They had never heard of "Silas Marner."
The glorious autumn weather continued, and two or three days after Millie's arrival they took her for a long walk, out of the Dale, along Radlem Rigg, to look at the curious old prehistoric relic locally known as Tod's Trush.
The loveliness of her surroundings was again borne in upon Millie. The same up-soaring of spirit which she had experienced when her uncle drove her from the station once more exhilarated her. She could not analyse what it was that she found so different here from the land of her birth. She came from a country of clear air and vast spaces, of solitude and immeasurable distance. These dales were small in comparison with the endless rippling veldt she knew. But here there confronted her an element which she was quick to feel, though as yet too young to define—the element of mystery.
Strange it is that a few atmospheric effects should have power to lift the soul into new realms, into the brooding heart of a tender, tinted secret, which haunts the uplands and the valleys of Cleveshire, making a promised land of every peak that emerges, suggestive, from its golden, shimmering veil. The primal truth which underlay the power of the Veiled Isis was here; but in the North the magic is stronger, because to its mystery it adds the crowning note of austerity.
There is a loneliness which is the result, not of distance, but of inaccessibility. The dwellers in two valleys, perhaps five miles apart, divided by a high mountain, a dangerous pass, are separated far more thoroughly than those who dwell with fifty miles of plain between them, which the train will traverse in an hour. These dales give the impression of something remote, inviolable—something stern and shy, yet with a heart of glowing colour, of infinite tenderness, for those who can understand.
The Trush itself, when they reached it, was an old barrow, or tumulus, the earth covering of which had been entirely removed centuries ago. It was a square kist of stones, the top of which had fallen in. The coffin, or coffins, which it must once have contained, had vanished so long ago that a persistent local tradition maintained that there had never been any; but that the little house had been the abode of a being of supernatural origin, called Tod, concerning whom antiquarians cudgelled their brains in vain. Two upright slabs still stood like the jambs of a tiny doorway, with a lintel across; the whole surrounded by a circular wreath of large stones, which probably defined the original size of the mound.
To Melicent, who had never seen anything of the kind before, the vacant and lonely sepulchre was fraught with great pathos. Her thoughts took wing, and wandered to the times when human hands had erected this monument, and wondered whether it then stood in such unbroken solitude as it did now.
They had brought cakes with them, and a bottle of milk, and they all sat down among the heather and harebells, and refreshed themselves, while Tommy read a fresh instalment of "Phyllis and the Duke."