Bleak, barren, desolate, perched like an eyrie upon the peak of a lonely moor, Glune held herself against the winds of heaven. Storms might come, storms did come, thunder would break, lightning and gales destroy, this or that avenue of trees. The spaces in the forest, the gaps and rents in the more cultivated landscape of the drive only served to give a clearer view of the severe outline of the grey building, about which such green things as strove to grow were ruthlessly cut down. Some houses are almost human in their characters and impressions. In an English hospital Cummings had once seen the death of a veteran pensioner, a corporal who had served at Balaclava under his grandfather. Something in the look of the rugged stone, defaced but defiant in its pride and poverty, recalled the light in the old man’s dying eyes as he said, "I’ve served my time, sir, eighty years of it all told, and I’ve got my faculties to the end, which is more than many a man can boast." Glune seemed as if it would keep its faculties to the end too. The young man looked across to the further hills and down at the castle soberly. The grey of the afternoon had broken; the long, narrow windows opposite had captured the reflected light, a blood-red light which flamed out dazzlingly. The shadows of the pines and firs cut the rank grass of a neglected lawn immediately in front of the house; the glow of the sky was repeated in the running water of a little burn at the base of the hill. So far as eye could see, a chain of purple hills stretched loftily. Hills full of warmth and colour, and the mystery which compels a man’s attention. So infinite, so eternal they seemed, that facing them the petty jars of daily life took their true value; and young as he was, Cummings realized in a flash that only what children call "big things" are of account in Heaven’s reckoning—love, penitence, and sacrifice. "I’m not with you," he cried, stammering and stumbling over the hasty words. "What you say can’t be true. A boy who lives here has got his chance. I bet you anything you like he’ll make something of it. Stunted! narrow! He needn’t be! Why, if the boy is only strong enough to climb these hills and look about him, he’ll educate himself instinctively. Not in book lore, of course, but book lore isn’t all, nor even much. Learning from Nature is like learning at your mother’s knee, you can’t forget it." He caught his breath uncomfortably, and then ran headlong on, as though he were ashamed of being ashamed to speak. "Both make one feel—why, more, they make one know—that there’s a God in the machine somewhere." His companion had moved away. His limp showed very perceptibly at that moment. The western windows of Glune were dull red now, flushing and scintillating like rubies in a curious setting.