A DANE IN THE DIKE Now, whether spy-glass had been used by any watchful mariner, or whether only blind chance willed it, sure it is that one fine morning Mary met with somebody.

And this was the more remarkable, when people came to think of it, because it was only the night before that her mother had almost said as much.
"Ye munna gaw doon to t' sea be yersell," Mistress Anerley said to her daughter; "happen ye mought be one too many." Master Anerley's wife had been at "boarding-school," as far south as Suffolk, and could speak the very best of Southern English (like her daughter Mary) upon polite occasion.

But family cares and farm-house life had partly cured her of her education, and from troubles of distant speech she had returned to the ease of her native dialect.
"And if I go not to the sea by myself," asked Mary, with natural logic, "why, who is there now to go with me ?" She was thinking of her sadly missed comrade, Jack.
"Happen some day, perhaps, one too many." The maiden was almost too innocent to blush; but her father took her part as usual.
"The little lass sall gaw doon," he said, "wheniver sha likes." And so she went down the next morning.
A thousand years ago the Dane's Dike must have been a very grand intrenchment, and a thousand years ere that perhaps it was still grander; for learned men say that it is a British work, wrought out before the Danes had even learned to build a ship.

Whatever, however, may be argued about that, the wise and the witless do agree about one thing--the stronghold inside it has been held by Danes, while severed by the Dike from inland parts; and these Danes made a good colony of their own, and left to their descendants distinct speech and manners, some traces of which are existing even now.

The Dike, extending from the rough North Sea to the calmer waters of Bridlington Bay, is nothing more than a deep dry trench, skillfully following the hollows of the ground, and cutting off Flamborough Head and a solid cantle of high land from the rest of Yorkshire.