t frightened her, she could equally little deny. So it came
about that once again, as Mary and her satellite Laura silently waited
at table, and as Theresa very audibly gobbled food in and words out,
Damaris shrank within herself seeming to hear a shrill sweet whistling
and the shatter of loose pebbles and shifting shingle under Faircloth's
pursuing feet.

The young man's name aroused her interest, not to say her curiosity, the
more deeply because of its association, with a locality exploration of
which had always been denied her--a Naboth's vineyard of the imagination,
near at hand, daily in sight, yet personal acquaintance with which she
failed to possess even yet. The idea of an island, especially a quite
little island, a miniature and separate world, shut off all by itself, is
dreadfully enticing to the infant mind--at once a geographical entity and
a cunning sort of toy. And Faircloth's Inn, with the tarred wooden houses
adjacent, was situated upon what, to all intents and purposes, might pass
as an island since accessible only by boat or by an ancient paved
causeway daily submerged at high tide.

Skirting the further edge of the warren, a wide rutted side lane leads
down to the landward end of the said causeway from the village green,
just opposite Deadham post office and Mrs. Doubleday's general shop.--A
neglected somewhat desolate strip of road this, between broken earthbanks
topped by ragged firs, yet very paintable and dear to the sketch-book of
the amateur. In summer overgrown with grass and rushes, bordered by
cow-parsley, meadowsweet, pink codlings-and-cream, and purple flowered
peppermint, in winter a marsh of sodden brown and vivid green; but at all
seasons a telling perspective, closed by the lonely black and grey island
hamlet set in the gleaming tide.

Small wonder the place stirred Damaris' spirit of enquiry and adventure!
She wanted to go there, to examine, to learn how people lived cut off
from the mainland for hours twice every day and night. But her early
attempts at investigation met with prompt discouragement from both her
nurse and her aunt, Felicia Verity. And Damaris was not of the
disposition which plots, wheedles, and teases to obtain what it wants;
still less screams for the desired object until for very weariness
resistance yields. Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly
defied authority. In the present case she relinquished hope and purpose
obediently, while inwardly longi