The next turn of the road showed them the red peaked roofs of the closely packed houses lying almost directly below the hill on which they were.  The full autumn sun brought out the ruddy colour of the tiled gables, and deepened the shadows in the narrow streets.  The narrow harbour at the mouth of the river was crowded with small vessels of all descriptions, making an intricate forest of masts.  Beyond lay the sea, like a flat pavement of sapphire, scarcely a ripple varying its sunny surface, that stretched out leagues away till it blended with the softened azure of the sky.  On this blue trackless water floated scores of white-sailed fishing boats, apparently motionless, unless you measured their progress by some land-mark; but still, and silent, and distant as they seemed, the consciousness that there were men on board, each going forth into the great deep, added unspeakably to the interest felt in watching them.  Close to the bar of the river Dee a larger vessel lay to.  Sylvia, who had only recently come into the neighbourhood, looked at this with the same quiet interest as she did at all the others; but Molly, as soon as her eye caught the build of it, cried out aloud—­

‘She’s a whaler! she’s a whaler home from t’ Greenland seas!  T’ first this season!  God bless her!’ and she turned round and shook both Sylvia’s hands in the fulness of her excitement.  Sylvia’s colour rose, and her eyes sparkled out of sympathy.

‘Is ta sure?’ she asked, breathless in her turn; for though she did not know by the aspect of the different ships on what trade they were bound, yet she was well aware of the paramount interest attached to whaling vessels.

‘Three o’clock! and it’s not high water till five!’ said Molly.  ’If we’re sharp we can sell our eggs, and be down to the staithes before she comes into port.  Be sharp, lass!’

And down the steep long hill they went at a pace that was almost a run.  A run they dared not make it; and as it was, the rate at which they walked would have caused destruction among eggs less carefully packed.  When the descent was ended, there was yet the long narrow street before them, bending and swerving from the straight line, as it followed the course of the river.  The girls felt as if they should never come to the market-place, which was situated at the crossing of Bridge Street and High Street.  There the old stone cross was raised by the monks long ago; now worn and mutilated, no one esteemed it as a holy symbol, but only as the Butter Cross, where market-women clustered on Wednesday, and whence the town crier made all his proclamations of household sales, things lost or found, beginning with ‘Oh! yes, oh! yes, oh! yes!’ and ending with ’God bless the king and the lord of this manor,’ and a very brisk ‘Amen,’ before he went on his way and took off the livery-coat, the colours of which marked him as a servant of the Burnabys, the family who held manorial rights over Monkshaven.