Chapter 4 - Page 2

manners from a man of business. Therefore Mr. Jellicorse had sealed
up little, except his respectful consideration and request to be allowed
to wait upon his honored clients, concerning a matter of great moment,
upon the afternoon of Thursday then next ensuing. And the post had gone
so far, to give good distance for the money, that the Thursday of the
future came to be that very day.

The present century opened with a chilly and dark year, following three
bad seasons of severity and scarcity. And in the northwest of Yorkshire,
though the summer was now so far advanced, there had been very little
sunshine. For the last day or two, the sun had labored to sweep up the
mist and cloud, and was beginning to prevail so far that the mists drew
their skirts up and retired into haze, while the clouds fell away to the
ring of the sky, and there lay down to abide their time. Wherefore it
happened that "Yordas House" (as the ancient building was in old time
called) had a clearer view than usual of the valley, and the river
that ran away, and the road that tried to run up to it. Now this
was considered a wonderful road, and in fair truth it was wonderful,
withstanding all efforts of even the Royal Mail pony to knock it to
pieces. In its rapidity down hill it surpassed altogether the river,
which galloped along by the side of it, and it stood out so boldly with
stones of no shame that even by moonlight nobody could lose it, until
it abruptly lost itself. But it never did that, until the house it came
from was two miles away, and no other to be seen; and so why should it
go any further?

At the head of this road stood the old gray house, facing toward the
south of east, to claim whatever might come up the valley, sun, or
storm, or columned fog. In the days of the past it had claimed much
more--goods, and cattle, and tribute of the traffic going northward--as
the loop-holed quadrangle for impounded stock, and the deeply embrasured
tower, showed. At the back of the house rose a mountain spine, blocking
out the westering sun, but cut with one deep portal where a pass ran
into Westmoreland--the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and
through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, a bar of
slanting sunset entered, like a plume of golden dust, and hovered on a
broad black patch of weather-beaten fir-trees. The day was waning now,
and every steep ascent looked steeper, while down the valley light and
shade made longer cast of shuttle, and the margin of the west began to
glow with a deep wine-color, as the sun came down--the tinge of many
mountains and the distant sea--until the sun himself settled quietly
into it, and there grew richer and more ripe (as old bottled wine is fed
by the crust), and bowed