"That's the sea," said Mr. Jackson, waving his whip in the air, "down to
Dunotter Cove. There's a wind to-night. It'll blow rough presently."
Now from their hilltop in the light of a baby moon puddles of water shone
like silk, hedges were bending lines of listeners, far on the horizon a
black wood, there in one of those precipitous valleys cottages cowering,
overhead the blue night sky suddenly chequered with solemn pompous slowly
moving clouds. But here on the hilltop at any rate, a bustle of wind--such
a noise amongst the hedges and the pools instantly ruffled and then quiet
again; and so precipitous a darkness when a cloud swallowed the moon. In
the daylight that landscape, to any who loved not Cornwall, would seem ugly
indeed, with a grey cottage stuck here and there naked upon the moor, with
a bare deserted engine house upon the horizon, with trees, deep in the
little valley, but scant and staggering upon the hill--ugly by day but now
packed with a mystery that contains everything that human language has no
name for, there is nothing to do, on beholding it, but to kneel down and
worship God. Mr. Jackson had seen it often before and he went twice to
chapel every Sunday, so he just whipped up his horse and they stumbled down
the road.
"Dirty weather coming," he said.
Peter was disturbed. That whispering noise that had crept across the
country frightened him.
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