32 STRAY -AW AYS 



value of distance, of the old-fashioned significance of 

 it to those whose world still lies within their longest 

 walk. But the limitations of that world are more 

 than ever felt when the desired goal is reached at 

 length, the metropolis of the surrounding waste, with 

 its sufficiently decent cottages, and more than suffi- 

 cient supply of public-houses. On the stony sands 

 below it lie, keel upwards (if they can be said to have 

 a keel), the coracles — slight frames of wood, with 

 tarred canvas stretched over them, in which most of 

 the fishing is done. It is as if to make their safety 

 seem more marvellously improbable that, in the wild- 

 ness of this twihght, the Atlantic rollers come towering 

 to the beach, and fall there with as separate a circum- 

 stance and ruin as the walls of Jericho. 



Martin Ross. 

 October 1889. 



