must only pray to God for patience.

Lucy is more excitable than ever, but is otherwise well. Last night
was very threatening, and the fishermen say that we are in for a
storm. I must try to watch it and learn the weather signs.

Today is a gray day, and the sun as I write is hidden in thick clouds,
high over Kettleness. Everything is gray except the green grass,
which seems like emerald amongst it, gray earthy rock, gray clouds,
tinged with the sunburst at the far edge, hang over the gray sea, into
which the sandpoints stretch like gray figures. The sea is tumbling
in over the shallows and the sandy flats with a roar, muffled in the
sea-mists drifting inland. The horizon is lost in a gray mist. All
vastness, the clouds are piled up like giant rocks, and there is a
'brool' over the sea that sounds like some passage of doom. Dark
figures are on the beach here and there, sometimes half shrouded in
the mist, and seem 'men like trees walking'. The fishing boats are
racing for home, and rise and dip in the ground swell as they sweep
into the harbour, bending to the scuppers. Here comes old Mr. Swales.
He is making straight for me, and I can see, by the way he lifts his
hat, that he wants to talk.

I have been quite touched by the change in the poor old man. When he
sat down beside me, he said in a very gentle way, "I want to say
something to you, miss."

I could see he was not at ease, so I took his poor old wrinkled hand in
mine and asked him to speak fully.

So he said, leaving his hand in mine, "I'm afraid, my deary, that I
must have shocked you by all the wicked things I've been sayin' about
the dead, and such like, for weeks past, but I didn't mean them, and I
want ye to remember that when I'm gone. We aud folks that be daffled,
and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal, don't altogether like to think
of it, and we don't want to feel scart of it, and that's why I've took
to makin' light of it, so that I'd cheer up my own heart a bit. But,
Lord love ye, miss, I ain't afraid of dyin', not a bit, only I don't
want to die if I can help it. My time must be nigh at hand now, for I
be aud, and a hundred years is too much for any man to expect. And
I'm so nigh it that the Aud Man is already whettin' his scythe. Ye
see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin' about it all at once.
The chafts will wag as they be used to. Some day soon the Angel of
Death will sound his trumpet for me. But don't ye dooal an' gre