common sense.  He remembered that he must have food and drink, and he sought them from the wayside public-house like an ordinary traveler, conquering without any apparent effort that first invincible repugnance of his toward the face of any human being.  Then on again across this strange land of windmills and spreading plains, until the darkness forced him to take shelter once more.  That night he slept like a child.  With the morning, the fever had passed from his blood.  A great wind blew in his face even as he opened his eyes, touched to wakefulness by the morning sun, a wind that came booming over the level places, salt with the touch of the ocean and fragrant with the perfume of many marsh plants.  He was coming toward the sea now, and within a very short distance from where he had spent the night, he found a broad, shining river stealing into the land.  With eager fingers he stripped himself and plunged in, diving again and again below the surface, swimming with long, lazy strokes backwards and forwards.  Afterwards he lay down in the warm, dry grass, dressed himself slowly, and went on his way.  The wind, which had increased now since the early morning, came thundering across the level land, bending the tops of the few scattered trees, sending the sails of the windmills spinning, bringing on its bosom now stronger than ever the flavor of the sea itself, salt and stimulating.  Tavernake told himself that this was a new world into which he was coming.  He would pass into its embrace and life would become a new thing.

Towards evening with many a thrill of reminiscence, he descended a steep hill and walked into a queer time-forgotten village, whose scattered red-tiled cottages were built around an arm of the sea.  Boldly enough now he entered the one inn which flaunted its sign upon the cobbled street, and, taking a seat in the stone-floored kitchen, ate and drank and bespoke a bed.  Later on, he strolled down to the quay and made friends with the few fishermen who were loitering there.  They answered his questions readily, although he found it hard at first to pick up again the dialect of which he himself had once made use.  The little place was scarcely changed.  All progress, indeed, seemed to have passed it by.  There were a handful of fishermen, a boat-builder and a fish-curer in the village.  There was no other industry save a couple of small farmhouses on the outskirts of the place, no railway within twelve miles.  Tourists came seldom, excursionists never.  In the half contented, half animal-like expression which seemed common to all the inhabitants, Tavernake read easily enough the history of their uneventful days.  It was such a shelter as this, indeed, for which he had been searching.

On the second night after his arrival, he walked with the boatbuilder upon the wooden quay.  The boatbuilder’s name was Nicholls, and he was a man of some means, deacon of the chapel, with a fair connection as a jobbing carpenter, and possessor of the only horse and cart in the place.