By six o’clock a breeze blew in off an icefield; and by seven the water was more purple than blue; and by half-past seven there was a patch of rough gold-beater’s skin round the Scilly Isles, and Durrant’s face, as he sat steering, was of the colour of a red lacquer box polished for generations.  By nine all the fire and confusion had gone out of the sky, leaving wedges of apple-green and plates of pale yellow; and by ten the lanterns on the boat were making twisted colours upon the waves, elongated or squat, as the waves stretched or humped themselves.  The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water.  Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling solemnity, against the rocks.

Although it would be possible to knock at the cottage door and ask for a glass of milk, it is only thirst that would compel the intrusion.  Yet perhaps Mrs. Pascoe would welcome it.  The summer’s day may be wearing heavy.  Washing in her little scullery, she may hear the cheap clock on the mantelpiece tick, tick, tick ... tick, tick, tick.  She is alone in the house.  Her husband is out helping Farmer Hosken; her daughter married and gone to America.  Her elder son is married too, but she does not agree with his wife.  The Wesleyan minister came along and took the younger boy.  She is alone in the house.  A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble-bee for clapper.  These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders.  In one of these, to hold, an historian conjectures, the victim’s blood, a basin has been hollowed, but in our time it serves more tamely to seat those tourists who wish for an uninterrupted view of the Gurnard’s Head.  Not that any one objects to a blue print dress and a white apron in a cottage garden.

“Look—­she has to draw her water from a well in the garden.”

“Very lonely it must be in winter, with the wind sweeping over those hills, and the waves dashing on the rocks.”

Even on a summer’s day you hear them murmuring.

Having drawn her water, Mrs. Pascoe went in.  The tourists regretted that they had brought no glasses, so that they might have read the name of the tramp steamer.  Indeed, it was such a fine day that there was no saying what a pair of field-glasses might not have fetched into view.  Two fishing luggers, presumably from St. Ives Bay, were now sailing in an opposite direction from the steamer, and the floor of the sea became alternately clear and opaque.  As for the bee, having sucked its fill of honey, it visited the teasle and thence made a straight line to Mrs. Pascoe’s patch, once more directing the tourists’ gaze to the old woman’s print dress and white apron, for she had come to the door of the cottage and was standing there.