CHAPTER II.--‘UNCLE’ LUKE AND ‘UNCLE’ MARK. While the setting sun gleamed on Grayfleet, its grim church, and its cluster of red-tiled dwellings, Uncle Luke took a footpath leading across the marshes. All around them the landscape was flat and level, with little or no vegetation; for over the dark low levels the sea had crawled, and would crawl again. Here and there hovered a seagull, tempted in from the distant salt water, and searching the marsh for plunder; and once, as they passed a shallow pool, blood-red in the light, a heron rose with a harsh cry and flapped slowly away. A walk of half a mile across the marsh brought them to the river side, and within view of a sort of pendant to the upper village, in the shape of a row of tiny red-tiled cottages on the very bank. Here there was a ferry-house, with a licence ‘to sell ale and tobacco.’ As they turned into the river path, the ferry-boat was crossing leisurely, with a freight of country girls on their way home from Grayfleet. Uncle Luke trotted cheerfully along, still holding Madeline by the hand. Her eyes were now on the shining river and the drifting ferry-boat, and she had almost forgotten her scene with the Rector. They were a curious pair. The girl was a slender slight thing, wild as some wayside weed. Her form was curiously light and graceful; her face, with its large passionate eyes, very wistful and sad. The common cotton frock and coarse country shoes and stockings became her well, though her limbs were somewhat long and shapeless as yet. And if the girl was not a little fairylike, Uncle Luke would certainly have passed well for a Gnome, or say rather, one of those quaint Trolls whose task it was, according to Scandinavian legend, to work busily in the bowels of the earth. All the week long Uncle Luke _did_ work, on the black river barge of which he was mate and his brother captain. From Monday to Saturday his figure was clad in blue jersey, red cap, and rough tarpaulin trousers, and he helped to work the barge on its short journeys up and down the crowded river. But on the present occasion, it being a holiday, his attire was radiant--a high chimney-pot hat, very broad at the brim, and large enough to descend to his ears, a blue pilot coat, a white waistcoat, and a coloured cotton shirt, blue navy trousers, and lace-up boots. For Uncle Luke loved splendour, and nothing suited him better than to shine glorious in the eyes of his neighbours; though Uncle Mark, who was his elder brother, and strictly pious, disapproved of all these vanities of apparel.