple crocuses in bud and blow abounding over the meadow that rolled to the level of the house, and two of these she gathered.

CHAPTER V

A MOUNTAIN WALK IN MIST AND SUNSHINE

Chillon was right in his forecast of the mists.  An over-moistened earth steaming to the sun obscured it before the two had finished breakfast, which was a finish to everything eatable in the ravaged dwelling, with the exception of a sly store for the midday meal, that old Mariandl had stuffed into Chillon’s leather sack—­the fruit of secret begging on their behalf about the neighbourhood.  He found the sack heavy and bulky as he slung it over his shoulders; but she bade him make nothing of such a trifle till he had it inside him.  ’And you that love tea so, my pretty one, so that you always laughed and sang after drinking a cup with your mother,’ she said to Carinthia, ’you will find one pinch of it in your bag at the end of the left-foot slipper, to remember your home by when you are out in the world.’

She crossed the strap of the bag on her mistress’s bosom, and was embraced by Carinthia and Chillon in turns, Carinthia telling her to dry her eyes, for that she would certainly come back and perhaps occupy the house one day or other.  The old soul moaned of eyes that would not be awake to behold her; she begged a visit at her grave, though it was to be in a Catholic burial-place and the priests had used her dear master and mistress ill, not allowing them to lie in consecrated ground; affection made her a champion of religious tolerance and a little afraid of retribution.  Carinthia soothed her, kissed her, gave the promise, and the parting was over.