I have wandered away from my story, I'm afraid, remembering these scraps of the past; but it all comes back to me now, so clearly that it seems to be happening again. There are Marah and Hugh, with the sun going down behind the gorse-bank, across the Lea; and there are the broken ships floating slowly past, with the perch rising at them; and there is myself, a very young cub, ignorant of what was about to come upon me. Perhaps, had I known what was to happen before the leaves of that spring had fallen, I should have played less light-heartedly, and given more heed to Mr Evans, the Rector. Now, on one day in each week, generally on Thursdays, we had rather longer school hours than on the other days. On these days of extra work Hugh and I had dinner at the Rectory with Ned Evans, our schoolmate. After dinner we three boys would wander off together, generally down to Black Pool, where old Spanish coins (from some forgotten wreck) were sometimes found in the sand after heavy weather had altered the lie of the beach. We never found any Spanish coins, but we always enjoyed our afternoons there. The brook which runs into the sea there was very good for trout, in the way that Marah showed us; but we never caught any, for all our pains. In the summer we meant to bathe from the sands, and all through that beautiful spring we talked of the dives we would take from the spring-board running out into the sea. Then we would have great games of ducks and drakes, with flat pebbles; or games of pebble-dropping, in which our aim was to drop a stone so that it should make no splash as it entered the water. But the best game of all was our game of cliff-exploring among the cliffs on each side of the bay, and this same game gave me the adventure of my life.