A grey November day, with sad-coloured clouds hanging low over a grey and sullen sea. At intervals there rolls across the water the dull boom of distant fog-guns, echoing like thunder under the heavy veil of mist. From the shore below comes the ceaseless fret of waves sweeping swiftly in across the sand. Along the edge of the tide and over the wide mud-flats are scattered the white figures of gulls; and at times there comes faintly up the low musical call of a whimbrel, or the plaintive wail of a curlew. At times, too, there rises in the air a great flock of sandpipers, like a thin smoke-cloud drifting down the shore, until, as they wheel, their snowy breasts and upturned wings gleam for a moment silver white on the grey sky behind them.

It is a grey world altogether; grey sea, grey shore, grey shingle. Grey, too, are the ragged sand hills, whose shifting ramparts the gales of many winters have piled so high over the old sea wall. Below this hollow—a narrow gorge worn deep into the hill—there lies a little hamlet, still half-hidden by the trees, thinned and tattered though they are, and nestling close under the shelter of the hill;—a score or so of white-walled houses, with roofs of red tiles weathered to soft shades of brown and russet, with plumes of blue smoke all trailing seawards, and with a fringe of orchards round it, where the mellow fruit is still glowing on the boughs. High over the roofs of the village rises the grey tower of the church, its turrets just clear above the clustering elms, in whose shadow lies the crowded graveyard,

A wide stretch of pasture-land divides the village from the sea. Yet, in old days—before the coming of the friars to the priory yonder, whose tower shows faintly against the low green hill that dies in a rocky headland by the sea, perhaps even before the legionaries stormed the great stronghold whose ruins crown this breezy hill-top—the little hamlet, now so far above the tide line, was, if antiquaries read its name aright, a place of boats. The fields about it are still below high-water mark. A high spring tide, before a gale from the westward, would even now reach right up to the village, were it not for the sea wall and the sand hills.

The sand hills are mere desert now. Yet they are pleasant enough in the summer time, when their short turf is bright with rest-harrow and crowfoot, when the great bells of the sea-convolvulus open wide on the hot sand, when tufts of pale thrift blossom in the shingle, and clumps of white campion, and frail flowers of yellow poppy. Pleasant then is the sweet breath of thyme and clover. Pleasanter still the smell of the sea, blown by soft summer airs over the wide mud-flats and the trampled sand.

The little hamlet, high and dry this many a day, is a port no longer. The only harvest of the sea that the villagers can glean in our time is that which wind and wave bring ashore upon this sandy beach. In the broken spars, the splintered timbers, the nameless waifs and strays of wreckage which the storm brings to their doors, the dwellers in the cottages that seem to crouch for shelter behind the old sea wall, find all their winter fuel.

There are traditions that many a cargo of spirits was run ashore here in smuggling days. Tales are still current of the hiding places where the goods were stored. It is said that even the church tower has in its time afforded sanctuary to bales of lace and kegs of liquor that never paid the King his due. This narrow pass may well have served the "free-traders" as a secret way into the hills.

But the long flight of rude stone steps that leads down it towards the village dates from an earlier time. To its use and history no clue remains. It is likely enough that it was the pathway to the camp from the long-vanished port below.

There is a legend in the country-side that it led up to the cell of an anchorite, a solitary who inhabited this ravine, and who, with his own hands, hewed and fitted the stones of the old stairway, now worn smooth by the feet of many centuries. Half-way up the pass, under the shelter of the limestone cliff, is his traditional dwelling place, a chamber hollowed in the living rock and roughly faced with masonry.

Who was he? A monk from the old priory yonder,—an outlaw with blood upon his soul?

It is a quiet spot. The crumbling walls look down through the rocky gateway of the gorge to the village at its foot; over the grey curve of shingle to the wet sands that, as the cloud veil lifts and scatters, are beginning now to shine like silver in the sunlight; to the grey sea, with sails showing ghost-like here and there; to the far shore, whose rugged outline looms faintly through the haze.

The brown elms of the village redden in the sunshine. There is a flush of colour on the belfry walls, on the limestone battlements above the pass, on the worn steps of the old stairway winding downward to the sea.

Yes, a quiet spot. There is no sound but the slumbrous music of the waves, at times the bark of a sheep-dog, a cattle-call from distant meadows, or the chatter of linnets on the hill.

On such a scene the old monk looked down. Such sounds were in his ears. Such rest and calm brooded over his rude dwelling—beast and bird his sole companions, the busy world shut out.

Was he the Father of the village, summoned from his cell to shrieve the dying, bless the dead? Was he a surly recluse, fond of solitude and silence?

From the rocky brow above the hermit's chamber the eye looks out over a wider world. A world no longer cold and colourless. The clouds have lifted from the sea; the sky has cleared; a flood of sunshine covers the whole landscape. It kindles on the red roofs of the village, it gilds the sombre leafage of the elms, it brightens the green meadows, turning all their straight-cut waterways to lines of silver. A tall beech that lifts its stately head above its fellows in the wood yonder reddens in the sunset. And the bright foliage of a row of Spanish chestnuts along the path that winds upwards from the shore flames like a river of light among the quiet-coloured elms and larches. A passing sail gleams white upon an opal sea. Over the wide west is spread a soft and golden glow; while far hills, range beyond range, are wrought in amethyst upon the lighted sky.