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She was looking first to one side of the station, then to the other. The platform and line stood raised under the hill. Just outside the station to the north the sands of the estuary stretched bare and wide under the moon. In the other direction, on her right hand, the hills rose steeply; and close above the line a limestone quarry made a huge gash in the fell-side.
"Yes," said Mr. Gryce, "she has had what you women call a disappointment; and," speaking with unusual energy, "the man was a fool and a coward, and she has had a lucky escape." "Say ye? If so, then there is no call for her to carry on," said Keziah philosophically. "But the poor bairn's looking wantle enough now, though I warrant me the fell-side air will brisk her up in no time."
But Laura had not gone to the town. From the platform she had clearly seen a path on the fell-side, leading over some broken ground to the great quarry above the station. The grove of trees had hidden the starting of the path from her, but some outlet into the road there must be; she had left the station in quest of it. And as soon as she reached the trees a gate appeared in the wall to the left.
These cautious men had become of late years manufacturers, and it was said were growing fabulously rich. They had learned the value of the low coppice woods on their fell-side, and had started a bobbin-mill which Sam superintended, while Matt was on constant duty at the great steam-mill on Milloch-Force, where he spun his own wools into blankets and serges.
"She lives with my sister at our old home on the fell-side: Windy Brow the place is called. You must tell me how she looks and what you think of her altogether when you write to me, as I suppose you will do, or when you come home, if you elect not to take the cure even on trial." "I am not much in the way of criticising young ladies," said Alick sadly.
She brought up her son in decent living and the fear of God. In the year when Andrew was nineteen he was a tall, handsome lad, and a shepherd, following the profession, as he was to inherit the estate, of his forebears. One April night in that year he and his grandfather, the pair of them with a collie, lay out on the fell-side together.
He had driven in a crazy old gig from Wigton, and the nine miles which lay between that not too brilliant town and the desolate fell-side hamlet which he had been so fain to make his own spiritual domain had not been such as disposed him to a cheerful view of things.
The snow would slip from the fell-side, and leave dripping rock and clammy bent, and the river would break its frosty silence and pour a mighty grey-green flood to the sea. The swans and geese began to fly northward, and the pipits woke among the birches.
A second later they were on the fell-side climbing a rough stony path, which in places was almost a watercourse, and which wound up the fell towards a tract of level swampy moss or heath, beyond which lay the descent to Shanmoor.
Now at the folding time in the autumn Grettir went down to Flysia-wharf and got sheep for himself; he had laid hold on four wethers; but the bonders became ware of his ways and went after him; and these two things befell at the same time, that he got up under the fell-side, and that they came upon him, and would drive the sheep from him, yet bare they no weapon against him; they were six altogether, and stood thick in his path.
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