three hours' railway travel through vertical cuttings in
metamorphic rock, through oak copses rich and green, stretching
over slopes and down delightful valleys, glens, and ravines,
sparkling with water like many-rilled Ida, and he plunged amid the
hundred and fifty thousand people composing the town of Plymouth.

There being some time upon his hands he left his luggage at the
cloak-room, and went on foot along Bedford Street to the nearest
church. Here Stephen wandered among the multifarious tombstones
and looked in at the chancel window, dreaming of something that
was likely to happen by the altar there in the course of the
coming month. He turned away and ascended the Hoe, viewed the
magnificent stretch of sea and massive promontories of land, but
without particularly discerning one feature of the varied
perspective. He still saw that inner prospect--the event he hoped
for in yonder church. The wide Sound, the Breakwater, the light-
house on far-off Eddystone, the dark steam vessels, brigs,
barques, and schooners, either floating stilly, or gliding with
tiniest motion, were as the dream, then; the dreamed-of event was
as the reality.

Soon Stephen went down from the Hoe, and returned to the railway
station. He took his ticket, and entered the London train.


That day was an irksome time at Endelstow vicarage. Neither
father nor daughter alluded to the departure of Stephen. Mr.
Swancourt's manner towards her partook of the compunctious
kindness that arises from a misgiving as to the justice of some
previous act.