rily as they forbore to answer; whereat the young men and women
laughed. Their laughter would have annoyed Tilda had it been less
unaffected; and, as it was, she cuffed the dog so sharply that he ceased
with a whine.

She had never met with folk like these. They gave her a sense of having
reached the ends of the earth--they were so simple and strong and
well-featured, and had eyes so kindly. She could understand but a bare
third of what they said, their language being English of a sort, but
neither that of the gentry--such as Arthur Miles spoke--nor that of the
gypsies; nor, in short, had she heard the human like of it anywhere in
her travels. She had never heard tell of vowels or of gutturals, and so
could not note how the voices, as they rose and fell, fluted upon the
one or dwelt, as if caressingly, on the other. To her their talk
resembled the talk of birds, mingled with liquid laughter.

Later, when she came to make acquaintance with the Scriptures and read
about the patriarchs and their families, she understood better.
Laban with his flocks, Rebekah and her maidens, the shepherds of
Bethlehem--for all of them her mind cast back to these innocent people,
met so strangely off an unknown coast.

For she had come by water; and never having travelled by ship before,
and being wholly ignorant of geography and distances, she did not dream
that the coast towards which they were rowing her could be any part of
England.

It loomed close ahead now--a bold line of cliff, reddish brown in
colour, but with patches of green vivid in the luminous haze; the summit
of the cliff-line hidden everywhere in folds of fog; the dove-coloured
sea running tranquilly at its base, with here and there the thinnest
edge of white, that shone out for a moment and faded.

But now the cliffs, which had hitherto appeared to run with one
continuous face, like a wall, began to break up and reveal gullies and
fissures; and as these unfolded, by and by a line of white cottages
crept into view. They overhung a cove more deeply indented than the
rest, and close under them was a diminutive grey pier sheltering a
diminutive harbour and beach.

And now the voyage was soon ended. The boat shot around the pier-end
and took ground upon firm shingle. The others, close in her wake, ran
in and were beached alongside, planks were laid out from the gunwales,
and in half a minute all hands had fallen to work, urging, persuading,
pushing, lifting the sh