A minute speck appeared upon it.
Roger pulled himself together.
"That's the Harwich boat," he said, "or it may be one of Moy's coaling-ships. I rather think it is."
He gazed with evident relish at the small puff of smoke. He experienced a certain relief in its advent, as one who descries a familiar face in a foreign crowd. He said he wished he had brought his glasses, as then he could have identified it. And he pointed out to her, far away in the mist, the crumbling headlands of the Suffolk coast, and the church tower of Dunwich, half lost in the sea haze, waiting for the next storm to engulf it.
Recalled to a remembrance of their destination by the coal-boat, they rose and walked slowly on towards the old stone cross standing bluntly up against a great world of sky. Mr. Stirling and Mrs. Stoddart were sitting under it; and close at hand a spring bubbled up, which slipped amid tumbled stone and ling to a little pond, the margin fretted by the tiny feet of sheep, and then wavered towards the Rieben as circuitously as the Rieben wavered to the sea.
There was nothing left of the anchorite's cell save scattered stones, and the shred of wall on which Mrs. Stoddart was sitting. But a disciple of Julian of Norwich had dwelt there once, Mr. Stirling told them, visited, so the legend went, by the deer of the forest when the moss on their horns fretted them, and by sick wolves with thorns in their feet, and by bishops and princes and knights and coifed dames, with thorns in their souls. And she healed and comforted them all. And later on Queen Mary had raised the cross to mark the spot where the saint of the Catholic Church had lived, as some said close on a hundred years.
"It is a pity there are no saints left nowadays," said Mr. Stirling, "to heal us poor sick wolves."
"But there are," said Annette, as if involuntarily, "only we don't see them until we become sick wolves. Then we find them, and they take the thorn away."
A baby-kite, all fluff, and innocent golden eyes, and callow hooked beak, flew down with long, unsteady wings to perch on the cross and preen itself. Presently a chiding mother's note summoned it away. Mr. Stirling watched it, and wondered whether the link between Mrs. Stoddart and Annette, which he saw was a very close one, had anything to do with some dark page of Annette's past. Had Mrs. Stoddart taken from her some rankling thorn?—healed some deep wound in her young life? He saw the elder woman's eyes looking with earnest scrutiny at Roger.