He began to be in better spirits.

He was in very good spirits one day in January when, quite unknown to him, the snow was shovelled away from the corner of a quiet churchyard in which his mother slept, and room was made beside her for the old man who had loved him as his own.
Old Daniel Mortimer had no such _following_ as had attended the funeral of his mother, and no such peaceful sunshine sleeping on a landscape all blossom and growth.

The wind raged, and the snow whirled all about his grave and in it.

The coffin was white before the first clod of earth was thrown on it, and the mourners were driven out of the churchyard, when the solemn service was over, by such gusts of storm and whirling wind as they could hardly stand against.
His will was read.

He had hardly anything to leave.