how few of the twenty-four hours they filled, how wide and wonderful were those remaining. Sunday passed, and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; and the first rapture of his awakening still encircled him about; since Saturday he had not fought or quarrelled, had played no tricks and given no trouble either at home or in school. Four consecutive days without so much as a reprimand were a new record in his life; according to his social traditions and standard of conduct a disgraceful one; but it did not occur to him to think about the matter at all; he was behaving like the "good boys" that he held in contempt, and had not even found it out, so absorbed he was in the joy of life, in splendours of sunlight and starlight, in shining sands and glittering foam.
On Monday night there had been a thunderstorm; and he had slipped out, unobserved, into the roaring blackness of the moor, to lie bareheaded on the heather in a torrent of rain. Then had come Tuesday, soft and cool and silver-grey, with tender shadows over land and sea, after the turbulent glories of the lightning god. Surely there was never any world so beautiful, or any boy so happy, so splendidly alive.
But the divinest day was Wednesday. From the fire-opal of the sunrise to the cloudy amethyst of twilight, it was a day of jewels; a day of sapphire sea and diamond spray, of skylarks singing in far blue heights and sunbeams flaming on the yellow gorse; a day of peace on earth and goodwill — even — toward men. One could not hate uncle himself on such a day.
Jack was up with the dawn and on the beach before sunrise. It was low water, and he scrambled out on to the long, jagged reef which had caused so many wrecks that the precipice above it was called "Deadman's Cliff." When he was tired of slipping about on the tangle and cutting his feet with the sharp points of barnacles, he lay down beside a shallow rock pool and looked into the sunlit water.