Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/18

12 Parson Langney, proudly. "She'll tell you herself that where her father can go she goes."

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Joan, wrapped in a rough peasant's cloak, and wearing a loose hood, came tripping down the stairs.

Not a moment was lost. With a word to Nance, who had put in a tardy appearance, the parson, with his daughter on one side and the sailor on the other, started for the shore.

The wind was at its worst on the top of the hill where the Parsonage stood. A very few minutes' sharp walking brought them all to a lower level, and within the shelter of a wild straggling growth of bushes and small trees, which extended in patches from the village almost to the edge of the crumbling cliffs.

Here they struck into a rough track made by the feet of the fishermen and less inoffensive characters, and before they had gone far they saw the hulk of the cutter, tossing like a little drifting spar amid the foam of the waves, and showing dark against the leaden, faint moonlight on the sea beyond. The parson asked a few questions, and elicited the usual story—a contraband cargo was being run in a little