Something was wrong with the world, a somber, frightening wrongness that pervaded everything like a dark impenetrable mist, stealthily closing around Scarlett.
The sky above turned slowly from azure to the delicate blue-green of a robin's egg, and the unearthly stillness of rural twilight came stealthily down about her.
And Templeton, the rat, crept stealthily along the wall and disappeared into a private tunnel that he had dug between the door and the trough in Wilbur's yard.
Now, plantation after plantation was going back to the forest, and dismal fields of broomsedge, scrub oak and runty pines had grown stealthily about silent ruins and over old cotton fields.