doctor pointed with his whip, and from the summit of the descent
seen over the rolling tops of the trees in a park by the side of the
road, appeared the level sea far below us, like the floor of an immense
edifice inlaid with bands of dark ripple, with still trails of glitter,
ending in a belt of glassy water at the foot of the sky. The light blur
of smoke, from an invisible steamer, faded on the great clearness of the
horizon like the mist of a breath on a mirror; and, inshore, the white
sails of a coaster, with the appearance of disentangling themselves
slowly from under the branches, floated clear of the foliage of the
trees.

"Shipwrecked in the bay?" I said.

"Yes; he was a castaway. A poor emigrant from Central Europe bound to
America and washed ashore here in a storm. And for him, who knew nothing
of the earth, England was an undiscovered country. It was some time
before he learned its name; and for all I know he might have expected to
find wild beasts or wild men here, when, crawling in the dark over
the sea-wall, he rolled down the other side into a dyke, where it was
another miracle he didn't get drowned. But he struggled instinctively
like an animal under a net, and this blind struggle threw him out into
a field. He must have been, indeed, of a tougher fibre than he looked
to withstand without expiring such buffetings, the violence of his
exertions, and so much fear. Later on, in his broken English that
resembled curiously the speech of a young child, he told me himself that
he put his trust in God, believing he was no longer in this world. And
truly--he would add--how was he to know? He fought his way against the
rain and the gale on all fours, and crawled at last among some sheep
huddled close under the lee of a hedge. They ran off in all directions,
bleating in the darkness, and he welcomed the first familiar sound he
heard on these shores. It must have been two in the morning then. And
this is all we know of the manner of his landing, though he did not
arrive unattended by any means. Only his grisly company did not begin to
come ashore till much later in the day...."

The doctor gathered the reins, clicked his tongue; we trotted down
the hill. Then turning, almost directly, a sharp corner into the High
Street, we rattled over the stones and were home.

Late in the evening Kennedy, breaking a spell of moodiness that had come
over him, returned to the story. Smoking his pipe, he paced the long
room from