Foxglove Manor, Volume I by Robert W. Buchanan

The grey dawn was glimmering through the chancel when Mr. Santley regained consciousness. He looked wonderingly about him, and at first was unable to understand how he came to be in his present position. That physical collapse had been a merciful relief from a state of mental tension which had become intolerable. He felt faint but calm, and the horrible excitement of the last few hours presented itself to his memory as a sort of ghastly nightmare from which he had been providentially awakened.

He rose and went out into the churchyard. The air was moist and cool. A strange white mist lay in fantastic pools and streaks on the bare hayfields. The corn was full of an indistinct white gauzy vapour. So were the trees. There was not much of it in the open air. It had a spectral look, and, like spirits, it seemed to require some material thing to interpenetrate and rest upon. The grass was heavy with dew, and the gravelled walk as dark coloured as though there had been rain. From the corn came the sound of innumerable chirpings and twitterings. The fields seemed to be swarming with sweet, sharp musical notes. In the trees, too, though there was no stir of wings, there was a very tumult of bird-song -- not the full, joyous outpouring, but a ceaseless orchestral tuning up and rehearsing as it were. The familiar graveyard in this unusual misty light, and alive with this strange music, seemed a place in which ne had never been before. The effect was as novel as the first appearance of a well-known landscape buried in snow.