the face.  Fortunately, so fierce a fury cannot last; presently the billows of wind that strike the wood come at longer intervals and with less vigour; then the rain increases, and yet a little while and the storm has swept on.  The very fury—­the utter abandon—­of its rage is its charm; the spirit rises to meet it, and revels in the roar and buffeting.  By-and-by they who have faced it have their reward.  The wind sinks, the rain ceases, a pale blue sky shows above, and then yonder appears a majesty of cloud—­a Himalaya of vapour.  Crag on crag rises the vast pile—­such jagged and pointed rocks as never man found on earth, or, if he found, could climb—­topped with a peak that towers to the heavens, and leans—­visibly leans—­and threatens to fall and overwhelm the weak world at its feet.  A gleam as of snow glitters on the upper rocks, the passes are gloomy and dark, the faces of the precipice are lit up with a golden gleam from the rapidly-sinking sun.  So the magic structure stands and sees the great round disk go down.  The night gathers around those giant mounts and dark space receives them.

CHAPTER XXI

A WINTER’S MORNING

The pale beams of the waning moon still cast a shadow of the cottage, when the labourer rises from his heavy sleep on a winter’s morning.  Often he huddles on his things and slips his feet into his thick ’water-tights’—­which are stiff and hard, having been wet over night—­by no other light than this.  If the household is comparatively well managed, however, he strikes a match, and his ‘dip’ shows at the window.  But he generally prefers to save a candle, and clatters down the narrow steep stairs in the semi-darkness, takes a piece of bread and cheese, and steps forth into the sharp air.  The cabbages in the garden he notes are covered with white frost, so is the grass in the fields, and the footpath is hard under foot.  In the furrows is a little ice—­white because the water has shrunk from beneath it, leaving it hollow—­and on the stile is a crust of rime, cold to the touch, which he brushes off in getting over.  Overhead the sky is clear—­cloudless but pale—­and the stars, though not yet fading, have lost the brilliant glitter of midnight.  Then, in all their glory, the idea of their globular shape is easily accepted; but in the morning, just as the dawn is breaking, the absence of glitter comes the impression of flatness—­circular rather than globular.  But yonder, over the elms, above the cowpens, the great morning star has risen, shining far brighter, in proportion, than the moon; an intensely clear metallic light—­like incandescent silver.