Through the summer months the old Bridge Factory stood in ruins; the only part that remained intact being the tall chimney-shaft, down which Amos Entwistle had brought the fainting child from out the flames. The days were long and the weather warm, and the inhabitants of Rehoboth spent the sunny hours in wandering over the moors, never dreaming of hard times and the closing year. A few of the more frugal and thrifty families had secured employment in a neighbouring valley, returning home at the week end. The many, however, awaited the rebuilding of the mill and the recommencement of work at their old haunt. But when the autumn set in chill and drear, and the October rains swept the trees and soaked the grass--when damp airs hung over the moors morning by morning, and returned to spread their chill canopy at eventide--faces began to wear an anxious look, and hearts lost the buoyancy of the idle summer hours. There is always desolation in the late autumn on the moors. The great hills lose their bold contours, now dying away in a cold gray of sky, through which a blurred sun sheds his watery ray; while the bracken, with its beaten fronds, and the heather with its disenchanted bloom, change the gorgeous carpet of colour into wastes and wilds of cheerless expanse. The wind sobs as though conscious of the coming winter's stress--sad with its prophecy of want, and cold, and decay. Little rivulets that ran gleaming like silver threads--the Pactolian streams of childhood's home and lover's whisperings--now swell and deepen and complain, as though angry with the burdens of the falling clouds. Bared branches and low-browed eaves weep with the darkened and lowering sky, and withered leaves beat piteously at the cottage windows they once shadowed with their greenery, or lie limp and clayey on the roadside and the path. Then, in the silent night, there falls the first rime, and in the morning is seen the hoary covering that tells of the year's ageing and declining days. At the corner of the village street the hoarse cough is heard, and around the hearth the children gather closely, no longer sporting amid the flowers, or peopling the cloughs with fairy homes. A dispiriting hand tones down the great orchestra of Nature, and all her music is set to a minor key, her 'Jubilate' becoming a threnody--a great preludious sob.