He skirted the grassy bank for some ten minutes, and then struck across the sands to his destination. Walking thus, a lonely speck on the dreary flat, the isolation of the dwellings in front came to him sharply, so that their air of prosperous serenity, of tranquil sureness, seemed almost dangerously provocative. Far away and out, where the bay, between two headlands, ran into open water, a slant of light from the sullen sky laid a shining strip from point to point which he knew to be the sea. It was there and it was coming, quietly, perhaps, and inoffensively, but there would be many a night when it would come like a beast of prey, ravening its path between narrow shores, devouring the waiting desert. And yet the farms were not afraid. The sea-wall had been carried in front of them also, reaching out to the last inch of broken land, and from thence merging into the huge, defiant bank which had once been famous throughout the kingdom. It ran along the coast for a couple of miles, joining the hill on which the town of Cunswick climbed, and behind it the reclaimed land lay safe. Lancaster’s father had built both walls, the success of the lesser firing him, years later, to throw the larger gauntlet over the sands. They had christened the low wall “Lancaster’s Let,” which means merely a hindrance, but the big bank they had named “Lancaster’s Lugg,” from the Scandinavian “lugg,” a forelock, and “lugga,” which means “to pull by the hair,” for Lancaster had knotted the manes of the white sea-horses together, and dragged them out of their ancient stable.