Next morning the sun burned in an azure sky. The gulls wheeled over the surf, seeking poor soddened bundles of feathers that only a little while since had been filled with hope and spurred by love to cross the ocean, but had fallen into the water and been drowned. _ii_ Returning from inland fields, three gulls with tranquil evening flight passed over the hill towards the headland. A sheep path wound irregularly over the hill, amongst the heather and the uncurling brakeferns. From here the western ocean was seen afar, until it met the clouded heaven. A subdued roar, a growling under-current of sound, floated up the hillside, although the sea was calm. Night and day, for thousands of years, the same ceaseless mutter of the shifting tides upon the sands, the same pounding of the headland as the tons of gray-green water slid over the rocks and into its hidden caverns. A small wind moved the heather, and shook a dog-violet with its face turned to the westering sun. It was the tail of the sea-breeze. The air over the fields was cold, and soon it would move down to the sands to explore the darkling sea still warm with the fervour of the sunbeams. A late bee droned among the birds-foot trefoil on the pathway, eager to gather more honey for the winter. The yellow flowers grew low down, and some were stained with deep, tawny orange, as though Antares, the dull red star of summer, had joined its blessing of colour with the greatest gift of beauty and life bestowed by the sun. Near them grew the germander speedwell, also lowly (for the salt winds that sweep the hill care nothing for the humble things of the earth) their sweet blue eyes turned in wonder to the great flower of the sky. A lark with crest upraised waited upon a hummock of mould thrown up by a rabbit--her nest was somewhere near, hidden in a tangle of burnet-rose. The bee left the trefoil, and droned away down the hill. A blackbird sang in the valley below, where gorse, blackthorn, bramble, and stunted holly choked an ancient waterbourne between the steep hills. It was evening, and he chanted to the departing splendour. Alone sang the sable artist, serene on a twig of blackthorn, having no illusions about life, fretted by no unnecessary labour or research, for ever happy in the sunshine or sleeping restfully as the stars burned above the lonely valley.