keeping her eyes on the window. The carriage lamps cast rays of light a
little distance ahead of them and she caught glimpses of the things
they passed. After they had left the station they had driven through a
tiny village and she had seen whitewashed cottages and the lights of a
public house. Then they had passed a church and a vicarage and a little
shop-window or so in a cottage with toys and sweets and odd things set
out for sale. Then they were on the highroad and she saw hedges and
trees. After that there seemed nothing different for a long time or at
least it seemed a long time to her.
At last the horses began to go more slowly, as if they were climbing
up-hill, and presently there seemed to be no more hedges and no more
trees. She could see nothing, in fact, but a dense darkness on either
side. She leaned forward and pressed her face against the window just
as the carriage gave a big jolt.
Eh! We re on the moor now sure enough, said Mrs. Medlock.
The carriage lamps shed a yellow light on a rough-looking road which
seemed to be cut through bushes and low-growing things which ended in
the great expanse of dark apparently spread out before and around them.
A wind was rising and making a singular, wild, low, rushing sound.
It s it s not the sea, is it? said Mary, looking round at her
companion.
No, not it, answered Mrs. Medlock. Nor it isn t fields nor
mountains, it s just miles and miles and miles of wild land that
nothing grows on but heather and gorse and broom, and nothing lives on
but wild ponies and sheep.
I feel as if it might be the sea, if there were water on it, said
Mary. It sounds like the sea just now.
That s the wind blowing through the bushes, Mrs. Medlock said. It s
a wild, dreary enough place to my mind, though there s plenty that
likes it particularly when the heather s in bloom.
On and on they drove through the darkness, and though the rain stopped,
the wind rushed by and whistled and made strange sounds. The road went
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