he great masses of cliff, which seemed like huge hills suddenly
chopped off by the sea, and before her the wide-stretching amethystine
plain, with a sail or two far away.

Celia sat watching a little snake which was wriggling rapidly along past
her, a little creature whose scales looked like oxidised silver in the
afternoon sunshine, and she was about to rise and try to capture the
burnished reptile, knowing from old experience that it was harmless,
when at one and the same moment she became aware that Grip was missing,
and that Ram Shackle and the big labourer from the farm, Jemmy Dadd,
were coming up a hollow away to the right, one by which they could reach
the down-like fields that spread along the edge of the cliffs from the
farm.

She saw them, and hardly realising that they did not see her, she went
on watching the reptile as it glided with easy serpentine motion through
the grass.

"Ram is going to gather blackberries," she said to herself, as she
glanced at his basket; "and Dadd is going to count the sheep. I ought
to have brought a basket for some blackberries."

She felt full of self-reproach, as she recalled how plentifully they
grew there, and how useful they would be at home. "And I might get some
mushrooms, too," she thought, "instead of coming out for nothing."

Just then she heard Grip again barking very faintly.

"Stupid dog!" she said to herself, with a little laugh. "He has
followed a rabbit to its hole. If he would only catch a few more, how
useful they would be!"

Then she moved a little to follow the slow-worm, which was making for a
patch of heath, and she was still watching it when, some time after,
Grip came running up quickly, snarling and growling, and pausing from
time to time to look back.

"Oh, you coward!" she said, sitting down and pulling his ears, as he
thrust his head into her lap. "Afraid of a fox! Was it a fox's hole,
then, and not a rabbit's, Grip?"

The dog growled and barked.

"Poor old fellow, then. Where is it, then?"

The dog leaped up, barked, and ran a few yards, to stop, look back at
her, and bark again.

"No, no, Grip; I don't want to see," she said; and she began idly to
pick up scraps of wild thyme and toss at the dog, who vainly kept on
making rushes toward the slope of the great cliff.

"No, sir," she said, shaking her finger at him. "I am not going to be
led to one of your discoveries, to see nothing for my pains."

The dog barked again, angri