est word that has been spoken
yet--Run! run!--To go by the sands!" seizing his hat and cane; "was there
ever such madness heard of!"

CHAPTER SEVENTH.

--Pleased awhile to view
The watery waste, the prospect wild and new;
The now receding waters gave them space,
On either side, the growing shores to trace
And then returning, they contract the scene,
Till small and smaller grows the walk between.
Crabbe.

The information of Davie Dibble, which had spread such general alarm at
Monkbarns, proved to be strictly correct. Sir Arthur and his
daughter had set out, according to their first proposal, to return to
Knockwinnock by the turnpike road; but when they reached the head of the
loaning, as it was called, or great lane, which on one side made a sort
of avenue to the house of Monkbarns, they discerned, a little way
before them, Lovel, who seemed to linger on the way as if to give him
an opportunity to join them. Miss Wardour immediately proposed to her
father that they should take another direction; and, as the weather
was fine, walk home by the sands, which, stretching below a picturesque
ridge of rocks, afforded at almost all times a pleasanter passage
between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns than the high-road.

[Illustration: Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour]

Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly. "It would be unpleasant," he said, "to
be joined by that young fellow, whom Mr. Oldbuck had taken the freedom
to introduce them to." And his old-fashioned politeness had none of the
ease of the present day which permits you, if you have a mind, to cut
the person you have associated with for a week, the instant you feel or
suppose yourself in a situation which makes it disagreeable to own him.
Sir Arthur only stipulated, that a little ragged boy, for the guerdon
of one penny sterling, should run to meet his coachman, and turn his
equipage back to Knockwinnock.

When this was arranged, and the emissary despatched, the knight and his
daughter left the high-road, and following a wandering path among sandy
hillocks, partly grown over with furze and the long grass called bent,
soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out
as they had computed but this gave them no alarm;--there were seldom ten
days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a
dry