God be with you, my brave lads, and with your children after you; for as long as you are what I have known you, Old England will rule the seas, and many a land beside! But in going up Aberalva Street, you remark several things; first, that the houses were all white-washed yesterday, except where the snowy white is picked out by buttresses of pink and blue; next, that they all have bright green palings in front, and bright green window-sills and frames; next, that they are all roofed with shining grey slate, and the space between the window and the pales flagged with the same; next, that where such space is not flagged, it is full of flowers and shrubs which stand the winter only in our greenhouses.
The fuchsias are ten feet high, laden with ripe purple berries running over (for there are no birds to pick them off); and there in the front of the coast-guard lieutenant's house, is Cobaea scandens, covered with purple claret-glasses, as it has been ever since Christmas: for Aberalva knows no winter: and there are grown-up men in it who never put on a skate, or made a snowball in their lives.

A most cleanly, bright-coloured, foreign-looking street, is that long straggling one which runs up the hill towards Penalva Court: only remark, that this cleanliness is gained by making the gutter in the middle street the common sewer of the town, and tread clear of cabbage-leaves, pilchard bones, _et id genus omne_.

For Aberalva is like Paris (if the answer of a celebrated sanitary reformer to the Emperor be truly reported), "fair without but foul within." However, the wind is blowing dull and hollow from south-west; the clouds are rolling faster and faster up from the Atlantic; the sky to westward is brassy green; the glass is falling fast; and there will be wind and rain enough to-night to sweep even Aberalva clean for the next week.
Grace Harvey sees the coming storm, as she goes slowly homewards, dismissing her little flock; and she lingers long and sadly outside her cottage door, looking out over the fast blackening sea, and listening to the hollow thunder of the groundswell, against the back of the point which shelters Aberalva Cove.
Far away on the horizon, the masts of stately ships stand out against the sky, driving fast to the eastward with shortened sail.

They, too, know what is coming; and Grace prays for them as she stands, in her wild way, with half outspoken words.
"All those gallant ships, dear Lord! and so many beautiful men in them, and so few of them ready to die; and all those gallant soldiers going to the war;--Lord, wilt thou not have mercy?
Spare them for a little time before--.

Is not that cruel, man-devouring sea full enough, Lord; and brave men's bones enough, strewn up and down all rocks and sands?
And is not that dark place full enough, O Lord, of poor souls cut off in a moment, as my two were?
Oh, not to-night, dear Lord! Do not call any one to-night--give them a day more, one chance more, poor fellows--they have had so few, and so many temptations, and, perhaps, no schooling.