The sky seemed prophetic of snow, a canopy of purple clouds pressing from the north like some fate-bearing vapor of the Norse legends. The west was a great cavern of fire, with ruddy veins of glowing ore tonguing scarlet and gold across the sky. The wild, fir-spired wastes of Pevensel loomed strange and mysterious under the slanting light. There were tall thickets bannered with crimson on the hills, stretches of rusty heather and dark-green gorse, covered as with a web of gold. Now and again a vague wind would start up out of the silence, and come roaring and moaning amid the swaying trees.
From Beacon Rock the road plunged suddenly into a broad valley. A tawny, iron-stained stream trickled on one side of the highway; on the other a beechwood rose towards the west, its round pillars and bronze carpeting of leaves streaked and splashed by the setting sun. A thousand intertwining branches netted the red and angry splendor of the sky.
There was a sudden scuffling in the wood as Jeffray rode by, a score of black pigs running squeaking and grunting amid the dead leaves and bracken. Close to the road, under the shadow of a great beech, sat an old woman with her chin near her knees, her nose a red hook above her lipless mouth. Behind the crone, and leaning against the trunk of the tree, stood a girl in a green gown and scarlet stays laced up over her full yet girlish bust, her short gown displaying a pair of buckled shoes and neat, gray-stockinged ankles. She wore also a red cloak, the hood, lined with rabbit-skin, turned back upon her shoulders.
Jeffray glanced at the pair as he reined in to avoid riding down a couple of pigs that were grunting and scurrying about the road. The girl in the red cloak was a tall wench with coal-black hair, petulant, full lips, cheeks tanned a rich red, a color that would have made the ladies of St. James’s appear pale and dim. Her eyes were of a hard and crude blue, looking almost fierce under their straight black brows. There was a haughty and intractable air about her. The sensuous curve of her strong figure seemed to suggest the agility and strength of a beautiful savage.
The old woman had clambered up and was laying her stick across the backs of the pigs with a verve that did her hardihood credit. The girl by the tree stood motionless, as though in no mood for playing under-swine-herd to the old lady. She was staring boldly at Jeffray, with no play of emotion upon her face, no softening of her large and petulant mouth. She looked, indeed, like a child of the wild woods, taught to rely solely upon her senses, and those primitive instincts that the forest life had developed.