He gazed along the beach, where the perpetual haze of spray seemed to have removed the light-house to a vast distance.

A sense of desolation came over him with a rush, and with something between a gasp and a sob he turned his back to the sea and ran, his boots dangling from his shoulders by their knotted laces.
He pounded up the first slope and looked for the cottage.

No sign of it! An insane fancy seized him.

These silent moving sands were after _him_.
He was panting along in real distress when he heard the baying of dogs, and at the same instant from the top of a hummock caught sight of a figure outlined against the sky, and barely a quarter of a mile away; the figure of a girl on horseback--a small girl on a very tall horse.
Just as Taffy recognised her, she turned her horse, walked him down into the hollow beyond, and disappeared.

Taffy ran towards the spot, gained the ridge where she had been standing, and looked down.
In a hollow about twenty feet deep and perhaps a hundred wide were gathered a dozen riders, with five or six couples of hounds and two or three dirty terriers.