At first these dogs showed the liveliest interest in ’Dolph, raising themselves with their forepaws on the gunwale, and gazing across the intervening twenty yards of water.  But they were dignified creatures, and their self-respect forbade them to bark.  ’Dolph, who had no breeding, challenged back loudly, all his bristles erect—­and still the more angrily as they forbore to answer; whereat the young men and women laughed.  Their laughter would have annoyed Tilda had it been less unaffected; and, as it was, she cuffed the dog so sharply that he ceased with a whine.

She had never met with folk like these.  They gave her a sense of having reached the ends of the earth—­they were so simple and strong and well-featured, and had eyes so kindly.  She could understand but a bare third of what they said, their language being English of a sort, but neither that of the gentry—­such as Arthur Miles spoke—­nor that of the gypsies; nor, in short, had she heard the human like of it anywhere in her travels.  She had never heard tell of vowels or of gutturals, and so could not note how the voices, as they rose and fell, fluted upon the one or dwelt, as if caressingly, on the other.  To her their talk resembled the talk of birds, mingled with liquid laughter.

Later, when she came to make acquaintance with the Scriptures and read about the patriarchs and their families, she understood better.  Laban with his flocks, Rebekah and her maidens, the shepherds of Bethlehem—­for all of them her mind cast back to these innocent people, met so strangely off an unknown coast.

For she had come by water; and never having travelled by ship before, and being wholly ignorant of geography and distances, she did not dream that the coast towards which they were rowing her could be any part of England.

It loomed close ahead now—­a bold line of cliff, reddish brown in colour, but with patches of green vivid in the luminous haze; the summit of the cliff-line hidden everywhere in folds of fog; the dove-coloured sea running tranquilly at its base, with here and there the thinnest edge of white, that shone out for a moment and faded.

But now the cliffs, which had hitherto appeared to run with one continuous face, like a wall, began to break up and reveal gullies and fissures; and as these unfolded, by and by a line of white cottages crept into view.  They overhung a cove more deeply indented than the rest, and close under them was a diminutive grey pier sheltering a diminutive harbour and beach.

And now the voyage was soon ended.  The boat shot around the pier-end and took ground upon firm shingle.  The others, close in her wake, ran in and were beached alongside, planks were laid out from the gunwales, and in half a minute all hands had fallen to work, urging, persuading, pushing, lifting the sheep ashore, or rounding them up on the beach, where they headed hither and thither, or stood obstinately still in mazed fashion, all bleating.  The middle-aged