Such was the aspect of the little village of Hurlston and its surroundings towards the end of the last century. It was not especially attractive—indeed few scenes would have appeared to advantage at that moment; but when sunshine lighted up the blue dancing waters, varied by the shadows of passing clouds, the marine painter might have found many subjects for his pencil among the picturesque cottages, their sturdy inhabitants, the wild cliffs, and the yellow strand glittering with shells.
Farther inland the country improved. On the higher ground to the south were neat cottages rising among shrubberies, the parish church with its square tower, and yet farther off the mansion of Sir Reginald Castleton, in the midst of its park, with its broad lake, its green meadows and clumps of wide-spreading trees, surrounded by a high paling forbidding the ingress of strangers, and serving to secure the herd of graceful deer which bounded amidst its glades.
The fishermen—regardless of the driving mist, which, settling on their flushing coats and sou’-westers, ran off them in streamlets—kept turning their eyes seawards, endeavouring to penetrate the increasing gloom.
“Here comes Adam Halliburt!” exclaimed one of them, turning round; “we shall hear what he thinks of the weather. If he has made up his mind to go to sea to-night, it must come on much worse than it now is to keep him at home.”
As these words were uttered, a tall man a little past middle age, strongly-built and hardy-looking as the youngest, habited like the rest in fisherman’s costume, was seen approaching from the largest of the cottages on the level ground. His face, though weather-beaten, glowed with health, his forehead was broad, his bright blue eyes beaming with good-nature and kindly feeling. He was followed by a stout fisher-boy carrying a coil of rope over his shoulders, and a basket of provisions in his hand. Two other lads, who had been with the men on the pier, ran to meet him.
“They are doubtful about going to sea to-night. What do you think of it, father?” said the eldest.
“There is nothing to stop us that I see, Ben, unless it comes on to blow harder than it does now,” answered Adam, in a cheery voice. “The Nancy knows her way to our fishing-grounds as well as we do, and it must be a bad night indeed to stop her.”
“What do you think of it, Adam?” asked two or three of the men, when he got among them.
Halliburt turned his face seaward, sheltering his eyes with his hand from the thick drizzle which the mist had now become.
“If the wind holds from the south-east there will be nothing to stop us,” he answered, after waiting a minute. “It is likely, however, to be a dirtier night than I had thought for—I will own that. Jacob,” he said to his youngest boy, “do you go back and stay with your mother, she wants some help in the house, and you can look after the pigs and poultry before we are back in the morning.”