The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in gray rain-clouds--gray they would have been by day; by night they looked sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of earth and heaven--never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, making them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared--a muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the horizon--with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the back of his head, as his Irish manner was. "Tramp, tramp," he went along the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an accommodation; "splash, splash," through the mire-filled cart ruts, where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain landmarks--the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table, and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water. 
The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in black rain-clouds. Malone was not an observer of nature; he could walk miles and never notice when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, or when a shower wept over them. He did not, therefore, observe the black vault of the sky, with the furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks throwing a lurid shimmer on the eastern horizon. He just tramped doggedly along the causeway, splashing through the mire-filled cart ruts. He looked only for certain landmarks - the spire of Briarfield Church, and the lights of Redhouse Inn.
When he reached the inn, the glow of a fire through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table, and of revellers on an oak settle, nearly drew the curate from his course. He thought longingly of whisky-and-water