In front of Blakebank the ground sloped away sharply to the river far down below. Dense woodland filled the hollow in which the water flowed, and rose again in a blue foaming mass on the farther side of the valley. Thence the eye followed undulation after undulation of meadow and copse, fields of soft green, plumed hedgerows, a placid country full of opulent peace. The foreground of the picture was formed by a strip of meadow beneath the terrace that dropped in a steep brow towards the woods. Here the grass was hidden and gilded by a sheet of buttercups, and the pure ardour of their gold was touched to a keener fire by the shafts of sunlight that slanted across them. Beyond their blaze lay the voluminous splendours of the woodland, dull and heavy in sullen shadow. For the day had its sharp notes of contrast. The air was leaden and lurid, dazzling, here and there, with a golden rain of sunlight, and here and there, again, made sombre by thunderous masses of cloud. Huge curling crags of purple and silver rolled and towered above the world, and the sky was opalescent with a hundred shifting colours. The landscape, drowsy and complacent, was transfigured into something mystic and dreamy. From the poignant glory of gold in the foreground the eye wandered on over the steamy blueness of the woods, over the rippling waves of vaporous green and blue that filled the valley, to where, seeming very far away across the glamour, the great rampart of the hill-country lay high against the faint rosy lights of the north. The lowering air, the sleepy, fantastic colours of the day, seemed to remove things distant to another world, and the mountains, dim, misty in shades of amethyst and azure, hardly appeared distinct from the ranges of cloud amid which they faintly loomed. Far away, far above the valleys, they lay in crests and billows of dreamland along the border of a fairy world. Yet only six miles of comfortable peace was all that lay between Gundred at her tea and those mysterious giants in the haze.