But Abner Gale, who accepted his lordship's invitation to supper, and cracked a bottle with him afterwards, though he prudently excused himself from playing cards, had a clear remembrance of the noted grey horse, whose speed and endurance were once the topic of every market-table and every drinking-bout in his own country. From Lord Bellinger's description of the animal on which his assailant was mounted; and which, by all the rules of gaming, my lord considered his own property, the Parson gathered that it could be none other than the famous grey, and that its rider must have been the celebrated highwayman, whose features were always masked, but whose figure was so well known at all fairs, races, cock-fights, and other sporting or social gatherings in the West. Parson Gale, indeed, had only seen the horse once, and then for an instant, dismounted, as it was led off to the stable, but his admiring eye had taken its whole frame in at a glance, and he could recall its make-and-shape, its points and action, as vividly as those of his own good nag that he had ridden many scores and hundreds of miles. "I always understood the man was hanged," murmured the Parson, as he laid his head on his pillow, "but I should know the horse among ten thousand!" CHAPTER XIV. LESS THAN KIN. Again is Nelly Carew sitting among the rocks in Porlock Bay, but the tide is out now, and a broad sweep of wet sand stretches before her to a low and level line of white that seems receding farther and farther towards the chalk-bluffs of the distant Welsh coast. The faint moan of the ebb is melancholy enough, and heavy clouds gathering down Channel, against the wind, denote a coming storm, but gleams of sun are still slanting athwart them in pale shafts of light, and there is a colour in Nelly's cheek, a lustre in her eye, little in accordance with the dull stagnation of slack water, the heavy atmosphere of a thunder-storm, speaking rather of bright thoughts, tranquil happiness, the springtide of health and youth and hope. Keen observers might indeed detect a shade more colour than usual in the soft cheeks, a deeper blue in the speaking eyes; but, when young women sit by the sea, in pleasant company, such tokens are neither unusual nor out of place. And Nelly Carew is not alone. By the merest accident--for how could he tell that this was her favourite haunt in the afternoon?--a gentleman, with whom she had lately made acquaintance, happened to stroll in the same direction as herself. Two lonely figures, breaking the solitude of a wide level sea-board, if they have ever met before, cannot avoid each other, without rudeness. A start--a stop--a bow--a little hesitation on one side, a little blushing on the other, and John Garnet found himself seated on a slab of rock at Nelly Carew's feet, looking dreamily out to seaward, exceedingly well satisfied with his place.