They piled some empty sacks, from the back of the cart, on their knees and shoulders; and the old grey horse set forward cautiously, feeling its way down the many hills of the Ambleside road.
The night was not yet wholly in possession.

The limestone road shone dimly white, the forms of the leafless trees passed them in a windy procession, and afar on the horizon, beyond the dark gulf of the lake, there was visible at intervals a persistent dimness, something less black than the sky above and the veiled earth below, which Fenwick knew must be the snowy tops of the mountains.

But it was a twilight more mournful than a total darkness; the damp air was nipping cold, and every few minutes gusts of sleet drove in their faces.
The two brothers talked to each other sometimes, in a broad Westmoreland speech.

To Fenwick the dialect of his childhood was already strange and disagreeable.

So, too, was the wild roughness of the Northern night, the length of the road, the sense of increasing distance from all that most held his mind.