oked down upon that vast
moving sea of grey mist that covered the earth, and saw the sun, a
large crimson disc, rising from it.

It was a great thing to see, and made him cry out aloud for joy: and
then as the sun rose higher into the pure, blue sky the grey mist
changed to silvery white, and the white changed in places to shining
gold: and it drifted faster and faster away before the sun, and
began to break up, and when a cloud of mist swept by the rock on
which he stood it beat like a fine rain upon his face, and covered
his bright clothes with a grey beady moisture.

Now, looking abroad over the earth, it appeared to Martin that the
thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of fragments of mist,
had the shapes of men, and were like an innumerable multitude of
gigantic men with shining white faces and shining golden hair and
long cloud-like robes of a pearly grey colour, that trailed on the
earth as they moved. They were like a vast army covering the whole
earth, all with their faces set towards the west, all moving swiftly
and smoothly on towards the west. And he saw that every one held his
robes to his breast with his left hand, and that in his right hand,
raised to the level of his head, he carried a strange object. This
object was a shell--a big sea-shell of a golden yellow colour with
curved pink lips; and very soon one of the mist people came near him,
and as he passed by the rock he held the shell to Martin's ear, and
it sounded in his ear--a low, deep murmur as of waves breaking on a
long shingled beach, and Martin knew, though no word was spoken to
him, that it was the sound of the sea, and tears of delight came to
his eyes, and at the same time his heart was sick and sad with
longing for the sea.

[Illustration: ]

Again and again, until the whole vast multitude of the mist people
had gone by, a shell was held to his ear; and when they were all gone,
when he had watched them fade like a white cloud over the plain, and
float away and disappear in the blue sky, he sat down on the rock
and cried with the desire that was in him.

When his mother found him with traces of tears on his cheeks; and he
was silent when she spoke to him, and had a strange look in his eyes
as if they were gazing at some distant object, she was angrier than
ever with the sea, for she knew that the thought of it had returned
to him and that it would be harder than ever to keep him.

One morning on waking he found her still asle