Nothing In Fact Was The Same, For When I Looked For The Swifts There Were No More Than About Twenty Birds Instead Of Over A Hundred, And Although Just On The Eve Of Departure They Were Not Behaving In The Same Excited Manner.

Probably I should not have thought so much about that particular crowd in that tempestuous August, and remembered it so vividly, but for the presence of three persons in it and the strange contrast they made to the large white type I have described.

These were a woman and her two little girls, aged about eight and ten respectively, but very small for their years. She was a little black haired and black-eyed woman with a pale sad dark face, on which some great grief or tragedy had left its shadow; very quiet and subdued in her manner; she would sit on a chair on the beach when the weather permitted, a book on her knees, while her two little ones played about, chasing and flying from the waves, or with the aid of their long poles vaulting from rock to rock. They were dressed in black frocks and scarlet blouses, which set off their beautiful small dark faces; their eyes sparkled like black diamonds, and their loose hair was a wonder to see, a black mist or cloud about their heads and necks composed of threads fine as gossamer, blacker than jet and shining like spun glass-hair that looked as if no comb or brush could ever tame its beautiful wildness.

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