The beach, with here and there a break, extended for close upon twenty
miles, still curving towards the headland; and the travellers covered
more than two-thirds of the distance without espying a single living
creature. As the afternoon wore on the weather improved. The sun, soon
to drop behind the cliff-summits on the left, asserted itself with a
last effort and shot a red gleam through a chink low in the cloud-wrack.
The shaft widened. The breakers--indigo-backed till now and turbid with
sand in solution--began to arch themselves in glass-green hollows, with
rainbows playing on the spray of their crests. And then--as though the
savage coast had become, at a touch of sunshine, habitable--our
travellers spied a man.

He came forth from a break in the cliffs half a mile ahead and slowly
crossed the sands to the edge of the surf, the line of which he began,
after a pause, to follow as slowly northwards. His back was turned thus
upon the Collector's equipage, to which in crossing the beach he had
given no attention, being old and purblind.

The coach rolled so smoothly, and the jingle of harness was so entirely
swallowed in the roar of the sea, that Captain Vyell, pushing ahead and
overtaking the old fellow, had to ride close up to his shoulder and
shout. It appeared then, for further explanation, that his hearing as
well as his eyesight was none of the best. He faced about in a puzzled
fashion, stared, and touched his hat--or rather lifted his hand a little
way and dropped it again.

"Your Honour will be the Collector," he said, and nodded many times, at
first as if proud of his sagacity, but afterwards dully--as though his
interest had died out and he would have ceased nodding but had forgotten
the way. "Yes; my gran'-darter told me. She's in service at the