And then, as the time wore on, came the note of dread, of chill threatening. The sun slipped out of sight, the sky sulked. When she began to cross the second stretch of common, a light, delicate powdery mist hung over the shriveled heather. The common drew away--brown, bare, heavy with foreboding. The autumn flaying of the turf was in progress. She saw the bare, blue-black patches, like the skin of a dark cat. Through the mist she saw the stolid figure of a man. He was leaning his body against a turfing iron. A cart, half full of square turfs, was at his elbow. The mist grew thicker at every step. The one note of comfort and warmth came from the smithy, round which was an angry red flare, and from which came the steady clink of iron on iron. The afternoon grew cold. The chill, delicate powder-mist was eating into her. She was lightly clad. When first she went to Beaufort Street she had bought herself some cheap, necessary clothing out of the few pounds in her purse. This was an afternoon for furs. The mist rose and rose. The voice of a woman who plodded by with a top-heavy perambulator, the cry of the wretched, chilled baby inside, were the only dull sounds in the eerie, pure-white thickness. Her hair was wet on her face, moisture stood in minute pearls on the velvet collar of her cloth coat. Higher and higher, thicker and thicker, rose the delicate, eating mist! She was chin high in it. A couple of cows, a tethered goat, a long white string of geese, were queerly-shaped wraiths. The world was white: a wet, ghostly, silent world. There was a threat at every step; each corner, each clump of dripping bush formed to her nervous fancy some sinister ambush. Her spirits fell. Once she absolutely stopped, half-crying, with cold and misery. She was disposed to go back. It was still a long way to Folly Corner, and the terrifying mist was triumphant. She came at last to the cottage at the edge of the oak-scrub copse, the thatched and plastered cottage under the great oak trees. She remembered it so well, remembered the hot August day when she had walked to Folly Corner for the first time, and had thrown herself on the moss-grown turf under the burning sun. She strained her eyes to see the wide green glades, the clumps of primrose leaves, the tangled brambles, the great tropical growing thistles. She knew exactly what should be there at that season, but she saw nothing save the fire of a bush of haws. The cottage, which had stood empty on that August day, was now tenanted. She approached, her chilled limbs moving creakily. She slowly skirted that cottage, preferring to tread the soddened grass just for the sake of being near somebody. The world was deserted; she could no longer hear one single sound. She was the last desperate soul left outside.