From among the scant brown mountain-grass, the limestone crops frequent, in peaks, and slabs, and riven rock-fragments. Far down in chinks and crevices little black-stemmed ferns grow darkling, and over the rock's rough face, the lichens, drab and yellow, make their little plans and charts. One may fancy some former people of strong giants sleeping very sweetly beneath those unchiselled tombstones, with their epitaphs written out fairly in Nature's hand in green mosses and rain furrows. In spring the hill's harsh front is crowned with a yellow splendour of gorse-flowers, but now a single blossom blows here and there desolate, just to hinder the old saying from being quite a lie. Below, in the valley, the mists roll greyly; and out above them Naullan church spire rises, pointing heavenwards, as if showing the way to the dead flock gathered round its feet; points heavenwards, like the finger of some sculptured saint.
The autumn winds are piping bleakly, singing an ugly peevish dirge for the gone summer, bending the frost-seared brake-fern all one way, and with rough hands pushing back Robert and Esther, saying, "This is our territory; what brings you here?"
Esther shivers.
"You are cold, I'm afraid," says Brandon, anxiously, putting his head on one side, not out of sentimentality, but in the endeavour to keep his hat on.
"Yes," she answers, rapidly; "and I'm glad of it. I should hate to feel warm and comfortable; I want to be cold, and faint, and miserable always. Do you know," she continues, excitedly, laying her hand on his arm, "yesterday I laughed?—yes! I actually laughed! and it is only a fortnight since—wasn't it horrible of me? I want the days and the weeks to go by quickly: I want it to be a long time since Jack died!"
Brandon makes no answer—partly because he is utterly at a loss for a reply, partly because he is still wrestling with his hat. Presently they come to a disused quarry, where the quarrymen have hewn out rock-ledges into comfortable seats for them. The wind howls above them, angry and sad, and flings hither and thither the flowerless broom-pikes that look over the cliffs, but it cannot reach them.
"Esther," says Bob, taking up a sharp stone, and beginning to draw white lines on the rock's smooth surface, "it seems as if I had no other occupation nowadays than to say disagreeable things to you, but I cannot help it: do you think you can bear to leave Glan-yr-Afon in three weeks or so?"
"Bear!" she repeats, bitterly; "I can bear anything—I have proved that already, I think. Any one that had had any feeling would have died of this; but I—I sleep and eat as well as ever: I am like the baker who refused Christ the loaf—I cannot die!"
"Hush!" he says, eagerly; "don't want to go before your time, or perhaps the Almighty might take you at your word."
There is silence for a moment or two, then Brandon speaks again: "At the end of three weeks you will come to us then?"