For New Silverstrand was a growth of barely ten years.
In all his wanderings his heart had always turned with a warm thrill of memory to the little old fishing-town where much of his restless boyhood had been spent.

He had returned to it as to a familiar friend and found it but slightly changed.

A new hotel had been erected where the old Crayfish Inn had once stood.

And this, so far as he had been able to judge in his first walk through the place on the evening of his arrival, was the sole alteration.
He had heard that the shore had crumbled beyond the town, but he had left that to be investigated on the morrow.

The fishing-harbour was the same; the brown-sailed fishing-boats rocked with the well-remembered swing inside; the water poured roaring in with the same baffled fury; and children played as of old on the extreme and dangerous edge of the stone quay.
The memory of that selfsame quay roused deeper recollections in Merefleet's mind as he sat and dined alone at the little table near the door.
There came to him the thought, with a sudden, stabbing regret, of a little dark-eyed sister who had hung with him over that perilous edge and laughed at the impotent breakers below.