The sobbing was a brief disturbance a dream perhaps. He turned to the dark face of the house and listened. Standing at the gate of the farm, waiting for the moment he knew, now, must surely come, Owen Keeton heard his grandchild begin to cry. Where it walked it left a deep furrow in the fresh snow. It was stooped, against the Christmas cold, perhaps. As it moved for the second time, coming closer to the farmhouse, it left the black wood behind. The cloak it wore was dark, the hood pulled low over its face. It stood there, just visible now to the old man who watched it from Stretley Farm watching back. Distantly, from that shadow round the meadow called The Stumps, the ghostly figure began to move again, following a hidden track over the rise of ground, then moving left, into tree cover. It was a lifeless, featureless place, and yet the shapes of the fields were clear, marked out by the moonshadow of the dark oak hedges that bordered them. The bright moon, hanging low over Barrow Hill, illuminated the snow-shrouded fields and made the winter land seem to glow with faint light.
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