I stood and looked over the newly-made gap at the great hungry water.  Considering the little wind, the swell on the North Sea was tremendous.  Far away there had been a storm somewhere.  The moon was laying a band of living light across the vast bosom of the sea, like a girdle.  Only a month had elapsed since that never-to-be-forgotten moonlight walk with Winifred.  But what a world of emotion since then!

VIII

I walked along the cliff to the gangway behind Flinty Point, and descended in order to see what havoc the landslip had made with the graves.

I looked across the same moonlit sands where I had seen Winifred so short a time before, when I had a father.  To my delight and surprise, there she was again.  There was Winifred, walking thoughtfully towards Church Cove with Snap by her side, who seemed equally thoughtful and sedate.  The relief of finding that my fears about her father were groundless added to my joy at seeing her.  With my own dead father lying within a few roods of me, I ran towards her in a state of high exhilaration, forgetting everything but her.  With sympathetic looks for my bereavement she met me, and we walked hand-in-hand in silence.

After a little while she said:  ’My father told me he was very busy to-night, and wished me to come on the sands for a walk, but I little hoped to meet you; I am very pleased we have met, for to-morrow I am going to London.’

‘To London?’ I said, in dismay at the thought of losing her so soon.  ‘Why are you going to London.  Winnie?’

‘Oh,’ said she, with the same innocent look of business-like importance which, at our first meeting as children, had so impressed me when she pulled out the key to open the church door, ’I’m going on business.’

‘On business!  And how long do you stay?’

‘I don’t stay at all; I’m coming back immediately.’

‘Come,’ I exclaimed, ’there’s a little comfort in that, at least.  Snap and I can wait for one day.’

‘Good-night,’ said Winifred.

‘Have you not seen the great landslip at the churchyard?’ I asked, taking her hand and pointing to the new promontory which the debris of the fall had made.

‘Another landslip?’ said she.  ’Poor dear old churchyard, it will soon all be gone!  Snap and I must have been far away when that fell.  But I remember saying to him, ‘Hark at the thunder.  Snap!’ and then I heard a sound like a shriek that appalled me.  It recalled a sound I once heard in Shire-Carnarvon.’

‘What was it, Winnie?’

’You’ve heard me when I was a little girl talk of my Gypsy sister Sinfi?’

‘Often,’ I said.