the sky above was spread the sea. Yesterday from the train Mark had had
what was actually his first view of the sea; but the rain had taken all
the colour out of it, and he had been thrilled rather by the word than
by the fact. Now the word was nothing, the fact was everything. There it
was within reach of him, blue as the pictures always made it. The
streams of the valley had gathered into one, and Mark caring no more
what happened to the forget-me-nots ran along the bank. This morning
when the stream reached the shore it broke into twenty limpid rivulets,
each one of which ploughed a separate silver furrow across the
glistening sand until all were merged in ocean, mighty father of streams
and men. Mark ran with the rivulets until he stood by the waves' edge.
All was here of which he had read, shells and seaweed, rocks and cliffs
and sand; he felt like Robinson Crusoe when he looked round him and saw
nothing to break the solitude. Every point of the compass invited
exploration and promised adventure. That white road running northward
and rising with the cliffs, whither did it lead, what view was outspread
where it dipped over the brow of the high table-land and disappeared
into the naked sky beyond? The billowy towans sweeping up from the beach
appeared to him like an illimitable prairie on which buffaloes and
bison might roam. Whither led the sandy track, the summit of whose long
diagonal was lost in the brightness of the morning sky? And surely that
huddled grey building against an isolated green cliff must be
grandfather's church of which his mother had often told him. Mark walked
round the stone walls that held up the little churchyard and, entering
by a gate on the farther side, he looked at the headstones and admired
the feathery tamarisks that waved over the tombs. He was reading an
inscription more legible than most on a headstone of highly polished
granite, when he heard a voice behind him say:

"You mind what you're doing with that grave. That's my granfa's grave,