On the evening of the day in question, Sybil was returning from the town to their new home with a heavy heart. Not a sketch had been sold, and her purse was almost empty; the rain was falling heavily, and a cold, keen blast from the Bristol Channel swept over the desolate and open moorland she had to traverse; and her tears were mingling with the large drops that plashed on her delicate face and sodden hair. She had resolved that on the morrow--come what might--she should take means to dispose of Audley's farewell gift, the returned engagement ring; the diamond, she knew, was a valuable one, too much so to find a purchaser in their now humble neighbourhood; but the doctor, or the friendly druggist, who had her luckless sketches, would perhaps advise her in the matter; and with a sigh, in which sorrow mingled with relief and hope, she hastened onward. The aspect of the district by which she had to pass to reach their present abode, was but ill-calculated to raise her spirit on a wet, stormy, and gloomy evening. In the distance rose the rough granite summits of the Row Tor and Bron Welli, each nearly some fourteen hundred feet in height, the sides of the former all covered by enormous blocks, the mightiest in Cornwall, piled over each other a very wilderness of spheroidal masses-- "Confusedly hurled, The fragments of a former world." Over these mountain summits, the descending evening mists, cold and grey, had replaced the farewell rays of the red sun as he sunk beyond the sea; the appearance of the former, made Sybil quicken her steps, lest she should be overtaken on the moor, for then she should be able to see but a few yards before her, so sudden and dense are those floating vapours in Cornwall; and the bogholes were perilous. On either side of the way--a mere cart track--stood those lines of upright stones, which are ranged along it at regular distances, and extend all the way from Watergate, over the moor, having been erected at some remote period to mark the path in misty weather; and with a new but not unaccountable foreboding in her heart, for like Constance she was of a delicate organisation and had keen perceptions, Sybil hastened on, till she experienced a kind of sad relief on seeing the light that shone from the window of the little room where now her ailing mother lay, and where kind old Winny Braddon sat and watched. Pausing at the threshold, she threw aside her drenched cloak and hat, and strove to smooth her wetted hair, ere she stealthily opened the door. "How is dear mamma now, Winny?" she whispered. "She sleeps still." "Still?" "Yes--the poor darling; but in her sleep she has been muttering much of the past--dreaming, I suppose; oh, my poor _chealveen_, you're wet, and cold, and weary too." "Please don't mind me, Winny; but tell me all about mamma."