'Lucy, how weary you look! tell me, can I help you ?' he was going to cry out.--'If I do,' he thought, 'it will be the ruin of us both!' He merely said that the afternoon was fine, and went on his way.
As he went a sudden blast of air came over the hill as if in contradiction to his words, and spoilt the previous quiet of the scene.
The wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the sea.
The harbour-road soon began to justify its name.

A gap appeared in the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the sunlight, the companion cliff on the right being livid in shade.

Between these cliffs, like the Libyan bay which sheltered the shipwrecked Trojans, was a little haven, seemingly a beginning made by Nature herself of a perfect harbour, which appealed to the passer-by as only requiring a little human industry to finish it and make it famous, the ground on each side as far back as the daisied slopes that bounded the interior valley being a mere layer of blown sand.

But the Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the course of ten centuries, responded many times to that mute appeal, with the result that the tides had invariably choked up their works with sand and shingle as soon as completed.

There were but few houses here: a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a residence or two, a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the chief features of the settlement.