Page:Far from the Madding Crowd Vol 1.djvu/156

 spots of this kind than amid woodland scenery. Still, to a close observer, they are just as perceptible; the difference is that their media of manifestation are less trite and familiar than such well-known ones as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering the general torpidity of a moor or heath. Winter, in coming to the place under notice, advanced in some such wellmarked stages as the following:—

This climax of the series had been reached tonight on Melchester Moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing, and without more character than that of being the limit of something else—the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic skyfull of crowding flakes the heath and moor momentarily received additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby.