boyhood; it seemed like a holiday to
have left all these cares behind him, just as it used to be when all his
lessons were prepared, and he had leave to disport himself, by land or
water, the whole afternoon, provided he did not go out beyond the Shag
Rock. He took up his sculls and rowed merrily, singing and whistling to
keep time with their dash, the return to the old pleasure quite enough
at first, the salt breeze, the dashing waves, the motion of the boat.
So he went on till he had come as far as his former boundary, then
he turned and gazed back on the precipitous rocks, cleft with deep
fissures, marbled with veins of different shades of red, and tufted here
and therewith clumps of samphire, grass, and a little brushwood, bright
with the early green of spring. The white foam and spray were leaping
against their base, and roaring in their hollows; the tract of wavelets
between glittered in light, or heaved green under the shadow of the
passing clouds; the sea-birds floated smoothly in sweeping undulating
lines,

As though life's only call and care
Were graceful motion;

the hawks poised themselves high in air near the rocks. The Cove lay in
sunshine, its rough stone chimneys and rude slate roofs overgrown
with moss and fern, rising rapidly, one above the other, in the
fast descending hollow, through which a little stream rushed to the
sea,--more quietly than its brother, which, at some space distant, fell
sheer down over the crag in a white line of foam, brawling with a tone
of its own, distinguishable among all the voices of the sea contending
with the rocks. Above the village, in the space where the outline of two
hills met and crossed, rose the pinnacled tower of the village church,
the unusual height of which was explained by the old custom of lighting
a beacon-fire on its summit, to serve as a guide to the boats at sea.
Still higher, apparently on the very brow of the beetling crag that
frowned above, stood the old Gothic hall, crumbling and lofty, a fit
eyrie for the eagles of Morville. The sunshine was indeed full upon
it; but it served to show how many of the dark windows were without the
lining of blinds and curtains, that alone gives the look of life and
habitation to a house. How crumbled by sea-wind were the old walls, and
the aspect altogether full of a dreary haughtiness, suiting with the
whole of the stories connected with its name, from the time when it
was said the very dogs crou