Old Longly himself was differently affected. "He's a bad one," he thought, as his mind turned to Arthur Hargrave; "he's a bad one, I've a notion. At all events, he's running ahead somewhat too fast with our Hannah. He sha'n't stay here long, I'll take care of that. However, one can't well turn him out before a day or two are over. But I must keep a good lookout ahead. That would never do. I'd rather she married Jim Wilson, the fisherman; but she'll never think of him, I dare say, though she seemed to haul her wind a little, too."
Early in the morning, as was his invariable custom, Longly was down in his garden, not exactly working therein, but rather enjoying; for there was not a little of the love for what is beautiful and graceful in the old sailor's mind; and the fresh, sparkling light of morning among the green shrubs and sweet flowers which his own hand had planted, was one of his chief delights.
After looking at this plant, however, and that plant, for about half an hour, he found himself insensibly approaching the garden gate, and his habitual impulse carried him through it and along the walk to the top of the cliff, He could not have sat down to his breakfast comfortably without his morning look at the sea; and there might be other feelings, too, a little concerned, with which we have nothing to do at this moment, as the only indications thereof, in the walk he took at present, were to be found in a slight deviation from the well-worn path which he usually followed. As soon as he had come within sight of the shore, then, he turned to the right for about two hundred yards along the top of the cliff, and paused at a spot where a projecting part of the crag formed a little nook or recess below, not big enough, indeed, to deserve the name of a bay, and never reached by the water but at times when spring tides were accompanied by high southwesterly winds.
Above that spot he paused, and suffering the telescope, his almost invariable companion, to drop by his side, gazed down upon a large mass of stones and seaweed on the shore. He was suddenly startled, however, by the sound of a footstep, and instantly the telescope went up to his eye, and was pointed towards a small vessel out at sea.