“I believe women have quite as many adventures as men,” declared Sarah Northover, who was waiting for her aunt, “only we’re quieter about ’em.”

“We’ve got to be,” answered Mrs. Northover.  “Now come on to your mother’s, Sarah.  There’s Mr. Roberts waiting for us outside.”

In the silent and empty mill Raymond dawdled for a few minutes with Sabina, talked love and won a caress.  Then she put on her sunbonnet and he walked with her to the door of her home, left her at ‘The Magnolias’ and went his way with Estelle’s fruit basket.

A great expedition had been planned by the lovers for a forthcoming public holiday.  They were going to rise in the dawn, before the rest of the world was awake, and tramp out through West Haven to Golden Cap—­the supreme eminence of the south coast, that towers with bright, sponge-coloured precipices above the sea, nigh Lyme.

CHAPTER XI

THE OLD STORE-HOUSE

Through a misty morning, made silver bright by the risen sun, Sabina and Raymond started for their August holiday.  They left Bridetown, passed through a white fog on the water-meadows and presently climbed to the cliffs and pursued their way westward.  Now the sun was over the sea and the Channel gleamed and flashed under a wakening, westerly breeze.

To West Haven they came, where the cliffs break and the rivers from Bridport flow through sluices into the little harbour.

Among the ancient, weather-worn buildings standing here with their feet in the sand drifts, was one specially picturesque.  A long and lofty mass it presented, and a hundred years of storm and salt-laden winds had toned it to rich colour and fretted its roof and walls with countless stains.  It was a store, three stories high, used of old time for merchandise, but now sunk to rougher uses.  In its great open court, facing north, were piled thousands of tons of winnowed sand; its vaults were barred and empty; its glass windows were shattered; rust had eaten away its metal work and rot reduced its doors and sashes to powder.  Rich red and auburn was its face, with worn courses of brickwork like wounds gashed upon it.  A staircase of stone rose against one outer wall, and aloft, in the chambers approached thereby, was laid up a load of sweet smelling, deal planks brought by a Norway schooner.  Here too, were all manner of strange little chambers, some full of old nettings, others littered with the marine stores of the fishermen, who used the ruin for their gear.  The place was rat-haunted and full of strange holes and corners.  Even by day, with the frank sunshine breaking through boarded windows and broken roof, it spoke of incident and adventure; by night it was eloquent of the past—­of smugglers, of lawless deeds, of Napoleonic spies.

Raymond and Sabina stood and admired the old store.  To her it was something new, for her activities never brought her to West Haven; but he had been familiar with it from childhood, when, with his brother, he had spent school holidays at West Haven, caught prawns from the pier, gone sailing with the fisher folk, and spent many a wet day in the old store-house.