She faded and was lost in the vaporous curtain. Still the children gazed astern after her over the backs of the huddled sheep. The rowers had fallen to singing again--men and maidens in harmony as they pulled-- 'The ransom'd sons of God, All earthly things we scorn, And to our high abode With songs of praise return! . . .' Of a sudden, while they sang and while the children gazed, the fog to northward heaved and parted, pierced by a shaft of the sinking sun, and there in a clear hollow lay land--lay an Island vignetted in the fog, with the light on its cliffs and green slopes--an Island, resting like a shield on the milky sea. "Look!" Arthur Miles clutched Tilda by the arm and pointed. The old steersman turned his head. "Aye," said he, "she looks pretty of an evening sometimes, does Holmness." CHAPTER XX. INISTOW FARM. "_Clean, simple livers._"--CRASHAW. The rowers in the leading boat were seven--four young men and three young women; and they pulled two to an oar--all but the bowman, a young giant of eighteen or thereabouts, who did without help. A fourth young woman sat beside, suckling a baby. And so, counting the baby and the two children and the old steersman, whom they all addressed as "Father," and omitting 'Dolph and the sheep, they were twelve on board. The second and third boats had half a dozen rowers apiece. The second was steered by a wizened middle-aged man, Jan by name. Tilda learned that he was the shepherd. More by token, he had his three shaggy dogs with him, crowded in the stern. At first these dogs showed the liveliest interest in 'Dolph, raising themselves with their forepaws on the gunwale, and gazing across the intervening twenty yards of water. But they were dignified creatures, and their self-respect forbade them to bark. 'Dolph, who had no breeding, challenged back loudly, all his bristles erect--and still the more angrily as they forbore to answer; whereat the young men and women laughed. Their laughter would have annoyed Tilda had it been less unaffected; and, as it was, she cuffed the dog so sharply that he ceased with a whine. She had never met with folk like these. They gave her a sense of having reached the ends of the earth--they were so simple and strong and well-featured, and had eyes so kindly. She could understand but a bare third of what they said, their language being English of a sort, but neither that of the gentry--such as Arthur Miles spoke--nor that of the gypsies; nor, in short, had she heard the human like of it anywhere in her travels. She had never heard tell of vowels or of gutturals, and so could not note how the voices, as they rose and fell, fluted upon the one or dwelt, as if caressingly, on the other. To her their talk resembled the talk of birds, mingled with liquid laughter.