It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr. Peggotty’s head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself, then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless⁠—yet with a heavy roll upon it, as if it breathed in its rest⁠—and touched, on the horizon, with a strip of silvery light from the unseen sun.

“We have had a mort of talk, sir,” said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we had all three walked a little while in silence, “of what we ought and doen’t ought to do. But we see our course now.”