He did not care for retired people--as he said to the cob every evening--he liked to see farm-work going on, or at any rate to hear all about it, and to listen to horses who had worked hard, and could scarcely speak, for chewing, about the great quantity they had turned of earth, and how they had answered very bad words with a bow.

In short, to put it in the mildest terms, Lord Keppel was giving himself great airs, unworthy of his age, ungrateful to a degree, and ungraceful, as the cob said repeatedly; considering how he was fed, and bedded, and not a thing left undone for him.

But his arrogance soon had to pay its own costs.
For, away to the right of Byrsa Cottage, as you look down the hollow of the ground toward the sea, a ridge of high scrubby land runs up to a forefront of bold cliff, indented with a dark and narrow bay.

"Goyle Bay," as it is called, or sometimes "Basin Bay," is a lonely and rugged place, and even dangerous for unwary visitors.

For at low spring tides a deep hollow is left dry, rather more than a quarter of a mile across, strewn with kelp and oozy stones, among which may often be found pretty shells, weeds richly tinted and of subtle workmanship, stars, and flowers, and love-knots of the sea, and sometimes carnelians and crystals.