Thrust back year after year by the advancing waves, the inhabitants have receded, in the present century, to the last morsel of land which is firm enough to be built on—­a strip of ground hemmed in between a marsh on one side and the sea on the other.  Here, trusting for their future security to certain sand-hills which the capricious waves have thrown up to encourage them, the people of Aldborough have boldly established their quaint little watering-place.  The first fragment of their earthly possessions is a low natural dike of shingle, surmounted by a public path which runs parallel with the sea.  Bordering this path, in a broken, uneven line, are the villa residences of modern Aldborough—­fanciful little houses, standing mostly in their own gardens, and possessing here and there, as horticultural ornaments, staring figure-heads of ships doing duty for statues among the flowers.  Viewed from the low level on which th ese villas stand, the sea, in certain conditions of the atmosphere, appears to be higher than the land:  coasting-vessels gliding by assume gigantic proportions, and look alarmingly near the windows.  Intermixed with the houses of the better sort are buildings of other forms and periods.  In one direction the tiny Gothic town-hall of old Aldborough—­once the center of the vanished port and borough—­now stands, fronting the modern villas close on the margin of the sea.  At another point, a wooden tower of observation, crowned by the figure-head of a wrecked Russian vessel, rises high above the neighboring houses, and discloses through its scuttle-window grave men in dark clothing seated on the topmost story, perpetually on the watch—­the pilots of Aldborough looking out from their tower for ships in want of help.  Behind the row of buildings thus curiously intermingled runs the one straggling street of the town, with its sturdy pilots’ cottages, its mouldering marine store-houses, and its composite shops.  Toward the northern end this street is bounded by the one eminence visible over all the marshy flat—­a low wooded hill, on which the church is built.  At its opposite extremity the street leads to a deserted martello tower, and to the forlorn outlying suburb of Slaughden, between the river Alde and the sea.  Such are the main characteristics of this curious little outpost on the shores of England as it appears at the present time.

On a hot and cloudy July afternoon, and on the second day which had elapsed since he had written to Magdalen, Captain Wragge sauntered through the gate of North Shingles Villa to meet the arrival of the coach, which then connected Aldborough with the Eastern Counties Railway.  He reached the principal inn as the coach drove up, and was ready at the door to receive Magdalen and Mrs. Wragge, on their leaving the vehicle.