In a few minutes he was quite himself once more, and drew my hand upon his arm, and went in with me to say farewell to the servants; he did so with grace and dignity like an old knight of romance--for he was never haughty to his inferiors, and they all loved him. They were crying and sobbing, every one of them--even old Whitehead--and I cried too, I could not help it; but my father was quite unmoved. He put me into the chaise, took his seat beside me, waved his hand out of the window, smiling as he did so--and then he closed the blinds rapidly on that side, and the carriage drove away. It was all over like a dream. I dared not and could not, look back upon the home which had been the centre of my thoughts all my life; and with the cold night wind blowing in our faces, we were hurrying to a new life, altogether severed from our old existence, and from Cottiswoode. Yes! the wind was in our faces, fresh and cold--and I never feel it so now without an instant recollection of that long silent drive to Cambridge, through the darkening October night. The long dark levels of the fields rushed past us so swiftly, and with such a desolate quietness; and the long luminous line of the horizon, and the dull clouds of night kept us company with such a ghost-like constancy, travelling at as quick a pace as ours. I was soon tired of weeping under my veil, for I had all the restlessness of my years; and I can see now how the darkness brooded upon the flat meadows, how there seemed no human divisions of fence or hedge upon them, but only one blank line of grass from which the night had taken all color, and of ploughed land stretching back its lessening furrows over many acres, which the eye ached to see. Sometimes miles away, a pollard willow bristled up upon the sky, showing its every twig with a strange exaggeration as it stood guarding some dreary point of road--and the solitary haystack which belonged to some one of those poor stray cottages belated among the fields, threw up its bulk like a goblin against that clear universal background--that pale line of sky which brought out every outline with such a ghostly distinction. Distance, space, the wild idea of an unending and unreposing journey, are the very spirit and sentiment of this country--I think sometimes its dull unfeatured outline is half sublime; there are no mountain heights to attain to, no sweet valleys charming you to rest; only the long lines converging into the infinite sky--the fresh breeze in your face--and the rushing of your own footsteps through the silence, crying--on--on! There was not a word exchanged between us all the way--my father sat quite still, looking out from one window, engaged I know not how, while I looked from the other, feeling a strange enjoyment in the mere motion and progress, and in the silence and dreamy dreariness of all those flat, unvarying lines, that glided past us in the twilight and the night.