'No, you didn't, because I was by,' retorted the honey-bee, and put forth her sting. 'If I had been underground, you'd have taken her in. I know you; yah!' And in the little parlour behind the bar, the comfortable Mrs. Warne settled herself before the fire, and drew up her gown so as not to scorch it, and looked smilingly at the more attractive bagman of the two, and said, 'Ah! Mr. Thomson, if you only knew from what I have saved you.' 'From what, my dearest Mrs. Warne?' 'From fascinations you could not have resisted. There has been here a peculiarly handsome woman wanting a situation――as ostler. If she had come, there would have been no drawing you from the stables.' 'Madame――elsewhere perhaps――but assuredly not here.' The women were all against Jane Marley because she was still good-looking. CHAPTER II ON THE VERGE Jane Marley wrapped her shawl about her; her head was bowed, her lips set, her grip on her daughter unrelaxed. She turned from the village, and walked along the shingly way to the water's edge. The Axe flows into the sea through a trough washed out of the blood-red sandstone that comes to the surface between the hills of chalk; but the fresh water does not mingle with the brine unopposed. A pebble ridge has been thrown up by the sea at the mouth, that the waves labour incessantly to complete, so as to debar the Axe from discharging its waters into it. Sometimes high tide and storm combine to all but accomplish the task, and the river is strangled within a narrow throat; but this is for a time only. Once more the effluent tide assists the river to force an opening which the inflowing tide had threatened to seal. One of the consequences of this struggle ever renewed is that the mouth has shifted. At one time the red Axe discharged to the west, but when a storm blocked that opening it turned and emptied itself to the east. On the farther side, that to the rising sun, the chalk with dusky sandstone underneath rears itself into a bold headland, Haven Ball, that stands precipitously against the sea, as a white, cold shoulder exposed to it. Up a hollow of this hill, a combe as it is called, a mean track ascends to the downs which overhang the sea, and extend, partly in open tracts, in part enclosed, as far as Lyme Regis. There is no highway. The old Roman coast-road lies farther to the north, but there is a track, now open, now between blasted hedges, always bad, and exposed to the gale from the sea and the drift of the rain. But to reach this, the Axe estuary must be crossed. This is nowadays a matter of one penny, as there is a toll-bridge thrown from one bank to the other. But at the time of my story transit was by a ferry-boat, and the boat could ply only when there was a sufficiency of water. Jane Marley seated herself on a bench by the landing-stage, and drew her daughter down beside her.