In all likelihood he would see Winefred no more. She had gone to Bath; there she would make new friends, form new associations, and forget Axmouth and its vexations together with those who had occasioned them. This, again, should have relieved his mind; on the contrary, it depressed it further. Certainly he was unhappy, without being able to account for his unhappiness. What was Winefred to him but one with whom he measured swords whenever they met? What could Winefred be to him in the future? A recollection, an unpleasant one, and nothing other. Why did he think of her? Why did her angry eyes haunt his soul? Why did her stabbing words still make his heart tingle? He seated himself on the chalk cliff above the harbour of Beer, this latter a snip taken by the sea out of the soft and crumbling rocks. The choughs were flying beneath his feet, building in the crags that overhung the beach. Below was the pebble strand. Boats were drawn up on it. A thread of weed marked the retreat of the tide from the shore, a fringe of foam on the grey water a few yards from the land told also that the sea was in ebb. Gulls chattered and fluttered and dropped to secure some little fish left stranded. The evening was closing in, and a pale light hung over the sea, that looked dull as lead, but gave to the chalk cliffs a moonlight whiteness. At the flagstaff where the Beer streamlet trickled into the shingle and lost itself were fisher lads congregated in idleness. When nothing can be done at sea, none more listless, inert, pictures of _dolce far niente_ than those who live by the harvest of the water. They will occupy a bench by the harbour hour after hour, smoking, occasionally talking, but doing absolutely nothing with hand or foot or brain. These fisher lads, several hundred feet below where sat Jack, were chattering, laughing, and sometimes singing. Then a boy's clear voice sounded: 'I would I were a sparrow To light on every tree; At even, noon, and morning, My love, I'd sing to thee. And as the ship is sailing, So lightly I would fly, And perch upon the mainmast, My own true love to spy. 'I would I were a goldfish All in the sea to swim, At even, noon, and morning I'd follow after him, And o'er the bulwark leaning, He'd say, "What see I there, That shines so gay and golden? A lock of my love's hair."' Then the boys burst out laughing, and there was a chatter as of birds, so that the singer was not suffered to finish his ballad. They all belonged to an age at which the emotions, the pangs of love, were unfelt, and a song that expressed them touched no fibre in the soul. But it was other with Jack. He knew the song, and his lips moved as he completed it, and his mind travelled away, not seaward but overland. He remained some time on the cliff, but finally shook himself, picked up his bundle and descended into Beer.