She faded and was lost in the vaporous curtain. Still the children
gazed astern after her over the backs of the huddled sheep. The rowers
had fallen to singing again--men and maidens in harmony as they pulled--
'The ransom'd sons of God,
All earthly things we scorn,
And to our high abode
With songs of praise return! . . .'
Of a sudden, while they sang and while the children gazed, the fog to
northward heaved and parted, pierced by a shaft of the sinking sun, and
there in a clear hollow lay land--lay an Island vignetted in the fog,
with the light on its cliffs and green slopes--an Island, resting like a
shield on the milky sea.
"Look!"
Arthur Miles clutched Tilda by the arm and pointed.
The old steersman turned his head.
"Aye," said he, "she looks pretty of an evening sometimes, does
Holmness."
CHAPTER XX.
INISTOW FARM.
"_Clean, simple livers._"--CRASHAW.
The rowers in the leading boat were seven--four young men and three
young women; and they pulled two to an oar--all but the bowman, a young
giant of eighteen or thereabouts, who did without help. A fourth young
woman sat beside, suckling a baby.
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