sailing vessels and
steamships moored to the great buoys, in two separate tiers, awaiting
their cargoes. Of the sailing vessels there were Russians, with no
yards to their masts, British coasters of varying rig, Norwegians, and
one solitary Dutch galliot. But the majority flew the Danish flag--your
Dane is fond of flying his flag, and small blame to him!--and these
exhibited round bluff bows and square-cut counters with white or
varnished top-strakes and stern-davits of timber. To the right and
seaward, the eye travelled past yet another tier, where a stumpy Swedish
tramp lay cheek-by-jowl with two stately Italian barques--now
Italian-owned, but originally built in Glasgow for traffic around the
Horn--and so followed the curve of the harbour out to the Channel, where
sea and sky met in a yellow flood of potable gold. To the left the
river-gorge wound inland, hiding its waters, around overlapping bluffs
studded with farmsteads and (as the eye threaded its way into details)
peopled here and there with small colonies of farm-folk working hard,
like so many groups of ants,--some cutting, others saving, the yellow
corn, all busy forestalling night, when no man can work.

Uplands, where the harvesters
Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes, to watch
Or barge or schooner stealing up from sea:
Themselves in twilight, she a twilit ghost
Parting the twilit woods.

. . . While Cai and 'Bias stood at gaze, drinking it all in, Mrs
Bosenna--whose senses were always quick--turned, looked behind her, and
uttered a little scream.

"Steers! . . . That Middlecoat's steers--they've broken fence again!
Oh--oh! and whatever shall I do?"

Cai and 'Bias, wheeling about simultaneously, were aware of a small
troop of horned cattle advancing towards them leisurably, breasting the
golden rays on the stubble-field, and spreading as they advanced.

"Do, ma'am?" echoed 'Bias, taking in the situation at a glance.
"Why, turn 'em back, to be sure!" He started off to meet the herd.

"--While you run for the stile," added Cai, preparing to follow as
bravely. But Mrs Bosenna caught his arm.

"I'm--I'm so silly," she confessed in a tremulous whisper,
"about horned beasts--when they don't belong to me."

"Dangerous, are they?" asked Cai. He lingered, although 'Bias had
advanced some twenty paces to meet the herd, three or four of which had
already come to a halt, astonished at being thus interrupted in an
innocent ra