The morning dawned fine and touched with frost. The wind blew gently from the east. There was no sting in it, but it created an inevitable haze, and distance quickly faded under its blue-grey mantle, while at hand all shone clear and bright in the sunrise fires. The heavy dew of a cloudless night was not yet dried off the herbage, and the grass, nibbled to a close and springy velvet by sheep and rabbits, spread emerald green between the masses of heather and furze, where the lover climbed Dene Moor. Still the autumn heath shone with passages of colour; but into the rich pink of a month earlier had crept a russet warmth, where innumerable heather bells passed to death with a redness that drowned the purple. As yet this new colour was genial in tone, shone in the sunlight and glowed along the reaches of the fading fern; but a time approached when from ruddy to sere the countless blossoms must sink. Then the light would fade and the flowers wither, till winter winds tinkled in their grey inflorescence and sang the song of another dying year. Now only the splendour of their passing and the pale gold, where brake died in patches amid the standing fern, prophesied changes to come. A few raddled sheep browsed their morning meal and made harmony with the bright colours of the dawn, while Maynard, stooping, picked up the wing feather of a carrion crow and reflected that this was the last black plume he would ever find to clean his pipe on Dartmoor. He was sorry to leave it, but had found no time for regret until this moment. Life had passed so swiftly and demanded so much thought and contrivance of late, that only now he spared a few minutes to consider all that he was leaving, and how much had been good and precious to him. He had formed a hazy and nebulous picture of his future environment, but knew that it could in no way resemble this. He guessed that he must often look back, and doubted whether his future scene of life would entirely take the place of the one he was about to leave. But he remembered Dinah's attitude and her expressed joy that the Vale should be left behind them and all things become new.