voices of the fishermen urging them up, mingled with the voices of the
fishermen's wives and their many children. The pier was musical with the
wash of the sea, the creaking of capstans and windlasses, and the airy
fluttering of little vanes and sails. The rough, sea-bleached boulders
of which the pier was made, and the whiter boulders of the shore, were
brown with drying nets. The red-brown cliffs, richly wooded to their
extremest verge, had their softened and beautiful forms reflected in the
bluest water, under the clear North Devonshire sky of a November day
without a cloud. The village itself was so steeped in autumnal foliage,
from the houses lying on the pier to the topmost round of the topmost
ladder, that one might have fancied it was out a bird's-nesting, and was
(as indeed it was) a wonderful climber. And mentioning birds, the place
was not without some music from them too; for the rook was very busy on
the higher levels, and the gull with his flapping wings was fishing in
the bay, and the lusty little robin was hopping among the great stone
blocks and iron rings of the breakwater, fearless in the faith of his
ancestors, and the Children in the Wood.

Thus it came to pass that Captain Jorgan, sitting balancing himself on
the pier-wall, struck his leg with his open hand, as some men do when
they are pleased--and as he always did when he was pleased--and said,--

"A mighty sing'lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days
of my life!"

Captain Jorgan had not been through the village, but had come down to the
pier by a winding side-road, to have a preliminary look at it from the
level of his own natural element. He had seen many things and places,
and had stowed them all away in a shrewd intellect and a vigorous memory.
He was an American born, was Captain Jorgan,--a New-Englander,--but he