... And they _do_
say--"
Here Mr. Jackson dropped his voice--
They were just at the top of the hill now. Peter was sitting with his hands
clenched, his body trembling.
"... They do say that up in the potato field over Dunotter they've seen
a man all in a cocked hat and red silk and gold lace--a ghost you must
understand, sir--which Bill Tregothny says ..."
The sea broke upon them with an instant, menacing roar. Between them and
this violence there was now only moorland, rough with gorse bushes, uneven
with little pits of sand, scented with sea pinks, with stony tracks here
and there where the moonlight touched it.
But across it, like a mob's menace, fell the thunder, flung up to them
from below, swelling from a menace to a sudden crash, then from crash to
echo, dying to murmur again. It had in it anger and power, also pity and
tenderness, also scorn and defiance. It cared for no one--it loved every
one. It was more intimate than any confidence ever made, and then it
shouted that intimacy to the whole world. It flung itself into Peter's
face, beat his body, lashed his soul--"Oh! you young fool--you've come
slinking back, have you? After all these years you've come slinking back.
Where are all your fine hopes now, where all those early defiances, those
vast ambitions?--Worthless, broken, defeated--worthless, broken, defeated.
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