in the sun after his morning's fishing, their white surface shining like
mail. Retiring without disturbing him and turning to the left along the
lofty ridge which ran inland, the country on each side lay beneath her
like a map, domains behind domains, parishes by the score, harbours, fir-
woods, and little inland seas mixing curiously together. Thence she
ambled along through a huge cemetery of barrows, containing human dust
from prehistoric times.

Standing on the top of a giant's grave in this antique land, Ethelberta
lifted her eyes to behold two sorts of weather pervading Nature at the
same time. Far below on the right hand it was a fine day, and the silver
sunbeams lighted up a many-armed inland sea which stretched round an
island with fir-trees and gorse, and amid brilliant crimson heaths
wherein white paths and roads occasionally met the eye in dashes and
zigzags like flashes of lightning. Outside, where the broad Channel
appeared, a berylline and opalized variegation of ripples, currents,
deeps, and shallows, lay as fair under the sun as a New Jerusalem, the
shores being of gleaming sand. Upon the radiant heather bees and
butterflies were busy, she knew, and the birds on that side were just
beginning their autumn songs.

On the left, quite up to her position, was dark and cloudy weather,
shading a valley of heavy greens and browns, which at its further side
rose to meet the sea in tall cliffs, suggesting even here at their back
how terrible were their aspects seaward in a growling southwest gale.
Here grassed hills rose like knuckles gloved in dark olive, and little
plantations between them formed a still deeper and sadder monochrome. A
zinc sky met a leaden sea on this hand, the low wind groaned and whined,
and not a bird sang.