His angry green eyes seemed to clear a path before him, in spite of the grins which his hump and shambling legs excited among strangers.

In this way he darted along High Street, turned up by the markets, crossed Church Street into West Street, and passed under the great gate by which the London Road left the town.
Beyond this gate the road ran through a tall ravelin and out upon a breezy peninsula between the river and the open sea.

And here Captain Barker halted and, tugging off hat and wig, wiped his crown with a silk handkerchief.
Over the reedy marsh upon his right, where a windmill waved its lazy arms, a score of larks were singing.

To his left the gulls mewed across the cliffs and the remoter sandbanks that thrust up their yellow ridges under the ebb-tide.

The hum of the little town sounded drowsily behind him.
He gazed across the sandbanks upon the blue leagues of sea, and rubbed his fingers softly up and down the unshaven side of his face.
"H'm," he said, and then "p'sh!" and then "p'sh!" again; and, as if this settled it, readjusted his wig and hat and set off down the road faster than ever.
A cluster of stunted poplars appeared in the distance, and a long thatched house; then, between the trees, the eye caught sight of two other buildings, exactly alike, but of a curious shape and colour.
Imagine two round towers, each about forty feet in height, daubed with a bright blue wash and surmounted with a high-pitched, conical roof of a somewhat darker tint.