The cliffs at East-Church towered away for nearly six miles, broken here
and there by the falling of some venerable crag, hurled, as it were,
into the ocean by the giant hand of changing nature; while, as a
sentinel, the house at Gull's Nest Crag maintained its pre-eminence in
front of the Northern Ocean. The two little islands of Elmley and Harty
slept to the south-east, quietly and silently, like huge rush-nests
floating on the waters. Beyond East-Church the lofty front of the house
of Shurland reared its stone walls and stern embattlements, and looked
proudly over its green hills and fertile valleys--while, if the eye
wandered again to the south, it could discern the Barrows, where many
hundred Danes, in the turbulent times long past, found quiet and a
grave.
Several large men-of-war, with reefed sails and floating pennons, lay at
the entrance of the Nore, while a still greater number blotted the
waters of the sluggish Medway;--still the sun shone over all; and what
is it that the sun does not deck with a portion of its own cheerfulness
and beauty?
"Mount up the tower, Maud," said Lady Frances, "the tower of the old
church; it commands a greater range than I can see; and tell me when any
cross the ferry; thy eyes, if not brighter, are quicker far than mine."
"Will ye'r ladyship sit?" replied the sapient waiting-maid; "I'll spread
a kercher on this fragment of antiquity: ye'r ladyship can sit there
free from any disturbance. I can see as well from this high mound as
from the castle, or church-steeple, my lady; it is so hard to climb."
"Maud, if you like not to mount, say so, and I will go myself. You are
dainty, young mistress."
Maud obeyed instantly, though with sundry mutterings, which, well for
her, her lady heard not; for the Lady Frances was somewhat shrewishly
given, and could scold as if she had not been a princess, the rank and
bearing of which she was most anxious to assume, and carry as highly as
the noblest born in Europe.
"See you aught?" she inquired, at last looking up to Mistress Maud,
whose head, surmounted by its black hood, overlooking the parapet wall,
showed very like a well-grown crow.
"A shepherd on yonder hill, lady, waving his arm to a dog down in the
dingle, and the beast is driving up the fold as if he were a man."
Lady Frances bent over a tombstone near her and read the inscription. It
described in quaint, but touching language, the death of a young woman,
about her own age, the day before her intended bridal. There had been a
white rose-tree planted close to the rude monument, but its growth was
impeded by a mass of long grass and wild herbage, so that there was but
one rose on its branches, and that was discoloured by a foul canker,
whose green body could be seen under the froth it cast around to conceal
its misdeeds. Lady Frances took it out, destroyed it, and began pulling
up the coarse weeds.