e eye.

Philip despised him the more for casting up his obligations, but had no
retort to make. He had an idea of making a man of young Selinville,
and his notion of the process had something of the bullying tendency of
English young towards the poor-spirited or cowardly. He ordered the boy
roughly, teased him for his ignorance of manly exercises, tried to cure
his helplessness by increasing his difficulties, and viewed his fatigue
as affectation or effeminacy. Berenger interfered now and then to guard
the poor boy from a horse-jest or practical joke, but he too felt
that Aime was a great incumbrance, hopelessly cowardly, fanciful, and
petulant; and he was sometimes driven to speak to him with severity,
verging on contempt, in hopes of rousing a sense of shame.

The timidity, so unusual and inexplicable in a youth of eighteen or
twenty, sowed itself irrepressibly at the Sands of Olonne. These were
not misty, as on Berenger's former journey. Nissard steeple was soon in
sight, and the guide who joined them on a rough pony had no doubt
that there would be ample time to cross before high water. There was,
however, some delay, for the winter rains had brought down a good many
streams of fresh water, and the sands were heavy and wet, so that their
horses proceeded slowly, and the rush and dash of the waves proclaimed
that the low of the tide had begun. To the two brothers the break and
sweep was a home-sound, speaking of freshness and freedom, and the salt
breeze and spray carried with them life and ecstasy. Philip kept as
near the incoming waves as his inland-bred horse would endure, and sang,
shouted, and hallooed to them as welcome as English waves; but Aime de
Selinville had never even beheld the sea before: and even when the
tide was still in the distance, was filled with nervous terror as each
rushing fall sounded nearer; and, when the line of white foamy crests
became more plainly visible, he was impelled to hurry on towards the
steeple so fast that the guide shouted to him that he would only bury
himself in a quicksand.

'But,' said he, white with alarm, and his teeth chattering, 'how can we
creep with those dreadful waves advancing upon us to drown us?'

Berenger silence Philip's rude laugh and was beginning to explain that
the speed of the waves could always be calculated by an experienced
inhabitant; and his voice had seemed to pacify Aime a little, when the
spreading water in front of a broken wave flowing up t