Over the dim hills, stopping at tiny halts, with waiting-rooms and booking halls fashioned out of wheelless railway carriages, up steep slopes where the grass grew long between the rails, curving into occasional loops, and pausing sometimes like a hard-worked animal taking breath. And then, from the top of a hill, the miles drooped gently into the bosom of the estuary: the tide was out and the mud shone golden in the sun. Yachts were lying stranded off the fair-way, and threading the broad belt of mud the river ran like a curve of molten gold. There were clusters of houses here and there on either bank, and a church with a candle-snuffer tower, and stretches of brown shingle.... And the train went gathering speed as it broke over the summit.... At Holleshont the estuary was no longer in view, but the sea-smell was fresh in the air. “Barhanger?” she said to a man with a pony and trap who was waiting outside the station. He nodded, and helped her to a seat beside him. He was buxom and red-faced and jolly. If he had been younger, it would have been rather romantic to go driving with him thus along the lonely country lanes. But he was taciturn, and stopped once to pluck from the side of the hedge a long grass to suck. At times he broke into humming, but it was a tune Catherine did not recognize. After half an hour’s riding they came upon a dishevelled country lane, which on turning a corner became immediately the main street of a village. They passed a church and a public-house, a post-office, a pump, and then another public-house. At this last the driver pulled his horse to a standstill and indicated to Catherine that she should descend. “Barhanger,” he muttered explanatorily. Seeing her uncertainty, he questioned her. “Lookin’ f’ranywhere partic’ler, miss?” She replied with a momentary impulse: “Seahill.” He pointed in a southerly direction. And now she was walking straight to “Seahill.” ...