r enjoyed a meal before.

"And the weather?" asked Margaret.

"The blessed weather is just as it was; perhaps even a bit more
so,--the most glorious weather that ever was on land or sea!"

"But----" said Margaret, smiling at his effervescence.

"No, I'm afraid it can't last very much longer, and potatoes and salt
I know would begin to pall in time. After breakfast you shall see the
grandest sight of your lives,--and for the rest, we will live in
hope."

XX

And, after all, they saw what they had specially come to see--a sunset
from Beleme cliff.

For the day remained gray and boisterous until late in the afternoon.
They had lunched--with less exuberance than they had breakfasted--on
potatoes and salt and a thin medicinal-tasting decoction made from
breakfast's tea-leaves; they were looking forward with no undue
eagerness to potato dinner without even the palliative of medicinal
tea; and even Miss Penny acknowledged that, choice being offered her,
she would give the preference to some other vegetable for a week to
come;--when, of a sudden, the gray veil of the west opened slowly,
like the lifting of an iron curtain, and let the light behind shine
through.

And the light was as they could imagine the light of heaven--a pure
lucent yellow as of the early primrose, but diaphanous and almost
transparent, as though this, which seemed to them light, was itself in
reality but an outer veil hiding the still greater glory behind. The
curtain lifted but a span, and the lower rim of it curved in a gentle
arch from the middle of Guernsey to the filmy line of Alderney. All
below the sharp-cut rim was the sea of heavenly primrose, with here
and there a floating purple island edged with gold. All above was
sombre plum-colour flushed with rose, the edges fraying in the wind,
and floating in thin rosy streamers up the dark sky above.

The sun, larger than they had ever seen him in their lives, dropped
gently like a great brass shield from behind the dark curtain into the
sea of primrose light, and the primrose flushed with crimson over
Guernsey and with tender green and blue over Alderney.

They hastened away to Beleme cliff, and then they saw what they had
hoped to see, and more;--the mighty granite frontlets of Sark all
washed with living gold--- shining from their long conflict with the
waves, and gleaming, every one, like a jewel,--from Bec-du-Nez to Moie
de Bretagne. And, out in the dimness, behind which lay Jersey,