He passed the ruins of the Tudor castle and the long featureless rib of grinding pebbles that screened off the outer sea, which could be heard lifting and dipping rhythmically in the wide vagueness of the Bay. At the under-hill island townlet of the Wells there were no flys, and leaving his things to be brought on, as he often did, he climbed the eminence on foot.
Half-way up the steepest part of the pass he saw in the dusk a figure pausing—the single person on the incline. Though it was too dark to identify faces, Pierston gathered from the way in which the halting stranger was supporting himself by the handrail, which here bordered the road to assist climbers, that the person was exhausted.
‘Anything the matter?’ he said.
‘O no—not much,’ was returned by the other. ‘But it is steep just here.’
The accent was not quite that of an Englishman, and struck him as hailing from one of the Channel Islands. ‘Can’t I help you up to the top?’ he said, for the voice, though that of a young man, seemed faint and shaken.
‘No, thank you. I have been ill; but I thought I was all right again; and as the night was fine I walked into the island by the road. It turned out to be rather too much for me, as there is some weakness left still; and this stiff incline brought it out.’
‘Naturally. You’d better take hold of my arm—at any rate to the brow here.’
Thus pressed the stranger did so, and they went on towards the ridge, till, reaching the lime-kiln standing there the stranger abandoned his hold, saying: ‘Thank you for your assistance, sir. Good-night.’
‘I don’t think I recognize your voice as a native’s?’
‘No, it is not. I am a Jersey man. Goodnight, sir.’