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The trees no longer sighed and moaned with the wind; on the stiffening firs lay beads of frozen snow, and the wind as it passed through them soughed. The ghylls were fuller and louder, and seemed to come from every hill; the gullocks overflowed, but silence was stealing over the streams, and the deeper rivers seemed scarcely to flow. Ralph and Rotha walked side by side to Shoulthwaite Moss.
Garth stood for a moment without perceiving that he was alone, his eyes still bent on the ground. Then he walked moodily in the other direction. When he reached his home, Joe threw down the hoop in the smithy and went into the house. His mother was there. "Sim, he's at Shoulthwaite," he said. "It's like enough his daughter is there, too." A sneer crossed Mrs. Garth's face.
But, unused as she had been to scenes made solemn by death, she appeared to know her part in this one. Intelligence of the disaster that had fallen on the household at Shoulthwaite Moss was not long in circulating through Wythburn. One after another, the shepherds and their wives called in, and were taken to the silent room upstairs.
Sim's daughter, Rotha, had about this time become a constant helper at Shoulthwaite Moss, where, indeed, she was treated with the cordiality proper to a member of the household. Old Angus had but little sympathy to spare for the girl's father, but he liked Rotha's own cheerfulness, her winsomeness, and, not least, her usefulness. She could milk and churn, and bake and brew.
She felt that after a step or two he had stood still in front of her. She knew that her face was crimson. Her eyes, too, were growing dim. "Rotha, my darling!" She heard no more. The spinning-wheel had been pushed hastily aside. She was on her feet, and Willy's arms were about her. As the parson left Shoulthwaite that morning he encountered Joe Garth at the turning of the lonnin.
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