dvent of an excursion steamer
was an event which attracted every looker-on in the harbour. All the
talk at Silversands was of tides and storms, of good or bad catches, the
luck of one vessel or the ill-fortune of another, and to the fisher-folk
the affairs of the empire were of small importance compared with the
arrival and departure of the herring-fleet. The schools gave a thin
veneer of education, but it seemed to vanish away directly with the
contact of the waves, so that the customs and modes of thought of most
of the people differed little from those of their forefathers who slept,
some in the churchyard on the edge of the cliff, with quaint epitaphs to
record their virtues, and some in those deeper graves over which no
stones could be reared.

Standing apart from the old town was a modern portion which was just
beginning to dignify itself with the name of a seaside resort. To be
sure, it was yet guiltless of pier, promenade, band, or niggers; but, as
the owner of the new grocery stores remarked, "you never knew what might
follow, and many a fashionable watering-place had risen from quite as
modest a commencement." There was already a row of shops with
plate-glass windows and a handsome display of spades, buckets,
shell-purses, baskets, china ornaments, photographic views, and other
articles calculated to tempt the shillings from the pockets of summer
visitors; there were several streets of lodging-houses near the railway
station, as well as the long terrace facing the sea, dignified rather
prematurely by the name of "The Parade," and an enterprising tradesman
from Ferndale had opened a tea-room and a circulating library. The
proprietor of the bathing machines was doing a good business, and had
set up a stand with six donkeys; a photographer had ventured to erect a
wooden studio upon the beach, where he would take your likeness for
eighteenpence; and the common was occasionally the camp of some
travelling circus, which, though _en route_ for a larger sphere of
action, did not disdain to give a performance in passing.

Like a link between the old and the new, the ancient gray stone church
stood on the verge of the cliff above the harbour, looking out to sea as
if it were always watching over those of its children who had their
business in great waters, and sending up silent prayers on their behalf.
In the square tower the bells had rung for seven hundred years, and the
flat roof with its turreted battlements told t