The day had begun sombrely in gray cloud and mist , but it had ended in a pomp of scarlet and gold . Over the western hills beyond the harbor were amber deeps and crystalline shallows , with the fire of sunset below . The north was a mackerel sky of little , fiery golden clouds . The red light flamed on the white sails of a vessel gliding down the channel , bound to a southern port in a land of palms . Beyond her , it smote upon and incarnadined the shining , white , grassless faces of the sand dunes . To the right , it fell on the old house among the willows up the brook , and gave it for a fleeting space casements more splendid than those of an old cathedral . They glowed out of its quiet and grayness like the throbbing , blood-red thoughts of a vivid soul imprisoned in a dull husk of environment . `` That old house up the brook always seems so lonely , '' said Anne . `` I never see visitors there . Of course , its lane opens on the upper road -- but I do n't think there 's much coming and going . It seems odd we 've never met the Moores yet , when they live within fifteen minutes ' walk of us . I may have seen them in church , of course , but if so I did n't know them . I 'm sorry they are so unsociable , when they are our only near neighbors . '' `` Evidently they do n't belong to the race that knows Joseph , '' laughed Gilbert . `` Have you ever found out who that girl was whom you thought so beautiful ? '' `` No . Somehow I have never remembered to ask about her . But I 've never seen her anywhere , so I suppose she must have been a stranger . Oh , the sun has just vanished -- and there 's the light . '' As the dusk deepened , the great beacon cut swathes of light through it , sweeping in a circle over the fields and the harbor , the sandbar and the gulf .
`` I feel as if it might catch me and whisk me leagues out to sea , '' said XXXXX , as one drenched them with radiance ; and she felt rather relieved when they got so near the Point that they were inside the range of those dazzling , recurrent flashes .
Anne Moores casements fire grayness husk right sandbar shallows swathes