About four o'clock they broke in rain, which the wind
drove horizontally with a cold whiffling murmur. As youth and glamour
die in a face before the cold rains of life, so glory died on the
moor. The tors, from being uplifted wild castles, became mere grey
excrescences. Distance failed. The cuckoos were silent. There was none
of the beauty that there is in death, no tragic greatness--all was
moaning and monotony. But about seven the sun tore its way back through
the swathe, and flared out. Like some huge star, whose rays were
stretching down to the horizon, and up to the very top of the hill of
air, it shone with an amazing murky glamour; the clouds splintered by
its shafts, and tinged saffron, piled themselves up as if in wonder.
Under the sultry warmth of this new great star, the heather began to
steam a little, and the glitter of its wet unopened bells was like that
of innumerable tiny smoking fires. The two brothers were drenched as
they cantered silently home. Good friends always, they had never much
to say to one another. For Miltoun was conscious that he thought on a
different plane from Bertie; and Bertie grudged even to his brother any
inkling of what was passing in his spirit, just as he grudged parting
with diplomatic knowledge, or stable secrets, or indeed anything that
might leave him less in command of life.
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