Cai could assure her in all innocence that he had never heard tell of Higher Parc and its famous view; nor did it occur to him to turn and interrogate his friend, who was flushing guiltily.

If Mrs Bosenna saw the flush, she ignored it.  She led the way to a stile; clambered over it, declining their help, agile as a maid of seventeen; and struck a footpath slanting up and across a turnip-field at the back of the farmstead.  The climb, though not steep, was continuous, and the chimneys of Rilla lay some twenty or thirty feet below them, when they reached a second stile and, overing it, stood on the edge of a mighty field, the extent of which could not be guessed, for it domed itself against the sky, cutting off all view of hedge or limit beyond.

“This is Higher Parc,” announced Mrs Bosenna.  “Ten acres.”

“Oh?” exclaimed Cai with a sudden flash of memory.  “And stubble!”

He glanced at ’Bias.  But ’Bias, who, if he heard the innuendo, read nothing in it, was gazing up the slope as though he had never set eyes on Higher Parc before in all his life.

They made their way up across the stubble, Mrs Bosenna picking her steps daintily among the sharp stalks that shone like a carpet stiff with gold against the level sunset.  The shadows of the three walked ahead of them, stretching longer and longer, vanishing at length over the ridge. . . .  And the view from the ridge was magnificent, as Mrs Bosenna had promised.  The slope at their feet hid the jetties—­or all save the tops of the loading-cranes:  but out in midstream lay the sailing vessels and steamships moored to the great buoys, in two separate tiers, awaiting their cargoes.  Of the sailing vessels there were Russians, with no yards to their masts, British coasters of varying rig, Norwegians, and one solitary Dutch galliot.  But the majority flew the Danish flag—­your Dane is fond of flying his flag, and small blame to him!—­and these exhibited round bluff bows and square-cut counters with white or varnished top-strakes and stern-davits of timber.  To the right and seaward, the eye travelled past yet another tier, where a stumpy Swedish tramp lay cheek-by-jowl with two stately Italian barques—­now Italian-owned, but originally built in Glasgow for traffic around the Horn—­and so followed the curve of the harbour out to the Channel, where sea and sky met in a yellow flood of potable gold.  To the left the river-gorge wound inland, hiding its waters, around overlapping bluffs studded with farmsteads and (as the eye threaded its way into details) peopled here and there with small colonies of farm-folk working hard, like so many groups of ants,—­some cutting, others saving, the yellow corn, all busy forestalling night, when no man can work.

      Uplands, where the harvesters
    Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes, to watch
    Or barge or schooner stealing up from sea: 
    Themselves in twilight, she a twilit ghost
    Parting the twilit woods.