A Woodland Walk. 167 



leafless branches come glimpses of the bay : the long 

 sweep of yellow sand, the low promontory with its 

 skirts of black and broken rocks, the rugged sand- 

 hills covered thick with tall, grey sedges, the wander- 

 ing line of the old sea-wall, and the green levels of the 

 moor. 



The tide is out. Over the wide mud-flats, brown 

 by the brink of the angry sea, tinged with purple 

 nearer in, and lighted here and there by steel-like 

 gleams of water left in the long hollows, wander troops 

 of waders. Even at this distance one can distinguish 

 the long bill of the curlew; the black and white 

 plumage of the oyster-catcher. Gulls driven ashore 

 by the rough weather are scattered in hundreds over 

 the mud ; some of them are even foraging like rooks 

 in the meadows of the moor. 



Out on the rough water, their dark figures rising 

 now on the crest of a wave, now hidden altogether by 

 the swell, ride a fleet of scaup ducks. Winter visitors 

 they are, from the far and frozen North. They are 

 splendid fellows, with their dresses half of glossy 

 black, half of pencilled grey, but so shy and so well 

 acquainted with the speed of a boat and the range of 

 a fowling-piece that it is no easy matter to get near 

 enough to see them well. 



Round the grey tower of the little church under the 

 hill cluster the white cottages of a straggling hamlet, 

 once, as its name implies, a place of boats. 



A flight of rude stone steps crossing the footpath 



