Here he paused, looking over the bank to see if he could get down and continue his walk along the shore, but the soft sandy bluff here jutted so that he could not even see at what level the tide lay.

After spending some minutes in scrambling half-way down and returning because he could descend no further, he struck backwards some paces behind the farm buildings, supposing the descent to be easier where bushes grew in the shallow chine.

In the top of the cliff there was a little dip, which formed an excellent place for an outside cellar or root-house for such farm stores as must be buried deep beneath the snow against the frost of winter.

The rough door of such a cellar appeared in the side of this small declivity, and as Caius came round the back of the byre in sight of it, he was surprised to see the farmer's wife holding the latch of its door in her hand and looking vacantly into the dark interior.

She looked up and answered the young man's greeting with apathetic manner, apparently quite indifferent to the scene she had just passed through.
Caius, his mind still in the rush of indignation on her behalf, stopped at the sight of her, wondering what he could do or say to express the wild pity that surged within him.
But the woman said, "The tide's late to-night," exactly as she might have remarked with dry civility that it was fine weather.
"Yes," said Caius, "I suppose it will be." She was looking into the cellar, not towards the edge of the bank.
"With a decent strong tide," she remarked, "you can hear the waves in this cave." Whereupon she walked slowly past him back toward her house.