rock, towards the boundless Western Ocean. Each is
like the other, and each is like no other English scenery. Each has its
upright walls, inland of rich oak-wood, nearer the sea of dark green
furze, then of smooth turf, then of weird black cliffs which range out
right and left far into the deep sea, in castles, spires, and wings
of jagged iron-stone. Each has its narrow strip of fertile meadow, its
crystal trout stream winding across and across from one hill-foot to the
other; its gray stone mill, with the water sparkling and humming round
the dripping wheel; its dark, rock pools above the tide mark, where the
salmon-trout gather in from their Atlantic wanderings, after each autumn
flood: its ridge of blown sand, bright with golden trefoil and crimson
lady's finger; its gray bank of polished pebbles, down which the
stream rattles toward the sea below. Each has its black field of jagged
shark's-tooth rock which paves the cove from side to side, streaked with
here and there a pink line of shell sand, and laced with white foam from
the eternal surge, stretching in parallel lines out to the westward,
in strata set upright on edge, or tilted towards each other at strange
angles by primeval earthquakes;--such is the "mouth"--as those coves are
called; and such the jaw of teeth which they display, one rasp of which
would grind abroad the timbers of the stoutest ship. To landward,
all richness, softness, and peace; to seaward, a waste and howling
wilderness of rock and roller, barren to the fisherman, and hopeless to
the shipwrecked mariner.

In only one of these "mouths" is a landing for boats, made possible by
a long sea-wall of rock, which protects it from the rollers of the
Atlantic; and that mouth is Marsland, the abode of the White Witch, Lucy
Passmore; whither, as Sir Richard Grenville rightly judged, the Jesuits
were gone. But before the Jesuits came, two other persons were standing
on that lonely beach, under the bright October moon, namely, Rose
Salterne and the White Witch herself; for Rose, fevered with curiosity
and superstition, and allured by the very wildness and possible danger
of the spell, had kept her appointment; and, a few minutes before
midnight, stood on the gray shingle beach with her counsellor.

"You be safe enough here to-night, miss. My old man is snoring sound
abed, and there's no other soul ever sets foot here o' nights, except
it be the mermaids now and then. Goodness, Father, where's our boat? I