circled and swooped, looping its aimless, unnecessary curves, yet always travelling on. It might have been a piece of the wandering mist that had taken shape, yet the sluggish, unbuoyant atmosphere seemed scarcely to have sufficient strength to carry its weight. So low it flew at last that it almost brushed their faces and the horse's ears, and in fancy he felt the touch of it damp and soft against his cheek. And then, as it dropped for the hundredth time, it suddenly spoke.

Sarah started violently when the cry broke over her head, the harsh wailing cry that makes all sands desolate and all moorland lone. She lifted her face to search the curtained sky as well as she could, but already the bird had left them and mounted higher, as if called and turned to another road. Each cry as it came was fainter than the last, like the speech of a passing soul ever further off. There was about it something of the majesty and terror of all irrevocable retreats, of those who go forth unhesitatingly when summoned, never to return. It left behind it the same impulse to reach out passionate, yearning arms, to cry aloud for the fainting answer that would still go on long after the ear had ceased to take it in.

Sarah sat with her face lifted to the last, trembling and drawing short, uneven breaths. Simon was silent until she had settled again, and then--"It was nobbut a gull," he said, at length.

She gave a deep sigh, and folded her hands tightly before her in their black cotton gloves.

"We've plenty on 'em, I'm sure, down on t'marsh.... I'm that used to them, I never hear their noise."

She turned her head slightly towards him, as if in a vain attempt to see his face.

"Ay, but it was that like," she answered in a suppressed tone. "Eh, man, but it was terble like!"

He gave a grunt by way of reply, knowing well enough what she meant, but knowing also that there was nothing to say. It was not true, of course, that he never heard the gulls. He heard them always, and behind them the voice that called across the years. But they had long since ceased to talk about it or to take the voice of the present for the voice of the past. Sometimes, indeed, when the cry came at the window on a stormy night, they started and looked at each other, and then looked away. But it was not often that they were deceived, as Sarah had been to-day. Even now, he felt sure, she was straining after the voice, that would never cease crying until it reached the tide.

They were passed again before they reached the town, but this time it was by the cheerful rap of hoofs. It caught them as they creaked their way up the last hill,--the smart going of a good horse that even on the smothered highway managed to ring sharp. A whip was waved as the dog-cart dashed by, and the driver turned back to give them a smile. She was Fleming's motherless daughter from the 'Ship' Inn across the sands, and Simon and Sarah had known her all her life. All her life she had lived looking out across the bay, and half her life looking a thousand miles beyond.

Simon threw up his hand to her with an answering smile, a sudden sweetness changing his whole face. Even Sarah relaxed when she knew who it was, and both of them brightened for a little while. They were fond of May, a good girl who did not change, and who never made light of those whom Fate was counting out. She had always had the power to strengthen their hold on life, to blow their dying courage into a flame. There was a serene yet pulsing strength about her that had the soothing stimulus of a summer tide. Sarah had been jealous of her when she was young, and had fended her off, but May had long since found her patient way to her heart. Now she stood to both the old people as their one firm link with the past, and as such she was more precious to them than rubies and dearer than bright gold.

"A good lass!" Simon observed, with the smile still present on his lips.

"Ay."

"I've always thought a deal o' May."

"Ay, an' me."

"Geordie an' all," he added, with a faintly mischievous air.

Sarah did not speak.

"An' Jim----"

"Nay, then, I want nowt about Jim!"

Simon drew the lash gently along the horse's back.

"I hear Fleming's been none so well lately," he resumed, as they rumbled into Witham. "We mun think on to ax. Happen I could slip across to t' 'Ship' after we've gitten back. Tide's about six, isn't it? I could happen do it."

"Fleming's nobbut going the same road as t'rest on us," Sarah said. "He'll be glad to see you, though, like enough. But it'll be dark soon, think on, wi' all this fog."

"There's summat queer about t'weather," Simon said broodingly, knitting his brows. "Tides is fairish big, and yet it's terble whyet. Happen we'll have a change o' some sort afore so long."

"I've noticed it's often whyet afore a big change. Seems like as if it knew what was coming afore it was on t'road."

"Ay, but it's different, some way.... It's more nor that. There's a blind look about things, seems to me."

"Blind weather for blind folk!" Sarah put in with a grim laugh. Simon grunted a protest but she took no notice. "I never thought as I should be blind," she went on, almost as if to herself. "I've always been terble sharp wi' my eyes; likely that's why I've managed to wear 'em out. And I've always been terble feared o' folk as couldn't see. There's no telling what blind weather and a blind body's brain may breed.... Ay, well, likely I'll know a bit more about they sort o' things now...."

III

All old and historical towns seem older and richer in meaning on some days than they do on others. But the old and the rich days are also the most aloof. The towns withdraw, as it were, to ponder on their past. By some magic of their own they eliminate all the latest features, such as a library, a garage, or a new town hall, and show you nothing but winding alleys filled with leaning walls and mossy roofs. The eye finds for itself with ease things which it has seen for a lifetime and yet never seen,--carved stone dates, colour-washed houses jutting out over worn pillars, grey, mullioned houses tucked away between the shops. The old pigments and figures stand out strangely on the well-known signs, and the old names of the inns make a new music in the ear. The mother-church by the river seems bowed to the earth with the weight of the prayers that cling to her arched roof. The flags in the chancel seem more fragile than they did last week. The whole spirit of the town sinks, as the eyelids of the old sink on a twilit afternoon.

Witham wore this air of detachment when Simon and Sarah came to it to-day, as if it held itself aloof from one of the busiest spectacles of the year. The long main street, rising and dipping, but otherwise running as if on a terrace cut in the side of the hill, was strung from end to end with the scattered units of the road. The ambling traffic blocked and dislocated itself with the automatic ease of a body of folk who are all acquainted with each other's ways. Groups clustered on the pavements, deep in talk, and overflowed carelessly into the street. Horses' heads