ittle frizzle of surf on the beach was
like to the sound to dreaming ears of bacon frying in the kitchens of the
blest.

William Tyrwhitt came, and I met him at the station, six or seven miles
away. He was all strained and springless, like a broken child's toy--"not
like that William who, with lance in rest, shot through the lists in
Fleet Street." A disputative galley-puller could have triumphed over
him morally; a child physically.

The drive in the inn brake, by undulating roads and scented valleys,
shamed his cheek to a little flush of self-assertion.

"I will sleep under the vines," he said, "and the grapes shall drop into
my mouth."

"Beware," I answered, "lest in King's Cobb your repose should be
everlasting. The air of that hamlet has matured like old port in the bin
of its hills, till to drink of it is to swoon."

We alighted at the crown of the High Street, purposing to descend on
foot the remaining distance to the shore.

"Behold," I exclaimed, "how the gulls float in the shimmer, like ashes
tossed aloft by the white draught of a fire! Behold these ancient
buildings nodding to the everlasting lullaby of the bay waters! The
cliffs are black with the heat apoplexy; the lobster is drawn scarlet to
the surface. You shall be like an addled egg put into an incubator."

"So," he said, "I shall rest and not hatch. The very thought is like
sweet oil on a burn."

He stayed with me a week, and his body waxed wondrous round and rosy,
while his eye acquired a foolish and vacant expression. So it was with
me. We rolled together, by shore and by road of this sluggard place, like
spent billiard balls; and if by chance we cannoned, we swerved sleepily
apart, until, perhaps, one would fall into a pocket of the sand, and the
other bring up against a cushion of sea-wall.

Yet, for all its enervating atmosphere, King's Cobb has its fine
traditions of a sturdy independence, and a slashing history withal; and
its aspect is as picturesque as that of an opera bouffe fishing-harbour.
Then, too, its High Street, as well as its meandering rivulets of low
streets, is rich in buildings, venerable and antique.

We took an irresponsible, smiling pleasure in noting these
advantages--particularly after lunch; and sometimes, where an old
house was empty, we would go over it, and stare at beams and
chimneypieces and hear the haunted tale of its fortunes, with a faint
half-memory in our breasts of that one-time bugbear we had known a