head low, and
still shifting the cake from hand to hand. By-and-by he fumbled and
dropped it; stooped to pick it up, but saw something which made him
kneel and peer into the ground.

The whole of the sand was moving; not by fits and starts, but
constantly; the tiny particles running over each other and drifting
in and out of the rushes, like little creatures in a dream. While he
looked, they piled an embankment against the edge of his cake.
He picked it up, ran forward a few yards, and peered again.
Yes, here too; here and yonder, and over every inch of that long
shore.

He ate his cake and climbed to the beach, and ran along it, watching
the sandhoppers that skipped from under his boots at every step, and
were lost on the instant. The beach here was moist and firm.
He pulled off his boots and stockings, and ran on, conning his
footprints and the driblets of sand split ahead from his bare toes.
By-and-by he came to the edge of the surf. The strand here was
glassy wet, and each curving wave sent a shadow flying over it, and
came after the shadow, thundering and hissing, and chased it up the
shore, and fell back, leaving for a second or two an edge of delicate
froth which reminded the boy of his mother's lace-work.

He began a sort of game with the waves, choosing one station after
another, and challenging them to catch him there. If the edge of
froth failed to reach his toes, he won. But once or twice the water
caught him fairly, and ran rippling over his instep and about his
ankles.

He was deep in this game when he heard a horn blown somewhere high on
the towans behind him.

He turned. No one was in sight. The house lay behind the
sand-banks, the first ridge hiding even its chimney-smoke. He gazed
along the beach, where the perpetual haze of spray seemed to have
removed the light-house to a vast distance. A sense of desolation
came over him with a rush, and with something between a gasp and a
sob he turned his back to the sea and ran, his boots dangling from
his shoulders by their knotted laces.

He pounded up the first slope and looked for the cottage. No sign of
it! An insane fancy seized him. These silent moving sands were
after _him_.

He was panting along in real distress when he heard the baying of
dogs, and at the same instant from the top of a hummock caught sight
of a figure outlined against the sky, and barely a quarter of a mile
away; the figure of a girl on horseback--a small girl o