de _me_ feel rather funny," said May. "You know, all over like."

The girls shivered, and the cart jogged on across the waste. They passed
a skewbald sign-post crowded with unfamiliar goblin names, and a dry
tree from which once depended, Trewhella assured them, the bodies of
three notorious smugglers. One of the carriage candles proved too short
to sustain the double journey and presently flickered out gradually, so
that the darkness on one side seemed actually to advance upon them.
After a long interval of silence Trewhella pulled up with a jerk.

"Listen," he commanded.

"Oh, what is it?" asked Jenny, with visions of a murderer's approach. On
a remote road sounded the trot of horses' hoofs miles away.

"Somebody coming after us," she gasped, clutching May's sleeve.

"No, that's a cart; but listen, can't you hear the sea?"

Ahead of them in the thick night like the singing of a kettle sounded
the interminable ocean.

"Wind's getting up, I believe," said Trewhella. "There's an ugly smell
in the air. Dirty weather, I suppose, dirty weather," he half chanted to
himself, whipping up the mare.

Soon, indeed, with a wide sigh that filled the waste of darkness, the
wind began to blow, setting all the withered rushes and stunted gorse
bushes hissing and lisping. The effort, however, was momentary; and
presently the gust died away in a calm almost profounder than before.
After another two miles of puddles and darkness, the heavy air was
tempered with an unwonted freshness. The farmer again pulled up.

"Now you can hark to it clear enough," he said.

Down below boomed a slow monotone of breakers on a long flat beach.

"That's Trewinnard Sands, and when the sea do call there so plain, it
means dirty weather, sure enough. And here's Trewinnard Churchtown, and
down along a bit of the way is Bochyn."

A splash of light from a dozen cottages showed a squat church surrounded
by clumps of shorn pine trees. The road did not improve as they drew
clear of the village, and it was a relief after the jolting in and out
of ruts to turn aside through a white gate, and even to crunch along
over a quarter of a mile of rough stones through two more gates until
they reached the softness of farmyard mud. As they pulled up for the
last time, between trimmed hedges of escallonia a low garden gate was
visible; and against the golden stream suffused by a slanting door, the
black silhouette of a woman's figure, with hand held up to shade he