The soothing sounds within--Wolf’s quiet breathing, the soft snoring of the dogs, the crackle of the fire, the patient speech of the clock--seemed to intensify the mighty silence without. There was no voice from shippon or dairy to give a sense of warm nearness and surrounding companionship. Facing the still-glimmering window, the wakeful woman gathered no feeling of protection from the well-built walls; seemed, rather, to be out unsheltered in the green emptiness, with the chill night settling heavily down. She could still mark the Lugg, dark against the paler sky, but the tide beyond it had been gone more than an hour; she knew it, though she could not see it. She folded her hands and laid her head against the woollen antimacassar, looking back over the years. The time for looking forward was past. Gradually, the pain of exile drew away. Here, in the very shadow of her great dread, it ceased to hold her, leaving her lapped in peace. There came to her, too, the consciousness of power, of victory almost, in the mere fact of having lived, which gives to old age, however humble, its own peculiar dignity. “_My_ life!”--says every soul--“that sum of happenings which is mine and mine alone, that wonderful and dreadful pilgrimage that I have made with Time. Whatever the record, I have lived, finished the course, bound myself to Eternity by the tendrils of experience and growth.” Her eyes closed slowly as the Lugg faded from view. The fire sank a little; the dogs turned and sighed; the shadows crept in. On the flickering hearth the old man and the old woman slept, dreamless. CHAPTER XVI SPURS TO GLORY Slowly, very slowly, the faintly-shifting kaleidoscope of the months adjusted Dandy to her new conditions. The first sense of stagnation, following on the hurry of Halsted, was replaced gradually by a feeling of steady movement and expansion. The days were alive but never feverish. She came to see that rampant activity does not always mean progression, that the stimulant of rush may finally produce stupefaction, and flying feet carry one over all the great truths of life. The country’s gift was hers--time to grow. But the gift came gauntleted, she found. It had its Judgment Book, its Black List, its Penal Code. There were long evenings with nobody at hand to deliver her from herself, long, hopeless days with a heart like a spurless steed, and long, terrible nights when the ghosts of the place woke her to clamour in cold hate at her presence. For Watters would not always own her. It had its brutal hours, when the very garden was sinister and the eyes of the house had no soul, and terror waited at every turn of the stair. She came to know, too, the penalty of identifying her mood with that of the weather--the cruel relentlessness of storm, the utter soullessness of glaring heat, the cynicism of an edged wind, the inquisition-beat of hail.