They stood so still in the moonlight! And the smell
from the withering fields laid bare of the harvest and breathing out
their damp odours, came to her mixed with the chill air from the dark
hills around, already spiced with keen atoms of frost, soon to appear
in spangly spikes. Beneath the bridge the river flowed maunderingly,
blundering out unintelligible news of its parent bog and all the dreary
places it had come through on its way to the strath of Glamerton, which
nobody listened to but one glad-hearted, puzzle-brained girl, who stood
looking down into it from the bridge when she ought to have been in bed
and asleep. She was not far from Clippenstrae, but she could not go
there so early, for her aunt would be frightened first and angry next.
So she wandered up the stream to the old church-forsaken churchyard,
and sat on one of the tombstones. It became very cold as the morning
drew on. The moon went down; the stars grew dim; the river ran with a
livelier murmur; and through all the fine gradations of dawn-???cloudy
wind and grey sky???-the gates of orange and red burst open, and the sun
came forth rejoicing. The long night was over. It had not been a very
weary one; for Annie had thoughts of her own, and like the earth in the
warm summer nights, could shine and flash up through the dark, seeking
the face of God in the altar-flame of prayer.
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