It was built with a high daring across the one lung of the limited passage, and at its back the grassy waste harboured sheep and waited for man’s hand; for though it had long since been mapped out for building, only one house had risen as yet on the stolen ground. Lanty had often looked at his father’s plans, and locked them away again. Something held him back from putting them into shape, and, moreover, decreasing values and increasing Government drains had left the income tight at times. Yet he meant some day to materialise his father’s dreams, and had good hopes of them, for Cunswick was a growing seaside resort, and would eventually take up the land quickly enough. Meanwhile the big wall held its own, caring nothing for the onslaughts of the crouching foe behind that shining line. Whether the full moon brought the fierce thrust of a heavy swell, or the west wind, riding a wracked sky, hurried the shock of racing billows, the bank held off the one and flung back the other, steadily throwing the trend of the tide to the further and higher side of the bay. To-day, with never a trickle of water at its base, it looked like a mighty serpent on the uncovered sand, winding its slow and writhing length lazily to the sea, purposeless, abnormal, monstrous in the unnatural fight and leashed quiet. The sands themselves were dangerous--dangerous to walk and sail, with their deep, shifting banks, unknown quicksands and tidal bore. The whole place had the terrible fascination of lurking ill, and yet on all hands the farms lay peaceful and content, like trustful women sleeping in a tiger’s cage. Lanty looked at the Lugg, that tremendous thwarter of the tides, and thought of his father. The project had aroused a storm of controversy at the time, out of which the thing itself had emerged triumphant. Men had pronounced it a risk to the whole coast, and time had proved them wrong. Lancaster had vindicated himself, leaving the bank as his monument, for, in looking out to it each day, the marsh saw also the dead who had planned it. They were not afraid of it there. Because a Lancaster had built it they trusted it, resting tranquilly on his word. It was in their simple confidence that his real monument was raised.