There is no season so bad but there are some fine days in it, and there is no time so heavy but it has some happy hours. That stormy summer-time had its happy hours, although I must needs tell also of its clouds.

The earth was the same, although the eyes with which I saw it saw another image before they reached it, and sometimes the sense of its eternal beauty came to my spirit with a soothing song, and whispered of an enduring life that was beyond the changes and chances of varying weathers, bidding me be still and wait. I don't know that I was still, I don't know that at that time I was content to wait; but those voices that were so familiar made me glad as nothing else did, and, though I knew it not, made me strong.

The wind that breathed soft from over the downs, heavy with the scent of the hops; the wind that smote salt upon my cheek with the fresh sea-brine; the lap of the waves upon the sand's soft lip, or their fretful flow upon the steeper beach whence they would suck the pebbles back again to the ocean's heart; the rush and rustle of birds in the air—rooks, or starlings, or fieldfares in great congregations that blackened the sky; the clouds hastening over the blue that lay so wide a covering over the wide level land, and made the red roofs of the town purple beneath their touch; the rippling of a breeze in the ash-trees, and the moaning of it in the pines; the pattering of rain, the lowing of cattle; the hundred notes of birds, and sounds of beasts upon the land; the throbbing sunlight, and the cold moon—all these things, and many, many more, spoke to me, gay or pitiful, in tones that I had learned from my childhood up, and told me of that wide sea of life that was there for me, whether I would or not, beyond the present, beyond selfish longings, beyond happiness or unhappiness.

Yes, I think something of all this came to me even then, although I could not have told it in words, as I try to do now—ten years afterwards.

It was late August—the last of the harvesting. I had gone down to those wheat-fields upon the marsh that lie almost alongside of the beach.

The day's work was nearly done, the reapers were binding up the last sheaves, and only a few solitary gleaners were still busy where the hated machines had left off their monotonous grind. I don't know how it was the men had done work so early that day, for it was an hour off sundown yet, but I think it was the very last field they had to reap upon father's land.

Trayton Harrod had been there, but I had not spoken to him all the afternoon, and now, as I stood looking at him from afar through the late golden sunshine, and one of those strange showers of cobwebs that sometimes fall about this time of year upon our Sussex levels, I saw the squire upon the path hard by that led to the beach. I had seen him coming down the road before with his bailiff, but had scarcely noticed him then—he was such a familiar figure in the landscape. Only when he was comparatively close at hand something occurred to me with regard to him.

I gave up a foolish wish that I had had to walk up to the village with Trayton Harrod after work was done, and jumped the dike, beyond which only a narrow strip of pasture-land was between me and the road. I remember how I stopped to pluck meadowsweet and flowering willow as I stepped across, that I might just climb the bank not too long before the squire should have reached that point.

"Been harvesting, Miss Margaret?" said he, in, I fancied, rather a preoccupied manner. "We have all got plenty of that to do just now, haven't we?"

The squire had more of it to do than we had, for he had more wheat, and the ugly weather having given place that week to a fresh burst of summer, all we who still had crops on the ground were anxious to take advantage of the unexpected good-fortune. I did not reply; I was thinking how to begin what I had to say, and I took my knife out of my pocket, and stooped to cut a tall teasel that was turning brown on the dike-side, and a spray of ruddy dock that grew beside it.

"The weather is splendid now for harvesting," said I, finding the squire did not speak again, "and Mr. Harrod says the crop of wheat will be finer than he once thought."

"Why shouldn't he have thought it would be fine?" grumbled the squire, looking in the direction where our bailiff stood in the wheat-field talking to the bailiff from the Manor. "We have rarely had such a hot summer."

The field was hot and golden, the hill behind cool and dark.

I pulled one of the heads of dock to pieces in my hand, and said, "He says that a hot early summer doesn't always do good; it sucks the juices out while the straw is milky, and impoverishes the strength of the plant."

The squire laughed, and I grew scarlet with vexation.

"Why, you'll be quite a farmer under Harrod's auspices," he said. "You were nearly fit to manage the farm before he came, and I'm sure you'll soon be able to turn him off."

"No, indeed," said I, trying to speak quietly. "I'm only just beginning to learn that I know nothing."

"Ah! Well, they say that's the first step to growing clever," he replied. "And, joking apart, of course Harrod's a very able fellow, and can teach us both a lot of things, I've no doubt, though he does have queer notions at times, I'm bound to say. He is a business man, and no mistake."

"Of course Mr. Harrod is a good man of business," said I, haughtily. "We all know that. That's why you recommended him to father, I suppose."

Whenever the squire was rough on Harrod for his energy—which somehow seemed to me to be rather often of late—I always reminded him that he had recommended him for that very quality. I don't think he liked to be so reminded. I don't know why, but I am sure he did not like it.

"Mr. Broderick," I said, striking a bold tangent, "when is Captain Forrester coming down again to the Manor?"

He looked at me, surprised.

"I don't know, I'm sure," he said. "He never used to come at all. He has never been at the Manor before for so long a time as he was here this spring."

"No, perhaps not," I said.

He looked at me sharply, and remembering the warning he had given me against any intimacy between my sister and Frank, it occurred to me that he might be to blame for Frank's long absence.

This thought made a sudden flame of anger leap up within me towards the squire. I could not help being angry with him if he were doing anything to keep Joyce and Frank apart. I longed to tell him so, but with that promise to mother at my back I did not dare.

"He might come for the election," said I. "I think he ought to come for the election."

The squire laughed again.

"On which side do you suppose he would throw in his interest, Miss Margaret?" he said.

I saw that I had said a silly thing, and flushed. Of course if Frank put any interest in the election it would be on the side that was not the squire's.

"But, upon my soul, I scarcely know myself," added he. "The lad is a slippery sort of fellow."

This speech pleased me no more than the former one. It pleased me none the more because it awakened a certain uneasiness that I had felt myself about Frank. Girl as I was, I, too, had fancied he was not always the same; but I stood up for him.

"I think it's very unfair of you to say that of your own nephew," I said.

The squire fixed his blue eyes upon me with an amused expression.

"Why, Miss Margaret, you're a very stanch champion of that young scapegrace," said he. "What makes you so bold at fighting his battles, and so eager that he should come back again to the Manor?"

"I fight his battles because I think you are unjust," I said. "And I want him to come back because father looks to him to help him in his work."

"Oh, I see," said the squire, somewhat doubtfully. "But you mustn't fancy that he is so necessary to your father as all that. I am sure my friend Maliphant is far too wise a man to set much store by the talk and opinions of a young and idle fellow like my nephew. He is far more likely to value the advice of a man such as this new parson over at Iden. I am glad to see they have struck up quite a friendship together. I wish he wouldn't wear such a long coat, but I can see that he is an honest chap in spite of it."

At any other time I might have been willing to enter into a discussion as to the merits of the Rev. Cyril Morland, but at that moment I was only annoyed with the squire for having noticed father's liking for him. However, he gave me no more time for further talk. Whether I had said anything to annoy him, or whether he was really busy, I don't know; but he bade me good-bye abruptly, only asking me, if I should meet Harrod, to tell him that he would call round at "The Elms" and see him later on.

I strolled down to the sea-shore that hemmed the margin of the marsh, and sat down upon the beach to listen to the wash of the water upon the pebbles as the tide went out. It was one of those serene evenings that are made for dreaming; the sea was calm, and melted into the sky, with a little haze upon the horizon; streaks of varied shades crossed it in lines, brown upon the shallows, palest green beyond, blue where the water deepened, and darker still where the shadow of passing clouds fell upon its bosom. A fishing-boat, with brown sail flapping idly, lay becalmed in the offing; a steamer crossed the distance. The light-house at the end of the long, faint pink line, that was the far point that swept out into the ocean, seemed scarcely to be on land at all, but a mere speck of white in a veil of haze at sea; even the shipping in the harbor, but two miles away, had a phantom look, although the distant cliffs to my right could not but be stable and stately even in that languid atmosphere.

It was all so peaceful and pleasant that I forgot the storms that oftentimes raged upon it, and although I was not actively happy I was passively content, involuntarily wrapped around by the soothing influence of the world that had been all the world to me until six months ago.

I began thinking of the days—not so very long past—when I knew no excitement so great as to be out with the fisher-lads fishing for mackerel. Mother would not allow me to go out when it was very stormy, so it was days of comparative calm that I remembered, and one night in special when I had leave to go out with Reuben and an old fisherman by torchlight. It was in the month of November—a cold, clear night—and we fished for herring. There had been just enough of a swell not to make the adventure tame, but the stars had shone calmly, and the haul had been a good one. At the time, I had thought much more about the haul of fish than about the stars, but now I remembered that the stars had shone calmly. A longing came over me to be once more on the sea.

The old fisherman with whom I had been out that night was dead, I knew; but there were others whom I had known, and with a sudden impulse I got up from the shingle, and began walking towards the fishing village hard by. It was but a handful of little low cottages, with a rough inn in the middle—a wild, strange place, alone on the border of the marsh with the wind and the sea.

I met one of my friends coming along the beach; he was going for his shrimping-net, for the tide was going out, and in another hour the work would begin. He came slouching along, with his old faded blue jersey rolled up around his waist, and his woollen cap cocked over his eyes to keep out the slanting rays of the late sun.

"Good-day to you, Eben," I called out. His name was Ebenezer, but everybody called him Eben. "Are you going to take up the nets this afternoon, or it is too calm?"

The old fellow—not so very old, but weather-beaten into an appearance that might mean any age from forty to sixty—pursed up his dry lips and looked out over the water. The yellow sail of the fishing-boat yonder had swelled out; there was a little breeze getting up.

"We might put out," he said, "though it's touch and go if it'd be worth while. Do you want to go out?"

"Yes, I should like to go," said I. "It's a long while since I've been on the water."

Eben looked at me. I don't know if he saw anything in my face different from what used to be there, but he said, quite sympathetically, "Well, 'tis mopin' work being always on dry land."

I laughed. "I'd rather have the land than the sea all the year round," I said; "but I should like to taste the salt again."

"I've my shrimpin' to do," said he. "And we can't go afore the turn o' the tide, anyhow."

"All right," answered I. "I'll wait a bit."

"There won't be more than a handful of codling and p'r'aps a sole," declared the old man, doubtfully.

"Never mind," answered I.

"How's the old chap up at the farm?" said he, as he was moving off. One might have imagined that he meant Reuben, but I knew well enough that he meant father.

"Father's well," I said.

"He have got a bailiff to look after the place now, haven't he?" asked Eben. "Don't work very well, do it?"

"Why, yes; it works all right," said I.

I did not ask whether it was Reuben who had said it did not work, but of course I knew, and wondered what I could do to punish Reuben for it.

"He's a nice-spoken chap," added the man. "I've seed him about here many's the time, and he's always spoke civil to me. Ain't that him coming along now?"

I turned round sharply. Yes, walking along the beach towards us was Trayton Harrod. He too was taking a rest after his day's work. The glare on the shingle dazzled me so that I could not see him, for the sun was behind me, sinking towards the hill, and shone onto the face of the pebbles, making the long stretch of beach shine rosy gray. Was he coming towards us? No, most likely he had not recognized me talking to the fisherman. Should I go to meet him? I had the squire's message to deliver. But I thought I would not go. Of late there had come upon me a resolve to wait until he should seek me. Foolish and useless effort of pride! Was I even true to it? He turned across the beach back again to the road, but in the direction of the cliff.

"Well, I'll be back again in an hour or so, Eben," I said. "You'll know by that time whether you mean to go out or not."

He nodded, and shouldered the pole of his big square net. I stood and watched him wade into the water. But when he had distanced me by some couple of hundred yards, plodding through the rippling waves, and pushing the big square net in front of him, then I turned and crossed the shingle back to the short brown turf, where the rabbit-warrens are thick upon the uneven ground, and the blue bugloss and sea-gillyflower bloom sparsely upon the dry soil.

I had suddenly resolved to use up the spare hour in a sharp walk to the cliffs. I did not know, or did not confess to myself, that I had any special object in view in coming to this determination; but I think my heart beat a little as I walked, wondering whether some one else was advancing in the same direction behind me. I walked without turning, however, till I came to certain pools in the beach that tides no longer reach—pools housed behind banks of shingle, and scarcely even remembering the sea their mother; quiet havens where rushes grow and moor-hen make their nests, and the stately purple heron comes for his meal at dawn and sunset.

One flew across from trees inland, obliquely, slowly sailing, just as I reached the last of these seeming remnants of a primitive world, and stood bathing his feet on the shallow lip, erect and imposing, the only inhabitant fitted to the spot. He did not see me nor move, even though I stooped down as I neared him to pluck a bunch of the yellow sea-poppies that bloomed amid the very pebbles.

The beach stretched blue now in front of me as I raised my head, for the sun was before me—nearing the edge of the hill; I looked back along the way, that was pink, but Trayton Harrod was not in sight, and with something that was very like disappointment at my heart, I went on again, following the dike, that now ran not far from the shore, until I came to where it widens into a channel between a greensward on one side and the high ridge of shingle on the other. Its end is in a deep pool sheltered beneath the hood of a gray cliff—a cliff adorned at its base with the blackberry and ash, and whitening at its top into the chalk that here begins to give its glistening frontal to the gales of the turbulent sea.

Upon a bank of bracken that September promised to gild with amber, I sat down to rest. Poor foolish child! How faint was my heart when my hope was vain—how wild when I saw it fulfilled! For he came at last, leisurely, reading as he came.

I had not been mistaken: for him too this was a favorite spot, this corner forsaken of the world, but loved all the more of the sleepy marsh and of the sleepless sea, of the raging winds of heaven and of the tender summer sunshine.

"Why, Miss Margaret!" said he, as he came up, with something of surprise, but also—ah yes—something of pleasure, in his tone. "Fancy finding you such a long way from home!"

"Oh, I often come here," I said. "It is but a step."

I was longing to remind him that it was but just yonder on the marsh that I had met him for the first time, but I could not. "What is that?" I asked, abruptly, instead, as a bird flew out of one of the caves that the sea once filled, and hovered over our heads. It hung there some forty feet aloft, winnowing the air gently; then fell like a stone upon the field. "A hawk, I call it," added I; "but I know you have some strange name for it."

When we were together we went back naturally, I think, with one accord to our little altercations about the names and manners of beasts and birds; it was on such little things that the first good beginning of our friendship had been built. It set me at my ease that day.

"It's a kestrel, not a sparrow-hawk," said Harrod. "It's a pity keepers ever mistake them. The kestrels are useful birds. They kill mice. That was a mouse it got now."

"What is your name for it?" I repeated.

"Windhover," he answered.

"Ah yes, it's a pretty name," I said.

And we went on discussing the habitations of the bird, and how it loved to dwell in old buildings; and as we talked we climbed the flight of rough steps, hewn, winding up the face of the rock, and stood on the bald top, with the wind fresh in our faces and nothing but sea, sea all around, in the midst of which we almost seemed to stand as on an island. The little struggle with the breeze did me good, and the familiar way in which he went from one subject to another of our every-day interests put stormier thoughts for a moment out of sight.

As we walked back along the beach—colorless now that the sun had sunk, with the silvery curves of the gull's white wings bright upon the blue waters—the sympathy that he sought from me once more, as of old, upon the things of his ambition, the daily and engrossing interest of his work, all made me happy again, as I had not been happy for many a day, and I think that for the moment I scarcely thought of anything better than that this sympathy should go on like that forever.

A flight of starlings, beginning with companies of fifties, till, as day waned, the army counted thousands, blackened the sky. Flying towards us, with wings perpendicular and wide-spread, they were a dark cloud high in the air; but presently, as though by silent command, they changed their course, and in the twinkling of an eye the cloud became a mere patch of faint gray upon the sky, although the birds were still as close to us as before; they had but altered the poise of their bodies, and the wings, presented horizontally, made only little lines where before they had been black blotches. But once more they varied their flight, the sky darkened again, the compact mass became a long, sweeping curve that, with one great rush and rustle, descended across the belt of trees that clothe the Manor cliff above the marsh, and with a roar of wings and a very Babel of chirping that was like the noise of a mountain torrent, they buried themselves completely out of sight in the bank of tall reeds and bulrushes that here clothe the dike-banks.

"It's a parliament," said Harrod. "Now, I wonder what they have got to talk about. If the truth were ever known, I dare say they know more about co-operation than we do."

He laughed, and so did I.

"You see I've got co-operation on the brain, Miss Margaret," he said. "I've set my heart upon making your father see what an advantage it would be for the farmers."

"I thought that was one of his own favorite things," said I.

"I'm afraid that's not exactly the sort I mean," replied he. "He means co-operation between laborers or artisans to thwart their employers—or at least to get on without them. I mean co-operation between land-owners to keep their goods up to the prices that will repay them for their outlay."

"Oh, I'm afraid that is a very different thing," murmured I. I felt in my bones that father would never take part in it.

"Yes, I know," he answered. "But I want to see the squire about it. I hope to bring him round to my views. I am to meet him to-night." He looked at his watch. We had not noticed how the twilight was falling.

"Well, you hurry on and meet the squire," said I, just a trifle nettled at the way he said it. "I'm going out in the boat with old Eben."

"That'll make you very late," said Harrod.

"I mean to go," said I, obstinately.

He looked at me and smiled, shaking his head a little, reprovingly. The smile made me forget everything.

"Won't you put the squire off a little to come out with me?" I begged, wistfully. "It's so beautiful on the sea."

He hesitated a moment, and I ran down to the shore, where old Eben was waiting for me. But before I had reached it I heard Harrod's firm, light step following me.

"Is this the right time to take up nets?" he asked of the fisherman.

"Women always thinks it's the right time to do a thing when they wants it," said Eben. "But I've knowed missie a little one," he added, stolidly.

He was going to call his "mate" for the other boat, two being necessary to do what they called the "seining"—that is to say, the drawing in of the net from opposite angles—but Harrod stopped him.

"I'll go out in one boat with the young lady, if you'll take the other," he said.

My heart grew big. Eben asked him if he knew anything about the work, very doubtful as to the competency of a mere pleasure-seeker, but suddenly his face lit up.

He looked from me to Harrod.

"It works all right, eh?" he asked of me.

I thought he had lost his wits, until suddenly it occurred to me that those were the words I had used when he had suggested that the new bailiff did not "work well" at the farm. What did he mean? I think I grew red as I jumped into the boat, and was glad that it was so dark that nobody could see me—for the twilight was dying fast, and the stars were coming out faintly. It was cold on the water after the hot day. Harrod rowed, and once, as before, he took a warm garment and wrapped it about my shoulders; this time it was his own coat.

We sat there a long hour, throwing pebbles at the net to make the fish sink down in it, and rowing hither and thither to gather it in. Now that he was at it, Harrod was keen upon the sport; I think he was always keen upon all sport. But eager as I had been a while ago to see the fish brought in once more, I was not a bit eager now; though the "take" was not a good one, I was not a bit disappointed.

The stars shone brighter every moment as the sky grew darker; they shone calmly. I looked up at the vault—deep and blue, with the perfect blue of a summer's night, and studded over so thick and bright with those thousands of wonderfully piercing eyes. Half an hour ago I had thought I wanted no more than that quiet sympathy of friendship—but now, did I want no more? I scarcely knew myself.

But the stars shone calmly. They shone as we crossed the solitary marsh and roused the timid night-jar upon the road-side. He uttered his weird and plaintive note like the speechless cry of some sorrowing soul, and fluttered away in short little flights along the path-way till he reached the dark wood under the cliff; and there he hid himself from our sight, still sending his mournful appeal at intervals through the darkness.

No wonder that the country-folk hold the bird in horror, and still imagine that its presence in the neighborhood of any dwelling is an omen of coming death or misfortune. One could fit the cry with words if one would, so far is it from the senseless utterance of a senseless creature, so near to the pathetic appeal of a human soul.

But the stars shone, and not even mother's just upbraiding, nor a certain silent surprise on my sister's countenance, which troubled me far more, could take away from me the good hours which had been mine, could make the stars stop shining in the great fathomless blue.