Page:Stories told to a child.djvu/106

 tops of them with spray; the sea was clear as a mirror, and white gulls were swimming on it by thousands; the sea was restless, and the rocking boats were tossing up and down on it. And the cliffs? In moonlight they were castles, and they were ships; in sunshine they were black, brown, blue, green, and ruddy, according to the clouds and the height of the sun. Their shadows, too, now a narrow strip at their bases, now an overshadowing mass, gave endless variety to the scene.

But this one black rock out at sea never seemed to change. In appearance at that distance it was a massive column, square, and bending inward at the centre, so as to make it lean towards the northern shore. Considering this changeless character, it was rather strange that in my dreams, still vivid from recent illness, this column always assumed the likeness of a man. A stern man it seemed to be, with head sunk on his breast, and arms gathered under the folds of a dark heavy mantle; yet when I awoke and looked out over the bay, the blue moonbeams would not drop on my rock, or its reflection, in such a way as to make it any other than the bare, bleak, bending thing that I always saw it.

In a week I was able to come out of doors, and wander by the help of my father's arm along the strip of yellow sand by the sea. How delightful was the feeling of leaf, pebble, sand, or seaweed to my hand, which so long had been used to nothing but the soft linen of my pillow! How beautiful and fresh everything looked out of doors! how delicious was the sound of the little inch-deep waves as they ran and Rh