f
could not have said it; but somehow it was just by differing from her
and from other folks that this boy endeared himself.

The reconciliation made them both very happy, and after dinner--to which
the whole family, the shepherd and half a dozen labourers assembled, so
that Tilda marvelled how, even with a fireplace so ample, Mrs. Tossell
managed to cook for them all--Arthur Miles boldly approached Chrissy and
got her to persuade her sweetheart, Festus, to lend him a hook.
Armed with this, the children retraced their steps down the coombe.
The fog had lifted a little, and in the offing Holmness loomed out
dimly, with a streak of golden light on the water beyond its westernmost
cliffs. But the boy nerved himself; he would not loiter to gaze at it,
but strode into the cottage and began hacking with great fierceness at
the nettles, which Tilda--her hands cased in a pair of old pruning
gloves--gathered in skirtfuls and carried out of door. Godolphus, in
his joy at this restored amity, played at assisting Arthur Miles in his
onslaught, barking and leaping at the nettles, yet never quite closely
enough to endanger his sensitive nose.

They had been engaged thus for half an hour, perhaps, when they heard a
horn sounded far up the coombe. It had not the note of Mrs. Tossell's
dinner-horn; it seemed to travel, too, from a distance beyond the farm,
and as Tilda listened, it was followed by a yet fainter sound, as of
many dogs baying or barking together. 'Dolph heard it, yapped
excitedly, and made a dash out through the doorway. But, when Tilda
followed, the sounds had died away. The coombe was silent save for the
chatter of the fall and the mewing of an army of sea-gulls up the vale,
where, on the farthest slope in sight, young Roger paced to and fro with
a team of horses breaking up the stubble.

Tilda whistled 'Dolph back and fell to work again, filling her lap with
nettles; but the load was scarcely complete before the dog, who had been
whimpering and trembling with excitement, made another dash for the
open, his yells all but drowning a thud of hooves with which a dark body
hurled itself past the doorway, between the children and the sunshine,
and so leapt clear for the beach over the fall.

Tilda, running to the doorway, saw the animal leap, but in so quick a
flash that she noted nothing but its size, and mistook it for a
riderless, runaway horse. Then as it appeared again and with three
bounds cleared the beach