sant surroundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a home
for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled by the puritanism of the great
towns, refugium peccatorum in this island of the saints.

"Once it was the Puritan Fathers who left our coasts," he is recorded
to have said; "nowadays it is our Prodigal Sons."

No doubt it was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little
steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning
shores of France was called "the Mayflower."

My lord's plan had been simple. By the aid of cunning architects he
had first blasted his harbour into shape, then built his hotels and
pleasure-palaces, and then leased them to dependants of his who knew
the right sort of people, and who knew that it was as much as their
lease was worth to find accommodation for teetotal amateur
photographers or wistful wandering Sunday-school treats. As,
unfortunately, the Queen's highway ran down in tortuous descent to the
handful of fishermen's cottages that had clung there limpet-like for
ages, there was always a chance of such a stray visitation; but it was
remote, and the whole place, hand and heart, was in the pocket of my
lord.

So much to give the reader some idea of the secret watering-place of
Yellowsands, situated at the mouth of that romantic little torrent, the
river Sly. Such further description as may be needed may be kept till
we come within sight of its gilded roofs and marble terraces.

CHAPTER VI

THE MOORLAND OF THE APOCALYPSE

I reckoned that it would take me two or three days, leisurely walking,
to reach Yellowsands. Rosalind would, of course, arrive there long
before me; but that I did not regret, as I was in a mood to find
company in my own thoughts.

Her story gave me plenty to think of. I dwelt particularly on the
careless extravagance of the happy. Here were two people to whom life
had given casually what I was compelled to go seeking lonely and
footsore through the world, and with little hope of finding it at the
end; and yet were they so little aware of their good fortune as to risk
it over a trumpery theory, a shadow of pseudo-philosophy. Out of the
deep dark ocean of life Love had brought them his great moon-pearl, and
they sat on the boat's edge carelessly tossing it from one to the
other, unmindful of the hungry fathoms on every side. A sudden slip,
and they had lost it for ever, and might only watch its shimmering fall
to the bottom of the