"Oh?" exclaimed Cai with a sudden flash of memory. "And stubble!"
He glanced at 'Bias. But 'Bias, who, if he heard the innuendo, read nothing in it, was gazing up the slope as though he had never set eyes on Higher Parc before in all his life.
They made their way up across the stubble, Mrs Bosenna picking her steps daintily among the sharp stalks that shone like a carpet stiff with gold against the level sunset. The shadows of the three walked ahead of them, stretching longer and longer, vanishing at length over the ridge. . . . And the view from the ridge was magnificent, as Mrs Bosenna had promised. The slope at their feet hid the jetties—or all save the tops of the loading-cranes: but out in midstream lay the sailing vessels and steamships moored to the great buoys, in two separate tiers, awaiting their cargoes. Of the sailing vessels there were Russians, with no yards to their masts, British coasters of varying rig, Norwegians, and one solitary Dutch galliot. But the majority flew the Danish flag—your Dane is fond of flying his flag, and small blame to him!—and these exhibited round bluff bows and square-cut counters with white or varnished top-strakes and stern-davits of timber. To the right and seaward, the eye travelled past yet another tier, where a stumpy Swedish tramp lay cheek-by-jowl with two stately Italian barques—now Italian-owned, but originally built in Glasgow for traffic around the Horn—and so followed the curve of the harbour out to the Channel, where sea and sky met in a yellow flood of potable gold. To the left the river-gorge wound inland, hiding its waters, around overlapping bluffs studded with farmsteads and (as the eye threaded its way into details) peopled here and there with small colonies of farm-folk working hard, like so many groups of ants,—some cutting, others saving, the yellow corn, all busy forestalling night, when no man can work.
Uplands, where the harvesters
Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes, to watch
Or barge or schooner stealing up from sea:
Themselves in twilight, she a twilit ghost
Parting the twilit woods.
. . . While Cai and 'Bias stood at gaze, drinking it all in, Mrs Bosenna—whose senses were always quick—turned, looked behind her, and uttered a little scream.
"Steers! . . . That Middlecoat's steers—they've broken fence again!
Oh—oh! and whatever shall I do?"
Cai and 'Bias, wheeling about simultaneously, were aware of a small troop of horned cattle advancing towards them leisurably, breasting the golden rays on the stubble-field, and spreading as they advanced.
"Do, ma'am?" echoed 'Bias, taking in the situation at a glance.
"Why, turn 'em back, to be sure!" He started off to meet the herd.
"—While you run for the stile," added Cai, preparing to follow as bravely. But Mrs Bosenna caught his arm.
"I'm—I'm so silly," she confessed in a tremulous whisper, "about horned beasts—when they don't belong to me."