This woke him up—indeed, Florence had an ugly trick of waking people up occasionally—and he took off his hat, which was as usual a dirty one, and muttered something inaudible. As for Eva, she blushed, and with ready wit said that Mr. Jones was no doubt astonished at the filthy state of her dress (as a matter of fact, Jeremy could not have sworn that she had one on at all, much less to its condition). “The fact is,” she went on, “I have been lying flat on the grass and looking over the edge of the cliff.” “What at?” “Why, the bones.” The spot on which they were standing was part of the ancient graveyard of Titheburgh Abbey, and as the sea encroached year by year, multitudes of the bones of the long dead inhabitants of Kesterwick were washed out of their quiet graves and strewed upon the beach and unequal surfaces of the cliff. “Look,” she said, kneeling down, an example that he followed. About six feet below them, which was the depth at which the corpses had originally been laid, could be seen fragments of lead and rotting wood projecting from the surface of the cliff, and, what was a more ghastly sight, eight inches or more of the leg-bones of a man, off which the feet had been washed away. On a ledge in the sandy cliff, about twenty-five feet from the top and sixty or so from the bottom, there lay quite a collection of human remains of all sorts and sizes, conspicuous among them being the bones which had composed the feet that belonged to the projecting shanks. “Isn’t it dreadful?” said Eva, gazing down with a species of fascination; “just fancy coming to that! Look at that little baby’s skull just by the big one. Perhaps that is the mother’s. And oh, what is that buried in the sand?” As much of the object to which she pointed at was visible looked like an old cannon-ball, but Jeremy soon came to a different conclusion. “It is a bit of a lead coffin,” he said. “Oh, I should like to get down there and find out what is in it. Can’t you get down?” Jeremy shook his head. “I’ve done it as a boy,” he said, “when I was very light; but it is no good my trying now: the sand would give with me, and I should go to the bottom.” He was willing to do most things to oblige this lovely creature, but Jeremy was above all things practical, and did not see the use of breaking his neck for nothing. “Well,” she said, “you certainly are rather heavy.” “Fifteen stone,” he said, mournfully. “But I am not ten; I think I could get down.” “You’d better not try without a rope.” Just then their conversation was interrupted by Florence’s clear voice: “When you two people have quite finished staring at those disgusting bones, perhaps, Eva, you will come home to lunch. If you only knew how silly you look, sprawling there like two Turks going to be bastinadoed, perhaps you would get up.” This was too much for Eva; she got up at once, and Jeremy followed suit. “Why could you not let us examine our bones in peace, Florence?” said her sister, jokingly.