'And all my men and maids have gone too. And Jose has toddled after them, he as don't care for phenomena, as the parson calls it, but only his pipe and ale.'
'But what is the matter?'
'The Lord only knows. The sea is boiling and throwing up mud, and they think that the rocks are about to fall. But I can't say. Lord preserve us all! It may be the Last Day coming on us in Axmouth and going on next to Seaton, and destroy it by instalments. If so, I wish it had begun t'other end of England.'
'Where is my mother—at the cottage?'
'That is just what I do not know, but want to find out.'
Winefred waited no longer. She ran up the lane leaving her father to follow at a pace more suited to his age and tight-lacing.
She came to the gate—once set with thorns—with a number of people running also up the lane, and could see that there were a great many on the common, forming as it were a wavering black ribbon on the short turf. Some impelled by curiosity advanced considerably, but next moment alarmed at their own temerity, scared by some trifle, recoiled.
One cried out that he heard a grinding sound under his boot-soles, and at once there was a rush inland. There broke out an argument as to where the fall would be. Some said along the line of the old Undercliff, there would be the cleavage. This was disputed on the ground that the Undercliff represented an earlier and exhausted subsidence.
One point there was on the down higher than the rest, that commanded a general view, and this was a point to which the curious trended partly because it gave such an extensive prospect, but also because it was esteemed secure.