Publisher's Synopsis
Helen realised that she had walked too far just as day-light was beginning to fade. As she looked around her, she was struck by the desolation of the country. During her long walk, she had met no one, and had passed no cottage. The high-banked lanes, which blocked her view, were little better than steep mudslides. On either side of her rose the hills-barren sepia mounds, blurred by a fine spit of rain. Over all hung a heavy sense of expectancy, as though the valley awaited some disaster. In the distance-too far away to be even a threat-rumbled faint, lumpy sounds of thunder. Fortunately Helen was a realist, used to facing hard economic facts, and not prone to self-pity. Of soaring spirit, yet possessed of sound common sense, she believed that those thinly-veiled pitfalls over hell-heaviness of body and darkness of spirit-could be explained away by liver or atmosphere.
