Chapter 7

--Pleased awhile to view
The watery waste, the prospect wild and new;
The now receding waters gave them space,
On either side, the growing shores to trace
And then returning, they contract the scene,
Till small and smaller grows the walk between.
Crabbe.


The information of Davie Dibble, which had spread such general alarm at
Monkbarns, proved to be strictly correct. Sir Arthur and his daughter had
set out, according to their first proposal, to return to Knockwinnock by
the turnpike road; but when they reached the head of the loaning, as it
was called, or great lane, which on one side made a sort of avenue to the
house of Monkbarns, they discerned, a little way before them, Lovel, who
seemed to linger on the way as if to give him an opportunity to join
them. Miss Wardour immediately proposed to her father that they should
take another direction; and, as the weather was fine, walk home by the
sands, which, stretching below a picturesque ridge of rocks, afforded at
almost all times a pleasanter passage between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns
than the high-road.

Sir Arthur acquiesced willingly. "It would be unpleasant," he said, "to
be joined by that young fellow, whom Mr. Oldbuck had taken the freedom to
introduce them to." And his old-fashioned politeness had none of the ease
of the present day which permits you, if you have a mind, to _cut_ the
person you have associated with for a week, the instant you feel or
suppose yourself in a situation which makes it disagreeable to own him.
Sir Arthur only stipulated, that a little ragged boy, for the guerdon of
one penny sterling, should run to meet his coachman, and turn his
equipage back to Knockwinnock.

When this was arranged, and the emissary despatched, the knight and his
daughter left the high-road, and following a wandering path among sandy
hillocks, partly grown over with furze and the long grass called bent,
soon attained the side of the ocean. The tide was by no means so far out
as they had computed but this gave them no alarm;--there were seldom ten
days in the year when it approached so near the cliffs as not to leave a
dry passage. But, nevertheless, at periods of spring-tide, or even when
the ordinary flood was accelerated by high winds, this road was
altogether covered by the sea; and tradition had recorded several fatal
accidents which had happened on such occasions. Still, such dangers were
considered as remote and improbable; and rather served, with other
legends, to amuse the hamlet fireside, than to prevent any one from going
between Knockwinnock and Monkbarns by the sands.

As Sir Arthur and Miss Wardour paced along, enjoying the pleasant footing
afforded by the cool moist hard sand,