Prospero's elves,

That on the sands, with printless feet,
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back again.

More pensive spirits saunter up and down the grassy terrace which
overlooks the beach, and watch the shifting line of dark figures seen
against the white wall of the breaker, or note the fugitive tints on the
dimpling surface of the water, or the wet margin of the tide. A group of
villagers is clustered round the water-fountain a few yards away; the
children chatter about us as they fill their pitchers; and the old women,
creeping homewards, cast a glance under their bonnets at the boys, and
exchange muttered comments with their gossips. Soon the cliffs of the
southern headland grow duskier and more remote; the sea fades to a cold
uniform gray; the colours of the brown twilight marsh and the violet
hills are lost in one another; and so, with a refreshing breath of
idyllic peacefulness, the stirring week came to an end. "Its evening
closed on a quiet scene of school routine, as if doubt and risk, turmoil
and confusion and fear, weary head and weary hand, had not been known in
the place. The wrestling-match against time was over, and happy dreams
came down on Uppingham by the Sea."




CHAPTER V.--THE NEW COUNTRY.


_All places that the eye of Heaven visits_,