In his few days' experience of life, the boy had already learned one great truth: that every man is exactly what he looks. The face always reveals or betrays. And in this face, wild with the wildness of storms and skies, there was nothing but the stupid innocence of one of his own sheep.
The man threw at the boy one shy glance of a woodland creature, and then ignored him. Another moment and he was stalking on his way, with floating cloak, tall crook, dog at heel, a mass of yellow backs rippling along in front of him.
IV
The boy stood on the rim of the saucer and looked down.
Dim green lowlands lay beneath him, spurs of the Downs thrusting out into them.
Beyond, the bay swept away saucer-wise, the sea white along its brown edge. From his feet a shoulder, dark with gorse, plunged seaward. Beneath the swell of it, a level plain ran away to the shore, heaving up there in a little hillock that stood out from the beach as a bump of green.
Off the hillock lay the privateer hove-to. Another boat hung at her stern. The boy recognised it at once. It was the lugger Kite.
Behind the hillock, upon the plain, stood a solitary cottage.
At that cottage, lonely in a sea of turf, the boy stared long and earnestly.
It was flying a flag out of the chimney.