h for yourself already." The
husband understood this language, vaguely, it might be, but still he
understood enough to make him draw back, still growling and menacing
with the whip. Caius was too young to understand what the woman
expressed; he only knew strength and weakness as physical things; his
mind was surging with pity for the woman and revenge against the man;
yet even he gathered the knowledge that for the time the quarrel was
over, that interference was now needless. He walked on, looking back as
he went to see the farmer go away to his stables and the wife stalk
past him up toward the byre that was nearest the sea.

As Caius moved on, the only relief his mind could find at first was to
exercise his imagination in picturing how he could avenge the poor
woman. In fancy he saw himself holding Day by the throat, throwing him
down, belabouring him with words and blows, meting out punishment more
than adequate. All that he actually did, however, was to hold on his way
to the place of his fishing.

The path had led him to the edge of the cliff. Here he paused, looking
over the bank to see if he could get down and continue his walk along
the shore, but the soft sandy bluff here jutted so that he could not
even see at what level the tide lay. After spending some minutes in
scrambling half-way down and returning because he could descend no
further, he struck backwards some paces behind the farm buildings,
supposing the descent to be easier where bushes grew in the shallow
chine. In the top of the cliff there was a little dip, which formed an
excellent place for an outside cellar or root-house for such farm stores
as must be buried deep beneath the snow against the frost of winter. The
rough door of such a cellar appeared in the side of this small
declivity, and as Caius came round the back of the byre in sight of it,
he was surprised to see the farmer's wife holding the latch of its door
in her hand and looking vacantly into the dark interior. She looked up
and answered the young man's greeting with apathetic manner, apparently
quite indifferent to the scene she had just passed through.

Caius, his mind still in the rush of indignation on her behalf, stopped
at the sight of her, wondering what he could do or say to express the
wild pity that surged within him.

But the woman said, "The tide's late to-night," exactly as she might
have remarked with dry civility that it was fine weather.

"Yes," said Caius, "I suppo