over the moor to the sea. Everything
was very still, even his footsteps were soundless on the thick turf. It
was one of those days filled with a warm mist, so fine it cannot be
observed near at hand, but always seeming to encircle the walker, as
though he carried some charm to make a hollow space around him where the
breath of the mist may not live. Yet, out in it for long, the clothes
become sodden, while every grass-blade and leaf can be seen to hold its
burden of a glittering drop, though the earth itself remains dry and
powdery and on the hard, pale roads the dust lies all day, as though the
actual soil were not of the texture to respond to a mist so fine.

Not a breath blew the vaporous clouds in the wreaths that usually change
shapes while one watches, and the long drifts in the valley at Ishmael's
feet hung motionless in the air, the dark side of the opposite slope
showed here and there, crossed by the pale zig-zag of the path. He went
on to the cliff's edge; far below at its foot the sea, lost further out,
was visible, motionless and soundless, save for the faint rustle where
it impinged upon the cliff in a narrow line of white. No outward pull or
inward swell of the sea's breast was visible; it was as though that fine
edge of murmurous whiteness were always made of the same particles of
water, hissing perpetually along the cliff's foot.

Ishmael lay down on the damp young bracken and listened to the stillness
that was only pierced by the rare wail of a syren far out to sea and
the steady moan of the horn from the lighthouse. He felt as dead as the
world seemed, as grey, as lost to all rousing; and, ignorant of
reactions, wondered why, and whether henceforth he would always be like
that.

He was suffering from too much fuss. In the days which had elapsed since
the wrestling bout on the moor Doughty's injury had seemed likely to
prove a bad sprain, but there had been a terrible twenty-four hours when
the doctor, a portentous person with more pessimism than knowledge, had
wagged his head forebodingly over the moaning patient. Doughty had felt
it was not in nature for anyone to be severe on a boy with an injured
back, and so he babbled freely, under cover of a pretended delirium,
feeling it was better to let his version get first to Old Tring. For he
guessed how that personage, always one to examine the springs of action
before judgment, would look at his share in the matter. Dr. Harvey had
asked for a famous Ply