Numbers of people were bathing, and beside the orthodox bathers, there was a party of little boys wading about with bare legs, and playing all sorts of pranks in the water.
A little way to the left of where they sat, there was a curious kind of wooden pier, which ran far away out into the sea and terminated in a small square wooden building.

The whole thing was raised on piles about five or six feet above the present level of the water which flowed underneath it.

The pier itself, in fact, was only a narrow bridge or footpath railed partly on one side only, partly on both, and with an oddly unsafe and yet tempting look about it.

Lucia had been attracted by it before, and she drew her mother's attention to it now-- "Look, mamma," she said, "does not it seem as if one could almost cross the Channel on it, it goes so far out.

See that woman, now--I have watched since she started from this end, and now you can scarcely distinguish her figure." "There is a priest coming along it--is it not Father Paul ?" "I do believe it is.