2 files changed, 9276 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/16000.txt b/old/16000.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1f142ea
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16000.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,9276 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Ship of Stars, by Arthur Thomas
+Quiller-Couch
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Ship of Stars
+
+
+Author: Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
+
+Release Date: June 7, 2005  [eBook #16000]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHIP OF STARS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Lionel Sear
+
+
+
+THE SHIP OF STARS.
+
+by
+
+Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch  (Q)
+
+1899
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To THE RIGHT HON. LEONARD HENRY COURTNEY, M.P.
+
+
+My Dear Mr. Courtney,
+
+It is with a peculiar pleasure and, I dare to hope, with some
+appropriateness that I dedicate to you this story of the West
+Country, which claims you with pride.  To be sure, the places here
+written of will be found in no map of your own or any neighbouring
+constituency.  A visitor may discover Nannizabuloe, but only to
+wonder what has become of the lighthouse, or seek along the
+sand-hills without hitting on Tredinnis.  Yet much of the tale is
+true in a fashion, even to fact.  One or two things which happen to
+Sir Harry Vyell did actually happen to a better man, who lived and
+hunted foxes not a hundred miles from the "model borough" of
+Liskeard, and are told of him in my friend Mr. W. F. Collier's memoir
+of Harry Terrell, a bygone Dartmoor hero: and a true account of what
+followed the wreck of the Samaritan will be found in a chapter of
+Remembrances by that true poet and large-hearted man, Robert Stephen
+Hawker.
+
+But a novel ought to be true to more than fact: and if this one come
+near its aim, no one will need to be told why I dedicate it to you.
+If it do not (and I wish the chance could be despised!), its author
+will yet hold that among the names of living Englishmen he could have
+chosen none fitter to be inscribed above a story which in the telling
+has insensibly come to rest upon the two texts, "Lord, make men as
+towers!" and "All towers carry a light."  Although for you Heaven has
+seen fit to darken the light, believe me it shines outwards over the
+waters and is a help to men: a guiding light tended by brave hands.
+We pray, sir--we who sail in little boats--for long life to the tower
+and the unfaltering lamp.
+
+A. T. Q. C.
+St. John's Eve, 1899.
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I.       THE BOY IN THE GATE-HOUSE.
+
+II.      MUSIC IN THE TOWN SQUARE.
+
+III.     PASSENGER'S BY JOBY'S VAN.
+
+IV.      THE RUNNING SANDS.
+
+V.       TAFFY RINGS THE CHURCH BELL.
+
+VI.      A COCK-FIGHT.
+
+VII.     GEORGE.
+
+VIII.    THE SQUIRE'S SOUL.
+
+IX.      ENTER THE KING'S POSTMAN.
+
+X.       A HAPPY DAY.
+
+XI.      LIZZIE REDEEMS HER DOLL AND HONORIA THROWS A STONE.
+
+XII.     TAFFY'S CHILDHOOD COMES TO AN END.
+
+XIII.    THE BUILDERS.
+
+XIV.     VOICES FROM THE SEA.
+
+XV.      TAFFY'S APPRENTICESHIP.
+
+XVI.     LIZZIE AND HONORIA.
+
+XVII.    THE SQUIRE'S WEIRD.
+
+XVIII.   THE BARRIERS FALL.
+
+XIX.     OXFORD.
+
+XX.      TAFFY GIVES A PROMISE.
+
+XXI.     HONORIA'S LETTERS.
+
+XXII.    MEN AS TOWERS.
+
+XXIII.   THE SERVICE OF THE LAMP.
+
+XXIV.    FACE TO FACE.
+
+XXV.     THE WRECK OF THE "SAMARITAN".
+
+XXVI.    SALVAGE.
+
+XXVII.   HONORIA.
+
+XXVIII.  A L'OUTRANCE.
+
+XXIX.    THE SHIP OF STARS.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SHIP OF STARS.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+THE BOY IN THE GATE-HOUSE.
+
+Until his ninth year the boy about whom this  story is written lived
+in a house which looked upon the square of a county town.  The house
+had once formed part of a large religious building, and the boy's
+bedroom had a high groined roof, and on the capstone an angel carved,
+with outspread wings.  Every night the boy wound up his prayers with
+this verse which his grandmother had taught him:
+
+     "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
+      Bless the bed that I lie on.
+      Four corners to my bed,
+      Four angels round my head;
+      One to watch, one to pray,
+      Two to bear my soul away."
+
+Then he would look up to the angel and say: "Only Luke is with me."
+His head was full of queer texts and beliefs.  He supposed the three
+other angels to be always waiting in the next room, ready to bear
+away the soul of his grandmother (who was bed-ridden), and that he
+had Luke for an angel because he was called Theophilus, after the
+friend for whom St. Luke had written his Gospel and the Acts of the
+Holy Apostles.  His name in full was Theophilus John Raymond, but
+people called him Taffy.
+
+Of his parents' circumstances he knew very little, except that they
+were poor, and that his father was a clergyman attached to the parish
+church.  As a matter of fact, the Reverend Samuel Raymond was senior
+curate there, with a stipend of ninety-five pounds a year.  Born at
+Tewkesbury, the son of a miller, he had won his way to a servitorship
+at Christ Church, Oxford; and somehow, in the course of one Long
+Vacation, had found money for travelling expenses to join a reading
+party under the Junior Censor.  The party spent six summer weeks at a
+farmhouse near Honiton, in Devon.  The farm belonged to an invalid
+widow named Venning, who let it be managed by her daughter Humility
+and two paid labourers, while she herself sat by the window in her
+kitchen parlour, busied incessantly with lace-work of that beautiful
+kind for which Honiton is famous.  He was an unassuming youth; and
+although in those days servitors were no longer called upon to black
+the boots of richer undergraduates, the widow and her daughter soon
+divined that he was lowlier than the others, and his position an
+awkward one, and were kind to him in small ways, and grew to like
+him.  Next year, at their invitation, he travelled down to Honiton
+alone, with a box of books; and, at twenty-two, having taken his
+degree, he paid them a third visit, and asked Humility to be his
+wife.  At twenty-four, soon after his admission to deacon's orders,
+they were married.  The widow sold the small farm, with its stock,
+and followed to live with them in the friary gate-house; this having
+been part of Humility's bargain with her lover, if the word can be
+used of a pact between two hearts so fond.
+
+About ten years had gone since these things happened, and their child
+Taffy was now past his eighth birthday.
+
+It seemed to him that, so far back as he could remember, his mother
+and grandmother had been making lace continually.  At night, when his
+mother took the candle away with her and left him alone in the dark,
+he was not afraid; for, by closing his eyes, he could always see the
+two women quite plainly; and always he saw them at work, each with a
+pillow on her lap, and the lace upon it growing, growing, until the
+pins and bobbins wove a pattern that was a dream, and he slept.
+He could not tell what became of all the lace, though he had a collar
+of it which he wore to church on Sundays, and his mother had once
+shown him a parcel of it, wrapped in tissue-paper, and told him it
+was his christening robe.
+
+His father was always reading, except on Sundays, when he preached
+sermons.  In his thoughts nine times out of ten Taffy associated his
+father with a great pile of books; but the tenth time with something
+totally different.  One summer--it was in his sixth year--they had
+all gone on a holiday to Tewkesbury, his father's old home; and he
+recalled quite clearly the close of a warm afternoon which he and his
+mother had spent there in a green meadow beyond the abbey church.
+She had brought out a basket and cushion, and sat sewing, while Taffy
+played about and watched the haymakers at their work.  Behind them,
+within the great church, the organ was sounding; but by-and-by it
+stopped, and a door opened in the abbey wall, and his father came
+across the meadow toward them with his surplice on his arm.  And then
+Humility unpacked the basket and produced a kettle, a spirit-lamp,
+and a host of things good to eat.  The boy thought the whole
+adventure splendid.  When tea was done, he sprang up with one of
+those absurd notions which come into children's heads:
+
+"Now let's feed the poultry," he cried, and flung his last scrap of
+bun three feet in air toward the gilt weather-cock on the abbey
+tower.  While they laughed, "Father, how tall is the tower?" he
+demanded.
+
+"A hundred and thirty-two feet, my boy, from ground to battlements."
+
+"What are battlements?"
+
+He was told.
+
+"But people don't fight here," he objected.
+
+Then his father told of a battle fought in the very meadow in which
+they were sitting; of soldiers at bay with their backs to the abbey
+wall; of crowds that ran screaming into the church; of others chased
+down Mill Street and drowned; of others killed by the Town Cross; and
+how--people said in the upper room of a house still standing in the
+High Street--a boy prince had been stabbed.
+
+Humility laid a hand on his arm.
+
+"He'll be dreaming of all this.  Tell him it was a long time ago, and
+that these things don't happen now."
+
+But her husband was looking up at the tower.
+
+"See it now with the light upon it!" he went on.  "And it has seen it
+all.  Eight hundred years of heaven's storms and man's madness, and
+still foursquare and as beautiful now as when the old masons took
+down their scaffolding.  When I was a boy--"
+
+He broke off suddenly.  "Lord, make men as towers," he added quietly
+after a while, and nobody spoke for many minutes.
+
+To Taffy this had seemed a very queer saying; about as queer as that
+other one about "men as trees walking."  Somehow--he could not say
+why--he had never asked any questions about it.  But many times he
+had perched himself on a flat tombstone under the church tower at
+home, and tilted his head back and stared up at the courses and
+pinnacles, wondering what his father could have meant, and how a man
+could possibly be like a tower.  It ended in this--that whenever he
+dreamed about his father, these two towers, or a tower which was more
+or less a combination of both, would get mixed up with the dream as
+well.
+
+
+The gate-house contained a sitting-room and three bedrooms (one
+hardly bigger than a box-cupboard); but a building adjoined it which
+had been the old Franciscans' refectory, though now it was divided by
+common planking into two floors, the lower serving for a feoffee
+office, while the upper was supposed to be a muniment-room, in charge
+of the feoffees' clerk.  The clerk used it for drying his
+garden-seeds and onions, and spread his hoarding apples to ripen on
+the floor.  So when Taffy grew to need a room of his own, and his
+father's books to cumber the very stairs of the gate-house, the money
+which Humility and her mother made by their lace-work, and which
+arrived always by post, came very handy for the rent which the clerk
+asked for his upper chamber.
+
+Carpenters appeared and partitioned it off into two rooms,
+communicating with the gate-house by a narrow doorway pierced in the
+wall.  All this, whilst it was doing, interested Taffy mightily; and
+he announced his intention of being a carpenter one of these days.
+
+"I hope," said Humility, "you will look higher, and be a preacher of
+God's Word, like your father."
+
+His father frowned at this and said: "Jesus Christ was both."
+
+Taffy compromised: "Perhaps I'll make pulpits."
+
+This was how he came to have a bedroom with a vaulted roof and a
+window that reached down below the floor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+MUSIC IN THE TOWN SQUARE.
+
+This window looked upon the Town Square, and across it to the
+Mayoralty.  The square had once been the Franciscans' burial-ground,
+and was really no square at all, but a semicircle.  The townspeople
+called it Mount Folly.  The chord of the arc was formed by a large
+Assize Hall, with a broad flight of granite steps, and a cannon
+planted on either side of the steps.  The children used to climb
+about these cannons, and Taffy had picked out his first letters from
+the words _Sevastopol_ and _Russian Trophy_, painted in white on
+their lead-coloured carriages.
+
+Below the Assize Hall an open gravelled space sloped gently down to a
+line of iron railings and another flight of granite steps leading
+into the main street.  The street curved uphill around the base of
+this open ground, and came level with it just in front of the
+Mayoralty, a tall stuccoed building where the public balls were
+given, and the judges had their lodgings in assize time, and the
+Colonel his quarters during the militia training.
+
+Fine shows passed under Taffy's window.  Twice a year came the
+judges, with the sheriff in uniform and his chaplain, and his coach,
+and his coachman and lackeys in powder and plush and silk stockings,
+white or flesh-coloured; and the barristers with their wigs, and the
+javelin men and silver trumpets.  Every spring, too, the Royal
+Rangers Militia came up for training.  Suddenly one morning, in the
+height of the bird-nesting season, the street would swarm with
+countrymen tramping up to the barracks on the hill, and back, with
+bundles of clothes and unblackened boots dangling.  For the next six
+weeks the town would be full of bugle calls, and brazen music, and
+companies marching and parading in suits of invisible green, and
+clanking officers in black, with little round forage caps, and silver
+badges on their side-belts; and, towards evening, with men lounging
+and smoking, or washing themselves in public before the doors of
+their billets.
+
+Usually too, Whitsun Fair fell at the height of the militia training;
+and then for two days booths and caravans, sweet-standings and
+shooting-galleries lined the main street, and Taffy went out with a
+shilling in his pocket to enjoy himself.  But the bigger shows--the
+menagerie, the marionettes, and the travelling Theatre Royal--were
+pitched on Mount Folly, just under his window.  Sometimes the theatre
+would stay a week or two after the fair was over, until even the boy
+grew tired of the naphtha-lamps and the voices of the tragedians, and
+the cornet wheezing under canvas, and began to long for the time when
+they would leave the square open for the boys to come and play at
+prisoners' bars in the dusk.
+
+One evening, a fortnight before Whitsun Fair, he had taken his book
+to the open window, and sat there with it.  Every night he had to
+learn a text which he repeated next morning to his mother.  Already,
+across the square, the Mayoralty house was brightly lit, and the
+bandsmen had begun to arrange their stands and music before it; for
+the Colonel was receiving company.  Every now and then a carriage
+arrived, and set down its guests.
+
+After a while Taffy looked up and saw two persons crossing the
+square--an old man and a little girl.  He recognised them, having
+seen them together in church the day before, when his father had
+preached the sermon.  The old man wore a rusty silk hat, cocked a
+little to one side, a high stock collar, black cutaway coat, breeches
+and gaiters of grey cord.  He stooped as he walked, with his hands
+behind him and his walking-stick dangling like a tail--a very
+positive old fellow, to look at.  The girl's face Taffy could not
+see; it was hidden by the brim of her Leghorn hat.
+
+The pair passed close under the window.  Taffy heard a knock at the
+door below, and ran to the head of the stairs.  Down in the passage
+his mother was talking to the old man, who turned to the girl and
+told her to wait outside.
+
+"But let her come in and sit down," urged Humility.
+
+"No, ma'am; I know my mind.  I want one hour with your husband."
+
+Taffy heard the door shut, and went back to his window-seat.
+
+The little girl had climbed the cannon opposite, and sat there
+dangling her feet and eyeing the house.
+
+"Boy," said she, "what a funny window-seat you've got!  I can see
+your legs under it."
+
+"That's because the window reaches down to the floor, and the bench
+is fixed across by the transom here."
+
+"What's your name?"
+
+"Theophilus; but they call me Taffy."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Father says it's an imperfect example of Grimm's Law."
+
+"Oh!  Then, I suppose you're quite the gentleman?  My name's
+Honoria."
+
+"Is that your father downstairs?"
+
+"Bless the boy! What age do you take me for?  He's my grandfather.
+He's asking your father about his soul.  He wants to be saved, and
+says if he's not saved before next Lady-day, he'll know the reason
+why.  What are you doing up there?"
+
+"Reading."
+
+"Reading what?"
+
+"The Bible."
+
+"But, I say, can you really?"
+
+"You listen." Taffy rested the big Bible on the window-frame; it just
+had room to lie open between the two mullions--"_Now when they had
+gone throughout Phrygia and Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy
+Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia they
+assayed to go into Bithynia; but the Spirit suffered them not.
+And they, passing by Mysia, came down to Troas.  And a vision
+appeared to Paul in the night_. . . ."
+
+"I don't wonder at it.  Did you ever have the whooping-cough?"
+
+"Not yet."
+
+"I've had it all the winter.  That's why I'm not allowed in to play
+with you.  Listen!"
+
+She coughed twice, and wound up with a terrific whoop.
+
+"Now, if you'd only put on your nightshirt and preach, I'd be the
+congregation and interrupt you with coughing."
+
+"Very well," said Taffy, "let's do it."
+
+"No; you didn't suggest it.  I hate boys who have to be told."
+
+Taffy was huffed, and pretended to return to his book.  By-and-by she
+called up to him:
+
+"Tell me, what's written on this gun of yours?"
+
+"Sevastopol--that's a Russian town.  The English took it by storm."
+
+"What!  the soldiers over there?"
+
+"No, they're only bandsmen; and they're too young.  But I expect the
+Colonel was there.  He's upstairs in the Mayoralty, dining.
+He's quite an old man, but I've heard father say he was as brave as a
+lion when the fighting happened."
+
+The girl climbed off the gun.
+
+"I'm going to have a look at him," she said; and turning her back on
+Taffy, she sauntered off across the square, just as the band struck
+up the first note of the overture from _Semiramide_.  A waltz of
+Strauss followed, and then came a cornet solo by the bandmaster, and
+a medley of old English tunes.  To all of these Taffy listened.
+It had fallen too dark to read, and the boy was always sensitive to
+music.  Often when he played alone broken phrases and scraps of
+remembered tunes came into his head and repeated themselves over and
+over.  Then he would drop his game and wander about restlessly,
+trying to fix and complete the melody; and somehow in the process the
+melody always became a story, or so like a story that he never knew
+the difference.  Sometimes his uneasiness lasted for days together.
+But when the story came complete at last--and this always sprang on
+him quite suddenly--he wanted to caper and fling his arms about and
+sing aloud; and did so, if nobody happened to be looking.
+
+The bandmaster, too, had music, and a reputation for imparting it.
+Famous regimental bands contained pupils of his; and his old pupils,
+when they met, usually told each other stories of his atrocious
+temper.  But he kept his temper to-night, for his youngsters were
+playing well, and the small crowd standing quiet.
+
+The English melodies had scarcely closed with "Come, lasses and
+lads," when across in Mayoralty a blind was drawn, and a window
+thrown open, and Taffy saw the warm room within, and the officers and
+ladies standing with glasses in their hands.  The Colonel was giving
+the one toast of the evening:
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen--The Queen!"
+
+The adjutant leaned out and lifted his hand for signal, and the band
+crashed out with the National Anthem.  Then there was silence for a
+minute.  The window remained open.  Taffy still caught glimpses of
+jewels and uniforms, and white necks bending, and men leaning back in
+their chairs, with their mess-jackets open, and the candle-light
+flashing on their shirt-fronts.  Below, in the dark street, the
+bandmaster trimmed the lamp by his music-stand.  In the rays of it he
+drew out a handkerchief and polished the keys of his cornet; then
+passed the cornet over to his left hand, took up his baton, and
+nodded.
+
+What music was that, stealing, rippling, across the square?
+The bandmaster knew nothing of the tale of Tannhauser, but was
+wishing that he had violins at his beck, instead of stupid flutes and
+reeds.  And Taffy had never heard so much as the name of Tannhauser.
+Of the meaning of the music he knew nothing--nothing beyond its
+wonder and terror.  But afterward he made a tale of it to himself.
+
+In the tale it seemed that a vine shot up and climbed on the shadows
+of the warm night; and the shadows climbed with it and made a trellis
+for it right across the sky.  The vine thrust through the trellis
+faster and faster, dividing, throwing out little curls and tendrils;
+then leaves and millions of leaves, each leaf unfolding about a drop
+of dew, which trickled and fell and tinkled like a bird's song.
+
+The beauty and scent of the vine distressed him.  He wanted to cry
+out, for it was hiding the sky.  Then he heard the tramp of feet in
+the distance, and knew that they threatened the vine, and with that
+he wanted to save it.  But the feet came nearer and nearer, tramping
+terribly.
+
+He could not bear it.  He ran to the stairs, stole down them, opened
+the front door cautiously, and slipped outside.  He was half-way
+across the square before it occurred to him that the band had ceased
+to play.  Then he wondered why he had come, but he did not go back.
+He found Honoria standing a little apart from the crowd, with her
+hands clasped behind her, gazing up at the window of the
+banqueting-room.
+
+She did not see him at once.
+
+"Stand on the steps, here," he whispered, "then you can see him.
+That's the Colonel--the man at the end of the table, with the big,
+grey moustache."
+
+He touched her arm.  She sprang away and stamped her foot.
+
+"Keep off with you!  Who _told_ you?--Oh! you bad boy!"
+
+"Nobody.  I thought you hated boys who wait to be told."
+
+"And now you'll get the whooping-cough, and goodness knows what will
+happen to you, and you needn't think I'll be sorry!"
+
+"Who wants you to be sorry!  As for you," Taffy went on sturdily, "I
+think your grandfather might have more sense than to keep you waiting
+out here in the cold, and giving your cough to the whole town!"
+
+"Ha! you do, do you?"
+
+It was not the girl who said this.  Taffy swung round, and saw an old
+man staring down on him.  There was just light enough to reveal that
+he had very formidable grey eyes.  But Taffy's blood was up.
+
+"Yes, I do," he said, and wondered at himself.
+
+"Ha!  Does your father whip you sometimes?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I should if you were my boy.  I believe in it.  Come, Honoria!"
+
+The child threw a glance at Taffy as she was led away.  He could not
+be sure whether she took his side or her grandfather's.
+
+That night he had a very queer dream.
+
+His grandmother had lost her lace-pillow, and after searching for
+some time, he found it lying out in the square.  But the pins and
+bobbins were darting to and fro on their own account, at an
+incredible rate, and the lace as they made it turned into a singing
+beanstalk, and rose and threw out branches all over the sky.
+Very soon he found himself climbing among those branches, up and up
+until he came to a Palace, which was really the Assize Hall, with a
+flight of steps before it and a cannon on either side of the steps.
+Within sat a giant, asleep, with his head on the table and his face
+hidden; but his neck bulged at the back just like the bandmaster's
+during a cornet solo.  A harp stood on the table.  Taffy caught this
+up, and was stealing downstairs with it, but at the third stair the
+harp--which had Honoria's head and face--began to cough, and wound up
+with a _whoop!_  This woke the giant--he turned out to be Honoria's
+grandfather--who came roaring after him.  Glancing down below as he
+ran, Taffy saw his mother and the bandmaster far below with axes,
+hacking at the foot of the beanstalk.  He tried to call out and
+prevent them, but they kept smiting.  And the worst of it was, that
+down below, too, his father was climbing into a pulpit, quite as if
+nothing was happening.  The pulpit grew and became a tower, and his
+father kept calling, "Be a tower!  Be a tower, like me!"
+
+But Taffy couldn't for the life of him see how to manage it.
+The beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for
+the tower. . . . And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first
+time in his life, afraid of the dark.  He would have called for his
+mother, but just then down by the turret clock in Fore Street the
+buglers began to sound the "Last Post," and he hugged himself and
+felt that the world he knew was still about him, companionable and
+kind.
+
+Twice the buglers repeated their call, in more distant streets, each
+time more faintly; and the last flying notes carried him into sleep
+again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+PASSENGERS BY JOBY'S VAN.
+
+At breakfast next morning he saw by his parents' faces that something
+unusual had happened.  Nothing was said to him about it, whatever it
+might be.  But once or twice after this, coming into the parlour
+suddenly, he found his father and mother talking low and earnestly
+together; and now and then they would go up to his grandmother's room
+and talk.
+
+In some way he divined that there was a question of leaving home.
+But the summer passed and these private talks became fewer.
+Toward August, however, they began again; and by-and-by his mother
+told him.  They were going to a parish on the North Coast, right away
+across the Duchy, where his father had been presented to a living.
+The place had an odd name--Nannizabuloe.
+
+"And it is lonely," said Humility, "the most of it sea-sand, so far
+as I can hear."
+
+It was by the sea, then.  How would they get there?
+
+"Oh, Joby's van will take us most of the way."
+
+Of all the vans which came and went in the Fore Street, none could
+compare for romance with Joby's.  People called it the Wreck Ashore;
+but its real name, "Vital Spark, J. Job, Proprietor," was painted on
+its orange-coloured sides in letters of vivid blue, a blue not often
+seen except on ship's boats.  It disappeared every Tuesday and
+Saturday over the hill and into a mysterious country, from which it
+emerged on Mondays and Fridays with a fine flavour of the sea renewed
+upon it and upon Joby.  No other driver wore a blue guernsey, or
+rings in his ears, as Joby did.  No other van had the same mode of
+progressing down the street in a series of short tacks, or brought
+such a crust of brine on its panes, or such a mixture of mud and fine
+sand on its wheels, or mingled scraps of dry sea-weed with the straw
+on its floor.
+
+"Will there be ships?" Taffy asked.
+
+"I dare say we shall see a few, out in the distance.  It's a poor,
+outlandish place.  It hasn't even a proper church."
+
+"If there's no church, father can get into a boat and preach; just
+like the Sea of Galilee, you know."
+
+"Your father is too good a man to mimic the Scriptures in any such
+way.  There is a church, I believe, though it's a tumble-down one.
+Nobody has preached in it for years.  But Squire Moyle may do
+something now.  He's a rich man."
+
+"Is that the old gentleman who came to ask father about his soul?"
+
+"Yes; he says no preaching ever did him so much good as your
+father's.  That's why he came and offered the living."
+
+"But he can't go to heaven if he's rich."
+
+"I don't know, Taffy, wherever you pick up such wicked thoughts."
+
+"Why, it's in the Bible!"
+
+Humility would not argue about it; but she told her husband that
+night what the child had said.  "My dear," he answered, "the boy must
+think of these things."
+
+"But he ought not to be talking disrespectfully," contended she.
+
+
+One Tuesday, towards the end of September, Taffy saw his father off
+by Joby's van; and the Friday after, walked down with his mother to
+meet him on his return.  Almost at once the household began to pack.
+The packing went on for a week, in the midst of which his father
+departed again, a waggon-load of books and furniture having been sent
+forward on the road that same morning.  Then followed a day or two
+during which Taffy and his mother took their meals at the
+window-seat, sitting on corded boxes; and an evening when he went out
+to the cannon in the square, and around the little back garden,
+saying good-bye to the fixtures and the few odds and ends which were
+to be left behind--the tool-shed (Crusoe's hut, Cave of Adullam, and
+Treasury of the Forty Thieves), the stunted sycamore-tree which he
+had climbed at different times as Zacchaeus, Ali Baba, and Man Friday
+with the bear behind him; the clothes' prop, which, on the strength
+of its forked tail, had so often played Dragon to his St. George.
+When he returned to the empty house, he found his mother in the
+passage.  She had been for a walk alone.  The candle was lit, and he
+saw she had been crying.  This told him where she had been; for,
+although he remembered nothing about it, he knew he had once
+possessed a small sister, who lived with him less than two months.
+He had, as a rule, very definite notions of death and the grave; but
+he never thought of her as dead and buried, partly because his mother
+would never allow him to go with her to the cemetery, and partly
+because of a picture in a certain book of his, called _Child's Play_.
+It represented a little girl wading across a pool among water-lilies.
+She wore a white nightdress, kilted above her knees, and a dark
+cloak, which dragged behind in the water.  She let it trail, while
+she held up a hand to cover one of her eyes.  Above her were trees
+and an owl, and a star shining under the topmost branch; and on the
+opposite page this verse:
+
+     "I have a little sister,
+        They call her Peep-peep,
+      She wades through the waters,
+        Deep, deep, deep;
+      She climbs up the mountains,
+        High, high, high;
+      This poor little creature
+        She has but one eye."
+
+For years Taffy believed that this was his little sister, one-eyed,
+and always wandering; and that his mother went out in the dusk to
+persuade her to return; but she never would.
+
+When he woke next morning his mother was in the room; and while he
+washed and dressed she folded his bed-clothes and carried them down
+to a waggon which stood by the door, with horses already harnessed.
+It drove away soon after.  He found breakfast laid on the
+window-seat.  A neighbour had lent the crockery, and Taffy was
+greatly taken with the pattern on the cups and saucers.  He wanted to
+run round again and repeat his good-byes to the house, but there was
+no time.  By-and-by the door opened, and two men, neighbours of
+theirs, entered with an invalid's litter; and, Humility directing,
+brought down old Mrs. Venning.  She wore the corner of a Paisley
+shawl over her white cap, and carried a nosegay of flowers in place
+of her lace-pillow; but otherwise looked much as usual.
+
+"Quite the traveller, you see!" she cried gaily to Taffy.
+
+Then the woman who had lent the breakfast-ware came running to say
+that Joby was getting impatient.  Humility handed the door-key to
+her, and so the little procession passed out and down across Mount
+Folly.
+
+Joby had drawn his van up close to the granite steps.  They were the
+only passengers, it seemed.  The invalid was hoisted in and laid with
+her couch across the seats, so that her shoulders rested against one
+side of the van and her feet against the other.  Humility climbed in
+after her; but Taffy, to his joy, was given a seat outside the box.
+
+"C'k!"--they were off.
+
+As they crawled up the street a few townspeople paused on the
+pavement and waved farewells.  At the top of the town they overtook
+three sailor-boys, with bundles, who climbed up and perched
+themselves a-top of the van, on the luggage.
+
+On they went again.  There were two horses--a roan and a grey.
+Taffy had never before looked down on the back of a horse, and
+Joby's horses astonished him; they were so broad behind, and so
+narrow at the shoulders.  He wanted to ask if the shape were at all
+common, but felt shy.  He stole a glance at the silver ring in Joby's
+left ear, and blushed when Joby turned and caught him.
+
+"Here, catch hold!" said Joby handing him the whip.  "Only you
+mustn't use it too fierce."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"I suppose you'll be a scholar, like your father?  Can ee spell?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Cipher?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That's more than I can.  I counts upon my fingers.  When they be
+used up, I begins upon my buttons.  I ha'n't got no buttons--visible
+that is--'pon my week-a-day clothes; so I keeps the long sums for
+Sundays, and adds 'em up and down my weskit during sermon.
+Don't tell any person."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"That's right.  I don't want it known.  Ever see a gipsy?"
+
+"Oh, yes--often."
+
+"Next time you see one you'll know why he wears so many buttons.
+You've a lot to learn."
+
+The van zigzagged down one hill and up another, and halted at a
+turnpike.  An old woman in a pink sun-bonnet bustled out and handed
+Joby a pink ticket.  A little way beyond they passed the angle of a
+mining district, with four or five engine-houses high up like castles
+on the hillside, and rows of stamps clattering and working up and
+down like ogres' teeth.  Next they came to a church town, with a
+green and a heap of linen spread to dry (for it was Tuesday), and a
+flock of geese that ran and hissed after the van, until Joby took the
+whip and, leaning out, looped the gander by the neck and pulled him
+along in the dust.  The sailor-boys shouted with laughter and struck
+up a song about a fox and a goose, which lasted all the way up a long
+hill and brought them to a second turnpike, on the edge of the moors.
+Here lived an old woman in a blue sun-bonnet; and she handed Joby a
+yellow-ticket.
+
+"But why does she wear a blue bonnet and give yellow tickets?" Taffy
+asked, as they drove on.
+
+Joby considered for a minute.  "Ah, you're one to take notice, I see.
+That's right, keep your eyes skinned when you travel."
+
+Taffy had to think this out.  The country was changing now.  They had
+left stubble fields and hedges behind, and before them the granite
+road stretched like a white ribbon, with moors on either hand, dotted
+with peat-ricks and reedy pools and cropping ponies, and rimmed in
+the distance with clay-works glistening in the sunny weather.
+
+"What sort of place is Nannizabuloe?"
+
+"I don't go on there.  I drop you at Indian Queens."
+
+"But what sort of place is it?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell you what folks say of it:"
+
+      'All sea and san's,
+       Out of the world and into St. Ann's.'
+
+"That's what they say, and if I'm wrong you may call me a liar."
+
+"And Squire Moyle?" Taffy persevered.  "What kind of man is he?"
+
+Joby turned and eyed him severely.  "Look here, sonny.  I got my
+living to get."
+
+This silenced Taffy for a long while, but he picked up his courage
+again by degrees.  There was a small window at his back, and he
+twisted himself round, and nodded to his mother and grandmother
+inside the van.  He could not hear what they answered, for the
+sailor-boys were singing at the top of their voices:
+
+     "I will sing you One, O!
+      What is your One, O?
+      Number One sits all alone, and ever more shall be-e so."
+
+"They're home 'pon leave," said Joby.  The song went on and reached
+Number Seven:
+
+     "I will sing you Seven, O!
+      What is your Seven, O?
+      Seven be seven stars in the ship a-sailing round in Heaven, O!"
+
+One of the boys leaned from the roof and twitched Taffy by the hair.
+"Hullo, nipper!  Did you ever see a ship of stars?"  He grinned and
+pulled open his sailor's jumper and singlet; and there, on his naked
+breast, Taffy saw a ship tattooed, with three masts, and a
+half-circle of stars above it, and below it the initials W. P.
+
+"D'ee think my mother'll know me again?" asked the boy, and the other
+two began to laugh.
+
+"Yes, I think so," said Taffy gravely; which made them laugh more
+than ever.
+
+"But why is he painted like that?" he asked Joby, as they took up
+their song again.
+
+"Ah, you'll larn over to St. Ann's, being one to notice things."
+The nearer he came to it, the more mysterious this new home of
+Taffy's seemed to grow.  By-and-by Humility let down the window and
+handed out a pasty.  Joby searched under his seat and found a pasty,
+twice the size of Taffy's, in a nose-bag.  They ate as they went,
+holding up their pasties from time to time and comparing progress.
+Late in the afternoon they came to hedges again, and at length to an
+inn; and in front of it Taffy spied his father waiting with a
+farm-cart.  While Joby baited his horses, the sailor-boys helped to
+lift out the invalid and trans-ship the luggage; after which they
+climbed on the roof again, and were jogged away northward in the
+dusk, waving their caps and singing.
+
+The most remarkable thing about the inn was its signboard.  This bore
+on either side the picture of an Indian queen and two blackamoor
+children, all with striped parasols, walking together across a
+desert.  The queen on one side wore a scarlet turban and a blue robe;
+but the queen on the other side wore a blue turban and a scarlet
+robe.  Taffy dodged from side to side, comparing them, and had not
+made up his mind which he liked best when Humility called him indoors
+to tea.
+
+They had ham and eggs with their tea, which they took in a great
+hurry; and then his grandmother was lifted into the cart and laid on
+a bed of clean straw beside the boxes, and he and his mother
+clambered up in front.  So they started again, his father walking at
+the horse's head.  They took the road toward the sunset.  As the dusk
+fell closer around, Mr. Raymond lit a horn lantern and carried it
+before them.  The rays of it danced and wheeled upon the hedges and
+gorse bushes.  Taffy began to feel sleepy, though it was long before
+his usual bedtime.  The air seemed to weigh his eyelids down.  Or was
+it a sound lulling him?  He looked up suddenly.  His mother's arm was
+about him.  Stars flashed above, and a glimmer fell on her gentle
+face--a dew of light, as it were.  Her dark eyes appeared darker than
+usual as she leaned and drew her shawl over his shoulder.
+
+Ahead, the rays of the lantern kept up their dance, but they flared
+now and again upon stone hedges built in zigzag layers, and upon
+unknown feathery bushes, intensely green and glistening like metal.
+
+The cart jolted and the lantern swung to a soundless tune that filled
+the night.  When Taffy listened it ceased; when he ceased listening,
+it began again.
+
+The lantern stopped its dance and stood still over a ford of black
+water.  The cart splashed into it and became a ship, heaving and
+lurching over a soft, irregular floor that returned no sound.
+But suddenly the ship became a cart again, and stood still before a
+house with a narrow garden-path and a light streaming along it from
+an open door.
+
+His father lifted him down; his mother took his hand.  They seemed to
+wade together up that stream of light.  Then came a staircase and
+room with a bed in it, which, oddly enough, turned out to be his own.
+He stared at the pink roses on the curtains.  Yes; certainly it was
+his own bed.  And satisfied of this, he nestled down in the pillows
+and slept, to the long cadence of the sea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+THE RUNNING SANDS.
+
+He awoke to find the sun shining in at his window.  At first he
+wondered what had happened.  The window seemed to be in the ceiling,
+and the ceiling sloped down to the walls, and all the furniture had
+gone astray into wrong positions.  Then he remembered, jumped out of
+bed, and drew the blind.
+
+He saw a blue line of sea, so clearly drawn that the horizon might
+have been a string stretched from the corner eaves to the snow-white
+light-house standing on the farthest spit of land; blue sea and
+yellow sand curving round it, with a white edge of breakers; inshore,
+the sand rising to a cliff ridged with grassy hummocks; farther
+inshore, the hummocks united and rolling away up to inland downs, but
+broken here and there on their way with scars of sand; over all,
+white gulls wheeling.  He could hear the nearest ones mewing as they
+sailed over the house.
+
+Taffy had seen the sea once before, at Dawlish, on the journey to
+Tewkesbury; and again on the way home.  But here it was bluer
+altogether, and the sands were yellower.  Only he felt disappointed
+that no ship was in sight, nor any dwelling nearer than the
+light-house and the two or three white cottages behind it.
+He dressed in a hurry and said his prayers, repeating at the close,
+as he had been taught to do, the first and last verses of the Morning
+Hymn:
+
+     "Awake, my soul, and with the sun
+        Thy daily stage of duty run;
+      Shake off dull sloth, and joyful rise
+        To pay thy morning sacrifice.
+
+     "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow;
+        Praise Him, all creatures here below;
+      Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
+        Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
+
+He ran downstairs.  In this queer house the stairs led right down
+into the kitchen.  The front door, too, opened into the kitchen,
+which was really a slate-paved hall, with a long table set between
+the doorway and the big open hearth.  The floor was always strewn
+with sand; there was no trouble about this, for the wind blew plenty
+under the door.
+
+Taffy found the table laid, and his mother busily slicing bread for
+his bread and milk.  He begged for a hot cake from the hearth, and
+ran out of doors to eat it.  Humility lifted the latch for him, for
+the cake was so hot that he had to pass it from hand to hand.
+
+Outside, the wind came upon him with a clap on the shoulder, quite
+as if it had been a comrade waiting.
+
+Taffy ran down the path and out upon the sandy hummocks, setting his
+face to the wind and the roar of the sea, keeping his head low, and
+still shifting the cake from hand to hand.  By-and-by he fumbled and
+dropped it; stooped to pick it up, but saw something which made him
+kneel and peer into the ground.
+
+The whole of the sand was moving; not by fits and starts, but
+constantly; the tiny particles running over each other and drifting
+in and out of the rushes, like little creatures in a dream.  While he
+looked, they piled an embankment against the edge of his cake.
+He picked it up, ran forward a few yards, and peered again.
+Yes, here too; here and yonder, and over every inch of that long
+shore.
+
+He ate his cake and climbed to the beach, and ran along it, watching
+the sandhoppers that skipped from under his boots at every step, and
+were lost on the instant.  The beach here was moist and firm.
+He pulled off his boots and stockings, and ran on, conning his
+footprints and the driblets of sand split ahead from his bare toes.
+By-and-by he came to the edge of the surf.  The strand here was
+glassy wet, and each curving wave sent a shadow flying over it, and
+came after the shadow, thundering and hissing, and chased it up the
+shore, and fell back, leaving for a second or two an edge of delicate
+froth which reminded the boy of his mother's lace-work.
+
+He began a sort of game with the waves, choosing one station after
+another, and challenging them to catch him there.  If the edge of
+froth failed to reach his toes, he won.  But once or twice the water
+caught him fairly, and ran rippling over his instep and about his
+ankles.
+
+He was deep in this game when he heard a horn blown somewhere high on
+the towans behind him.
+
+He turned.  No one was in sight.  The house lay behind the
+sand-banks, the first ridge hiding even its chimney-smoke.  He gazed
+along the beach, where the perpetual haze of spray seemed to have
+removed the light-house to a vast distance.  A sense of desolation
+came over him with a rush, and with something between a gasp and a
+sob he turned his back to the sea and ran, his boots dangling from
+his shoulders by their knotted laces.
+
+He pounded up the first slope and looked for the cottage.  No sign of
+it!  An insane fancy seized him.  These silent moving sands were
+after _him_.
+
+He was panting along in real distress when he heard the baying of
+dogs, and at the same instant from the top of a hummock caught sight
+of a figure outlined against the sky, and barely a quarter of a mile
+away; the figure of a girl on horseback--a small girl on a very tall
+horse.
+
+Just as Taffy recognised her, she turned her horse, walked him down
+into the hollow beyond, and disappeared.  Taffy ran towards the spot,
+gained the ridge where she had been standing, and looked down.
+
+In a hollow about twenty feet deep and perhaps a hundred wide were
+gathered a dozen riders, with five or six couples of hounds and two
+or three dirty terriers.  Two of the men had dismounted.  One of
+these, stripped to his shirt and breeches, was leaning on a
+long-handled spade and laughing.  The other--a fellow in a shabby
+scarlet coat--held up what Taffy guessed to be a fox, though it
+seemed a very small one.  It was bleeding.  The hounds yapped and
+leapt at it, and fell back a-top of each other snarling, while the
+Whip grinned and kept them at bay.  A knife lay between his
+wide-planted feet, and a visgy[1] close behind him on a heap of
+disturbed sand.
+
+The boy came on them from the eastward, and his shadow fell across
+the hollow.
+
+"Hullo!" said one of the riders, looking up.  It was Squire Moyle
+himself.  "Here's the new Passon's boy!"
+
+All the riders looked up.  The Whip looked up too, and turned to the
+old Squire with a wider grin than before.
+
+"Shall I christen en, maister?"
+
+The Squire nodded.  Before Taffy knew what it meant, the man was
+climbing toward him with a grin, clutching the rush bents with one
+hand, and holding out the blood-dabbled mask with the other.
+The child turned to run, but a hand clutched his ankle.  He saw the
+man's open mouth and yellow teeth; and, choking with disgust and
+terror, slung his boots at them with all his small force.  At the
+same instant he was jerked off his feet, the edge of the bank
+crumbled and broke, and the two went rolling down the sandy slope in
+a heap.  He heard shouts of laughter, caught a glimpse of blue sky,
+felt a grip of fingers on his throat, and smelt the verminous odour
+of the dead cub, as the Whip thrust the bloody mess against his face
+and neck.  Then the grip relaxed, and--it seemed to him, amid dead
+silence--Taffy sprang to his feet, spitting sand and fury.
+
+"You--you devils!"  He caught up the visgy and stood, daring all to
+come on.  "You devils!" He tottered forward with the visgy lifted--it
+was all he could manage--at Squire Moyle.  The old man let out an
+oath, and the curve of his whip-thong took the boy across the eyes
+and blinded him for a moment, but did not stop him.  The grey horse
+swerved, and half-wheeled, exposing his flank.  In another moment
+there would have been mischief; but the Whip, as he stood wiping his
+mouth, saw the danger and ran in.  He struck the visgy out of the
+child's grasp, set his foot on it, and with an open-handed cuff sent
+him floundering into a sand-heap.
+
+"Nice boy, that!" said somebody, and the whole company laughed as
+they walked their horses slowly out of the hollow.
+
+They passed before Taffy in a blur of tears; and the last rider to go
+was the small girl Honoria on her tall sorrel.  She moved up the
+broad shelving path, but reined up just within sight, turned her
+horse, and came slowly back to him.
+
+"If I were you, I'd go home." She pointed in its direction.
+
+Taffy brushed the back of his hand across his eyes.  "Go away.
+I hate you--I hate you all!"
+
+She eyed him while she smoothed the sorrel's mane with her
+riding-switch.
+
+"They did it to me three years ago, when I was six.  Grandfather
+called it 'entering' me."
+
+Taffy kept his eyes sullenly on the ground.  Finding that he would
+not answer, she turned her horse again and rode slowly after the
+others.  Taffy heard the soft footfalls die away, and when he looked
+up she had vanished.
+
+He picked up his boots and started in the direction to which she had
+pointed.  Every now and then a sob shook him.  By-and-by the chimneys
+of the house hove in sight among the ridges, and he ran toward it.
+But within a gunshot of the white garden-wall his breast swelled
+suddenly and he flung himself on the ground and let the big tears
+run.  They made little pits in the moving sand; and more sand drifted
+up and covered them.
+
+"Taffy! Taffy!  Whatever has become of the child?"
+
+His mother was standing by the gate in her print frock.  He scrambled
+up and ran toward her.  She cried out at the sight of him, but he hid
+his blood-smeared face against her skirts.
+
+[1] Mattock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+TAFFY RINGS THE CHURCH BELL.
+
+They were in the church--Squire Moyle, Mr. Raymond, and Taffy close
+behind.  The two men were discussing the holes in the roof and other
+dilapidations.
+
+"One, two, three," the Squire counted.  "I'll send a couple of men
+with tarpaulin and rick-ropes.  That'll tide us over next Sunday,
+unless it blows hard."
+
+They passed up three steps under the belfry arch.  Here a big bell
+rested on the flooring.  Its rim was cracked, but not badly.  A long
+ladder reached up into the gloom.
+
+"What's the beam like?" the Squire called up to someone aloft.
+
+"Sound as a bell," answered a voice.
+
+"I said so.  We'll have en hoisted by Sunday, I'll send a waggon over
+to Wheel Gooniver for a tackle and winch.  Damme, up there!
+Don't keep sheddin' such a muck o' dust on your betters!"
+
+"I can't help no other, Squire!" said the voice overhead; "such a
+cauch o' pilm an' twigs, an' birds' droppins'!  If I sneeze I'm a
+lost man."
+
+Taffy, staring up as well as he could for the falling rubbish, could
+just spy a white smock above the beam, and a glint of daylight on the
+toe-scutes of two dangling boots.
+
+"I'll dam soon make you help it.  _Is_ the beam sound?"
+
+"Ha'n't I told 'ee so?" said the voice querulously.
+
+"Then come down off the ladder, you son of a--"
+
+"Gently, Squire!" put in Mr. Raymond.
+
+The Squire groaned.  "There I go again--an' in the House of God
+itself!  Oh! 'tis a case with me!  I've a heart o' stone--a heart o'
+stone."  He turned and brushed his rusty hat with his coat-cuff.
+Suddenly he faced round again. "Here, Bill Udy," he said to the old
+labourer who had just come down the ladder, "catch hold of my hat an'
+carry en fore to porch.  I keep forgettin' I'm in church, an' then on
+he goes."
+
+The building stood half a mile from the sea, surrounded by the
+rolling towans and rabbit burrows, and a few lichen-spotted
+tombstones slanting inland.  Early in the seventeenth century a
+London merchant had been shipwrecked on the coast below Nannizabuloe
+and cast ashore, the one saved out of thirty.  He asked to be shown a
+church in which to give thanks for his preservation, and the people
+led him to a ruin bedded in the sands.  It had lain since the days of
+Arundel's Rebellion.  The Londoner vowed to build a new church there
+on the towans, where the songs of prayer and praise should mingle
+with the voice of the waves which God had baffled for him.
+The people warned him of the sand; but he would not listen to reason.
+He built his church--a squat Perpendicular building of two aisles,
+the wider divided into nave and chancel merely by a granite step in
+the flooring; he saw it consecrated, and returned to his home and
+died.  And the church steadily decayed.  He had mixed his mortar with
+sea-sand.  The stonework oozed brine, the plaster fell piece-meal;
+the blown sand penetrated like water; the foundations sank a foot on
+the south side, and the whole structure took a list to leeward.
+The living passed into the hands of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter,
+and from them, in 1730, to the Moyles.  Mr. Raymond's predecessor was
+a kinsman of theirs by marriage, a pluralist, who lived and died at
+the other end of the Duchy.  He had sent curates from time to time;
+the last of whom was dead, three years since, of solitude and drink.
+But he never came himself, Squire Moyle having threatened to set the
+dogs on him if ever he set foot in Nannizabuloe; for there had been
+some dispute over a dowry.  The result was that nobody went to
+church, though a parson from the next parish held an occasional
+service.  The people were Wesleyan Methodists or Bryanites.
+Each sect had its own chapel in the fishing village of Innis, on the
+western side of the parish; and the Bryanites a second one, at the
+cross-roads behind the downs, for the miners and warreners and
+scattered farmfolk.
+
+
+_Ding--ding--ding--ding--ding_.
+
+It was Sunday morning, and Taffy was sounding the bell, by a thin
+rope tied to its clapper.  The heavy bell-rope would be ready next
+week; but Humility must first contrive a woollen binding for it, to
+prevent its chafing the ringer's hands.
+
+Out on the towans the rabbits heard the sound, and ran scampering.
+Others, farther away, paused in their feeding, and listened with
+cocked ears.
+
+_Ding--ding--ding_.
+
+Mr. Raymond stood in the belfry at the boy's elbow.  He wore his
+surplice, and held his prayer-book, with a finger between the pages.
+Glancing down toward the nave, he saw Humility sitting in the big
+vicarage pew--no other soul in church.
+
+He took the cord from Taffy, "Run to the door, and see if anyone is
+coming."
+
+Taffy ran, and after a minute came back.
+
+"There's Squire Moyle coming along the path, and the little girl with
+him, and some servants behind--five or six of them.  Bill Udy's one."
+
+"Nobody else?"
+
+"I expect the people don't hear the bell," said Taffy.  "They live
+too far away."
+
+"God hears.  Yes, and God sees the lamp is lit."
+
+"What lamp?"  Taffy looked up at his father's face, wondering.
+
+"All towers carry a lamp of some kind.  For what else are they
+built?"
+
+It was exactly the tone in which he had spoken that afternoon at
+Tewkesbury about men being like towers.  Both these sentences puzzled
+the boy; and yet Taffy never felt so near to understanding him as he
+had then, and did again now.  He was shy of his father.  He did not
+know that his father was just as shy of him.  He began to ring with
+all his soul--ding--ding-ding, ding-ding.
+
+The old Squire entered the church, paused, and blew his nose
+violently, and taking Honoria by the hand, marched her up to the end
+of the south aisle.  The door of the great pew was shut upon them,
+and they disappeared.  Before Honoria vanished Taffy caught a glimpse
+of a grey felt hat with pink ribbons.
+
+The servants scattered and found seats in the body of the church.
+He went on ringing, but no one else came.  After a minute or two
+Mr. Raymond signed to him to stop and go to his mother, which he did,
+blushing at the noise of his shoes on the slate pavement.
+Mr. Raymond followed, walked slowly past, and entered the
+reading-desk.
+
+"When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath
+committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save
+his soul alive. . . ."
+
+Taffy looked towards the Squire's pew.  The bald top of the Squire's
+head was just visible above the ledge.  He looked up at his mother,
+but her eyes were fastened on her prayer-book.  He felt--he could not
+help it--that they were all gathered to save this old man's soul, and
+that everybody knew it and secretly thought it a hopeless case.
+The notion dogged him all through the service, and for many Sundays
+after.  Always that bald head above the ledge, and his father and the
+congregation trying to call down salvation on it.  He wondered what
+Honoria thought, boxed up with it and able to see its face.
+
+Mr. Raymond mounted an upper pulpit to preach his sermon.  He chose
+his text from Saint Matthew, Chapter vii., verses 26 and 27:
+
+"_And every one that heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them
+not, shall be likened unto a foolish man which built his house upon
+the sand_;
+
+"_And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew,
+and beat upon that house; and it fell; and great was the fall of
+it_."
+
+Taffy never followed his father's sermons closely.  He would listen
+to a sentence or two, now and again, and then let his wits wander.
+
+"You think this church is built upon the sands.  The rain has come,
+the winds have blown and beaten on it; the foundations have sunk and
+it leans to leeward. . . . By the blessing of God we will shore it
+up, and upon a foundation of rock.  Upon what rock, you ask? . . .
+Upon that rock which is the everlasting foundation of the Church
+spiritual. . . . Hear what comfortable words our Lord spake to Peter.
+. . . Our foundation must be faith, which is God's continuing
+Presence on earth, and which we shall recognise hereafter as God
+Himself. . . . Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
+evidence of things not seen. . . . In other words, it is the rock we
+search for. . . . Draw near it, and you will know yourself in God's
+very shadow--the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. . . . As
+with this building, so with you, O man, cowering from wrath, as these
+walls are cowering. . . ."
+
+The benediction was pronounced, the pew-door opened, and the old man
+marched down the aisle, looking neither to right nor to left, with
+his jaw set like a closed gin.  Honoria followed.  She had not so
+much as a glance for Taffy; but in passing she gazed frankly at
+Humility, whom she had not seen before.
+
+Humility was rather ostentatiously cheerful at dinner that day; a
+sure sign that at heart she was disappointed.  She had looked for a
+bigger congregation.  Mrs. Venning, who had been carried downstairs
+for the meal, saw this and asked few questions.  Both the women stole
+glances at Mr. Raymond when they thought he was not observing them.
+He at least pretended to observe nothing, but chatted away
+cheerfully.
+
+
+
+"Taffy," he said, after dinner, "I want you to run up to Tredinnis
+with a note from me.  Maybe I will follow later, but I must go to the
+village first."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+A COCK-FIGHT.
+
+A footpath led Taffy past the church, and out at length upon a high
+road, in face of two tall granite pillars with an iron gate between.
+The gate was surmounted with a big iron lantern, and the lantern with
+a crest--two snakes' heads intertwined.  The gate was shut, but the
+fence had been broken down on either side, and the gap, through which
+Taffy passed, was scored with wheel-ruts.  He followed these down an
+ill-kept road bordered with furze-whins, tamarisks, and clumps of
+bannel broom.  By-and-by he came to a ragged plantation of stone
+pines, backed by a hedge of rhododendrons, behind which the hounds
+were baying in their kennels.  It put him in mind of the "Pilgrim's
+Progress."  He heard the stable clock strike three, and caught a
+glimpse, over the shrubberies, of its cupola and gilt weather-cock.
+And then a turn of the road brought him under the gloomy northern
+face of the house, with its broad carriage sweep and sunless portico.
+Half the windows on this side had been blocked up and painted black,
+with white streaks down and across to represent framework.
+
+He pulled at an iron bell-chain which dangled by the great door.
+The bell clanged far within and a dozen dogs took up the note,
+yelping in full peal.  He heard footsteps coming; the door was
+opened, and the dogs poured out upon him--spaniels, terriers,
+lurchers, greyhounds, and a big Gordon setter--barking at him,
+leaping against him, sniffing his calves.  Taffy kept them at bay as
+best he could and waved his letter at a wall-eyed man in a dirty
+yellow waistcoat, who looked down from the doorstep but did not offer
+to call them off.
+
+"Any answer?" asked the wall-eyed man.
+
+Taffy could not say.  The man took the letter and went to inquire,
+leaving him alone with the dogs.
+
+It seemed an age before he reappeared, having in the interval slipped
+a dirty livery coat over his yellow waistcoat.  "The Squire says
+you're to come in."  Taffy and the dogs poured together into a high,
+stone-flagged hall; then through a larger hall and a long dark
+corridor.  The footman's coat, for want of a loop, had been hitched
+on a peg by its collar, and stuck out behind his neck in the most
+ludicrous manner; but he shuffled ahead so fast that Taffy, tripping
+and stumbling among the dogs, had barely time to observe this before
+a door was flung open and he stood blinking in a large room full of
+sunlight.
+
+"Hallo!  Here's the parson's bantam!"
+
+The room had four high, bare windows through which the afternoon
+sunshine streamed on the carpet.  The carpet had a pattern of pink
+peonies on a delicate buff ground, and was shamefully dirty.  And the
+vast apartment, with its white paint and gilding and Italian sketches
+in water-colour and statuettes under glass, might have been a lady's
+drawing-room.  But paint and gilding were tarnished; the chintz
+chair-covers soiled and torn; the pictures hung askew; and a smell of
+dog filled the air.
+
+Squire Moyle sat huddled in a deep chair beside the fire-place,
+facing the middle of the room, where a handsome, high-complexioned
+gentleman, somewhat past middle age, lounged on a settee and dangled
+a gold-mounted riding crop.  A handsome boy knelt at the back of the
+settee and leaned over the handsome gentleman's shoulder.  On the
+floor, between the two men, lay a canvas bag; and something moved
+inside it.  At the end of the room, by the farthest window, Honoria
+knelt over a big portfolio.  She wore the grey frock and pink sash
+which Taffy had seen in church that morning, and she tossed her dark
+hair back from her eyes as she looked up.
+
+The Squire crumpled up the letter in his hand.
+
+"Put the bag away," he said to the handsome gentleman.  "'Tis Sunday,
+I tell 'ee, and Parson will be here in an hour.  This is young
+six-foot I was telling about."  He turned to Taffy--
+
+"Boy, go and shake hands with Sir Harry Vyell."
+
+Taffy did as he was bidden.  "This is my son George," said Sir Harry;
+and Taffy shook hands with him, too, and liked his face.
+
+"Put the bag away, Harry," said the Squire.
+
+"Just to comfort 'ee, now!"
+
+"I tell 'ee I won't look at en."
+
+Sir Harry untied the neck of the bag, and drew out a smaller one;
+untied this, and out strutted a game-cock.
+
+The old Squire eyed it.  "H'm, he don't seem flourishing."
+
+"Don't abuse a bird that's come twelve miles in a bag on purpose to
+cheer you up.  He's a match for anything you can bring."
+
+"Tuts, man, he's dull--no colour nor condition.  Get along with 'ee;
+I wouldn' ask a bird of mine to break the Sabbath for a wastrel like
+that."
+
+Sir Harry drew out a shagreen-covered case and opened it.  Within, on
+a lining of pale blue velvet, lay two small sharp instruments of
+steel, very highly polished.  He lifted one, felt its point, replaced
+it, set down the case on the carpet, and fell to toying with the ears
+of the Gordon setter, which had come sniffing out of curiosity.
+
+"You're a very obstinate man," said Squire Moyle.  After a long pause
+he added, "I suppose you're wanting odds?"
+
+"Evens will do," said Sir Harry.
+
+The old man turned and rang the bell.
+
+"Tell Jim to fetch in the red cock," he shouted to the wall-eyed
+footman--who must have been waiting in the corridor, so promptly he
+appeared.
+
+"And Jim won't be long about it either," whispered Honoria.  She had
+come forward quietly, and stood at Taffy's elbow.
+
+Sir Harry shook a finger at her and laid it on his lips.  But the old
+Squire did not hear.  He sat glum, pulling a whisker and keeping a
+sour eye on the bird, which was strutting about in rather foolish
+bewilderment at the pink peonies on the carpet.
+
+"I'm giving you every chance," he grumbled at length.
+
+"Oh, as for that," Sir Harry replied, equably, "have it out in the
+yard, if you please, on your own dunghill."
+
+"No.  Indoors is bad enough."
+
+Jim appeared just then, and turned out to be Taffy's old enemy, the
+Whip, bearing the Squire's game-cock in a basket.  He took it out; a
+very handsome bird, with a hackle in which gold, purple and the
+richest browns shone and were blended.
+
+Sir Harry had picked up his bird and was heeling it with the long
+steel spurs; a very delicate process, to judge by the time occupied
+and the pucker on his good-tempered brow.
+
+"Ready?" he asked at length.
+
+Jim, who had been heeling the Squire's bird, nodded and the pair were
+set down.  They ruffled and flew at each other without an instant's
+hesitation.  The visitor, which five minutes before had been staring
+at the carpet so foolishly, was prompt enough now.  For a moment they
+paused, beak to beak, eye to eye, furious, with necks outstretched
+and hackles stiff with the rage of battle.  They began to rise and
+fall like two feathers tossing in the air, very quietly.  But for the
+soft whir of wings there was no sound in the room.  Taffy could
+scarcely believe they were fighting in earnest.  For a moment they
+seemed to touch--to touch and no more, and for a moment only--but in
+that moment the stroke was given.  The home champion fluttered down,
+stood on his legs for a moment, as if nothing had happened, then
+toppled over and lay twitching, as his conqueror strutted over him
+and lifted his throat to crow.
+
+Squire Moyle rose, clutching the corner of his chair.  His mouth
+opened and shut, but no words came.  Sir Harry caught up his bird,
+whipped off his spurs, and thrust him back into the bag.  The old man
+dropped back, letting his chin sink on his high stock-collar.
+
+"It serves me right.  Who shall deliver me from the wrath to come?"
+
+"Oh! as for that--" Sir Harry finished tying the neck of the bag, and
+lazily fell to fingering the setter's ear.
+
+The old man was muttering to himself.  Taffy looked at the dead bird,
+then at Honoria.  She was gazing at it too, with untroubled eyes.
+
+"But I _will_ be saved! I tell you, Harry, I _will!_  Take those
+birds away.  Honoria, hand me my Bible.  It's all here"--he tapped
+the heavy book--"miracles, redemption, justification by faith--I
+_will_ have faith.  I _will_ believe, every damned word of it!"
+
+Sir Harry broke in with a peal of laughter.  Taffy had never heard a
+laugh so musical.
+
+The old man was adjusting his spectacles; but he took them off and
+laid them down, his hands shaking with rage.
+
+"You came here to taunt me"--his voice shook as his hand--"me, an
+old man, with no son to my house.  You think, because I'm seeking
+higher things, there's no fight left in us or in the parish.  I tell
+you what; make that boy of yours strip and stand up, and I'll back
+the Parson's youngster for doubles or quits.  Off with your coat, my
+son, and stand up to him!"
+
+Taffy turned round in a daze.  He did not understand.  His eyes met
+Honoria's, and they were fastened on him curiously.  He was white in
+the face; the sight of the murdered game-cock had sickened him.
+
+"He doesn't look flourishing." Sir Harry mimicked the Squire's recent
+manner.
+
+Taffy turned with the look of a hunted animal.  He did not want to
+fight.  He hated this house and its inhabitants.  The other boy was
+stripping off his jacket with a good-humoured smile.
+
+"I--I don't want--" Taffy began fumbling with a button.  "Please--"
+
+"Off with your coat, boy!  You were game enough t'other day.  If you
+lick en, I'll put a new roof on your father's church."
+
+Taffy was still fumbling with his jacket-button when a bell sounded,
+clanging through the house.
+
+"The parson!"
+
+Squire Moyle clutched at his Bible like a child who has been caught
+playing in school.  Sir Harry stepped to the window and flung up the
+sash.  "Out you tumble, youngsters--you too, Miss, if you like.
+Pick up your coat, George--cut and run to the stables; I'll be round
+in a minute--quick, out you go!"
+
+The children scrambled over the sill and dropped on to the stone
+terrace.  As his father closed the sash behind him, George Vyell
+laughed out.  Then Taffy began to laugh; he laughed all the way as
+they ran.  When they reached the stables he was swaying with
+laughter.  There was a hepping-stock by the stable-wall, and he flung
+himself on to the slate steps.  He could not stop laughing.
+The two others stared at him.  They thought he had gone mad.
+
+"Here comes Dad!" cried George Vyell.
+
+This sobered Taffy.  He sat up and brushed his eyes.  Sir Harry
+whistled for Jim, and told him to saddle the horses.
+
+George and Honoria stood by the stable-door and watched the saddling.
+The horses were led out; Sir Harry's, a tall grey, George's, a roan
+cob.
+
+"Look here!" Sir Harry said to Jim; "you take my bird, and comfort
+your master with him.  I don't want him any more."
+
+The two rode out of the yard and away up the avenue.  Honoria planted
+herself in front of Taffy.
+
+"Would you have fought just now?" she asked.
+
+"I--I don't know.  That's my father calling."
+
+"But, would you have fought?"
+
+"I must go to him."  He would not look her in the face.
+
+"Tell me."
+
+"Don't bother!  I don't know."
+
+He ran out of the yard.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+GEORGE.
+
+It appeared that Honoria and Taffy were to do lessons together, and
+Mr. Raymond was to teach them.  This had been the meaning of his
+visit to Tredinnis House.  They began the very next day in the
+library at Tredinnis--a deserted room carpeted with badgers' skins,
+and lined with undusted books--works on farriery, veterinary surgery,
+and sporting subjects, long rows of the _Annual Register_, the
+_Arminian Magazine_.
+
+Taffy began by counting the badgers' skins.  There were eighteen, and
+the moths had got into them, so that the draught under the door
+puffed little drifts of hair over the polished boards.  Then he
+settled down to the first Latin declension--_Musa_, a muse; vocative,
+_Musa_, O muse!; genitive, Musae, of a muse.  Honoria began upon the
+ABC.
+
+Mr. Raymond brought a pile of his own books, and worked at them,
+scribbling notes in the margin or on long slips of paper, while the
+children learnt.  A servant came in with a message from Squire Moyle,
+and he left them for a while.
+
+"I call this nonsense," said Honoria.  "How am I to get these silly
+letters into my head?"
+
+Taffy was glad of the chance to show off.  "Oh, that's easy.  You
+make up a tale about them.  See here.  A is the end of a house; it's
+just like one with a beam across.  B is a cat with his tail curled
+under him--watch me drawing it.  C is an old woman stooping; and D is
+another cat, only his back is more rounded.  Once upon a time, there
+lived in a cottage an old woman who went about with two cats, one on
+each side of her--that's how you go on."
+
+"But I can't go on.  You must do it for me."
+
+"Well, each of these cats had a comb, and was combed every Saturday
+night.  One was a good cat, and kept his comb properly--like E, you
+see.  But the other had broken a tooth out of his--that's F--"
+
+"I expect he was a fulmart," said Honoria.
+
+Taffy agreed.  He didn't know what a fulmart was, but he was not
+going to confess it.  So he went on hurriedly, and Honoria thought
+him a wonder.  They came to W.
+
+"So they got into a ship (I'll show you how to make one out of paper,
+exactly like W), and sailed up into the sky, for the ship was a Ship
+of Stars--you make X's for stars; but that's a witch-ship; so it
+stuck fast in Y, which is a cleft ash-stick, and then came a stroke
+of lightning, Z, and burnt them all up!"  He stopped, out of breath.
+
+"I don't understand the ending at all," said Honoria.  "What is a
+Ship of Stars?"
+
+"Haven't you ever seen one?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I have.  There's a story about it--"
+
+"Tell me about it."
+
+"I'll tell you lots of stories afterwards; about the Frog-king and
+Aladdin and Man Friday and The Girl who trod on a Loaf."
+
+"And the Ship of Stars?"
+
+"N--no." Taffy felt himself blushing.  "That's one of the stories
+that won't come--and they're the loveliest of all," he added, in a
+burst of confidence.
+
+Honoria thought for a moment, but did not understand in the least.
+All she said was, "what funny words you use!"  She went back to her
+alphabet--A, house; B, cat.  It came more easily now.
+
+After lessons she made him tell her a story; and Taffy, who wished to
+be amusing, told her about the "Valiant Tailor who killed Seven at a
+Blow."  To his disgust, it scarcely made her smile.  But after this
+she was always asking for stories, and always listened solemnly, with
+her dark eyes fixed on his face.  She never seemed to admire him at
+all for his gift, but treated it with a kind of indulgent wonder, as
+if he were some queer animal with uncommon tricks.  This dashed Taffy
+a bit, for he liked to be thought a fine fellow.  But he went on
+telling his stories, and sometimes invented new ones for her.
+George Vyell was much more appreciative.  Sir Harry had heard of the
+lessons, and wrote to beg that his son might join the class.
+So George rode over three times a week to learn Latin, which he did
+with uncommon slowness.  But he thought Taffy's stories stunning, and
+admired him without a shade of envy.  The two boys liked each other;
+and when they were alone Taffy stood an inch or two higher in
+self-conceit than when Honoria happened to be by.  But he took more
+pains with his stories if she was listening.  As for her lessons,
+Honoria got through them by honest plodding.  She never quite saw the
+use of them, but she liked Mr. Raymond.  She learnt more steadily
+than either of the boys.
+
+One day George rode over with two pairs of boxing-gloves dangling
+from his saddle.  After lessons he and Taffy had a try with them, in
+a clearing behind the shrubberies where the gardener had heaped his
+sweepings of dry leaves to rot down for manure.
+
+"But, look here," said George, after the first round; "you'll never
+learn if you hit so wild as that.  You must keep your head up, and
+watch my eyes and feint."
+
+Taffy couldn't help it.  As soon as ever he struck out, he forgot
+that it was not real fighting.  And he felt ashamed to look George
+straight in the face, for his own eyes were full of tears of
+excitement.  At the end of the bout, when George said, "Now we must
+shake hands; it's the proper thing to do," he looked bewildered for a
+moment.  It made George laugh in his easy way, and then Taffy laughed
+too.
+
+After this they had a bout almost every day; and he was soon able to
+hold his own and treat it as sport.  But somehow he always felt a
+passion behind it, whispering to him to put some nastiness into his
+blows, especially when Honoria came to look on.  And yet he liked
+George far better than he liked Honoria.  Indeed, he adored George,
+and the Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings when George appeared
+were the bright spots in his week.  Lessons were over at twelve
+o'clock; by one o'clock Taffy had to be home for dinner.  Loneliness
+filled the afternoons, but the child peopled them with extravagant
+fancies.  He and George were crusaders sworn to defend the Holy
+Sepulchre, and bound by an oath of brotherhood, though George was a
+Red Cross Knight and he a plain squire; and after the most surprising
+adventures Taffy received the barbed and poisoned arrow intended for
+his master, and died most impressively, with George and Honoria, and
+Richard Coeur de Lion, and most of the characters from "Ivanhoe,"
+sobbing round his bed.  There was a Blondel variant too, with George
+imprisoned in a high tower; and a monstrous conglomerate tale in
+which most of the heroes of history and romance played second fiddle
+to George, whose pre-eminence, though occasionally challenged by
+Achilles, Sir Lancelot, or the Black Prince, was regularly vindicated
+by Taffy's timely help.
+
+This tale, with endless variations, actually lasted him for two good
+years.  The scene of it never lay among the towans, but round about
+his old home or the well-remembered meadow at Tewkesbury.  That was
+his plain of Troy, his Field of Cressy, his lists of Ashby de la
+Zouche.  The high road at the back of the towans crossed a stream, by
+a ford and a footbridge; and the travelling postman, if he had any
+letters for the Parsonage, would stop by the footbridge and blow a
+horn.  He little guessed what challenges it sounded to the small boy
+who came running for the post.
+
+The postman came by, as a rule, at two o'clock or thereabouts.
+One afternoon in early spring Mr. Raymond happened to be starting for
+a walk when the horn was blown, and he and Taffy went to meet the
+post together.  There were three or four letters which the Vicar
+opened; and one for Humility, which he put in his pocket.  In the
+midst of his reading, he looked up, smiled over his spectacles, and
+said:
+
+"Oxford has won the boat-race."
+
+Taffy had been deep in the Fifth Aeneid for some weeks, and
+boat-racing ran much in his mind.
+
+"Who is Oxford?" he asked.
+
+Mr. Raymond took off his spectacles and wiped them.  It came on him
+suddenly that this child, whom he loved, was shut out from many of
+his dearest thoughts.
+
+"Oxford is a city," he answered; and added, "the most beautiful city
+in the world."
+
+"Shall I ever go there?" Taffy asked.
+
+Mr. Raymond walked off without seeming to hear the question.
+But that evening after supper he told the most wonderful tales of
+Oxford, while Taffy listened and hoped his mother would forget his
+bedtime; and Humility listened too, bending over her _guipure_.
+The love with which he looked back to Oxford was the second passion
+of Samuel Raymond's life; and Humility was proud of it, not jealous
+at all.  He forgot all the struggle, all the slights, all the grip of
+poverty.  To him those years had become an heroic age, and men
+Homeric men.  And so he made them appear to Taffy, to whom it was
+wonderful that his father should have moved among such giants.
+
+"And shall I go there too?"
+
+Humility glanced up quickly, and met her husband's eyes.
+
+"Some day, please God!" she said.  Mr. Raymond stared at the embers
+of wreck-wood on the hearth.
+
+From that night Oxford became the main scene of Taffy's imaginings; a
+wholly fictitious Oxford, pieced together of odds and ends from
+picture-books, and peopled with all the old heroes.  And so, with
+contests on the models of the Fifth Aeneid, the story went forward
+gallantly for many months.
+
+But the afternoons were long; and at times the interminable
+sand-hills and everlasting roar of the sea oppressed the child with a
+sense of loneliness beyond words.  The rabbits and gulls would not
+make friends with him, and he ached for companionship.  Of that ache
+was born his half-crazy adoration of George Vyell.  There were hours
+when he lay in some nook of the towans, peering into the ground,
+seeing pictures in the sand--pictures of men and regiments and
+battles, shifting with the restless drift; until, unable to bear it,
+he flung out his hands to efface them, and hid his face in the sand,
+sobbing, "George!  George!"
+
+At night he would creep out of bed to watch the lighthouse winking
+away in the north-east.  George lived somewhere beyond.  And again it
+would be "George!  George!"
+
+And when the happy mornings came, and George with them, Taffy was as
+shy as a lover.  So George never guessed.  It might have surprised
+that very careless young gentleman, when he looked up from his verbs
+which govern the dative, and caught Taffy's eye, could he have seen
+himself in his halo there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+THE SQUIRE'S SOUL.
+
+Two years passed, and a third winter.  The church was now well on its
+way to restoration.  The roof had been repaired, the defective
+timbers removed and sound ones inserted, the south wall strengthened
+with three buttresses, the foundations on that side examined and
+shored up.  The old Squire did not halt here.  Furniture arrived for
+the interior; a handsome altar cloth, a small gilt cross, a dozen
+hanging lamps, an oaken lectern, cushions, hymn-books, a big new
+Bible with purple book-markers.  He promised to take out the east
+window--which was just a patchwork of common glass, like a cucumber
+frame--and replace it with sound mullions and stained glass, in
+memory of his only daughter, Honoria's mother.  She had run away from
+Tredinnis House, and married a penniless captain; and Honoria's
+surname was Callastair, though nobody uttered it in the old man's
+hearing.  Husband and wife had died in India, of cholera, within
+three years of their marriage; and the old man had sent for the
+child.  Having relented so far, he went on to do it thoroughly, in
+his own fashion.  He neglected Honoria; but she might have anything
+she wanted for the asking.  It seemed, though, that she wanted very
+little.
+
+He allowed Mr. Raymond to choose the design for this window.  He only
+stipulated that the subject should be Jonah and the whale.
+"There's no story'll compare with it for trying a man's faith."
+
+When the window came, and was erected, he complained that it left out
+most of the whale, of which the jaws and one wicked little red eye
+were all that appeared.  "It looks half-hearted.  Why didn't they
+swim en all in?  'Tis neck or nothin' wi' that story; but they've
+made it neck _and_ nothin'.  An' after colouring en violet too!"
+
+In return, the Vicar had hunted up some county histories and heraldic
+works in the library at Tredinnis, and was now busy re-emblazoning
+with his own hand the devices carved on the Moyle pew.
+
+Little by little, too, the congregation had grown.  The people came
+shyly at first.  They mistrusted the Established Church.  But they
+treated the Vicar with politeness when he visited them.  And seeing
+him so awkward, and how with all his book-learning he listened to
+their opinions and blushed when he offered any small service, they
+grew to like him, being shy themselves.  They pitied him too, knowing
+the old Squire better than he did.  So from Sunday to Sunday Taffy,
+pulling at his rope in the belfry, counted the new-comers, and
+Humility talked about them on the way home and at dinner.  They were
+fisher folk for the most part; the men in blue guernseys and corduroy
+trousers, and some with curled black beards and rings in their ears;
+the women, in gayer colours than you see in an up-country church; a
+southern-seeming race, with southern-sounding names--Santo, Jose,
+Hugo, Bennet, Cara.  They belonged--so Mr. Raymond often told
+himself--to the class which Christ called His Apostles.  Sometimes,
+scanning an olive-coloured face, he would be minded of the Sea of
+Gennesareth; and, a minute later, the sight of the grey coast-line
+with its whirled spray would chill the fancy.
+
+The congregation always lingered outside the porch after service; and
+then one would say to another: "Wall, there's more in the man than
+you'd think.  See you up to the meetin' this evenin' I s'pose?
+So long!"
+
+But having come once, they came again.  And the family at the
+Parsonage were full of hope, though Taffy longed sometimes for a
+play-fellow, and sometimes for he knew not what, and Humility bent
+over her lace pillow and thought of green lanes and of Beer Village
+and women at work by sunshiny doorways; and wondered if their faces
+had changed.
+
+     "O, that I were where I would be!
+        Then would I be where I am not;
+      But where I am, there I must be,
+        And where I would be, I cannot."
+
+She never told a soul of her home thoughts.  Her husband never
+guessed them.  But Taffy (without knowing why), whenever this verse
+from his old playbook came into his head, connected it with his
+mother.
+
+But the old Squire was getting impatient.  He took quite a feudal
+view of the saving of his soul, and would have dragged the whole
+parish to church by main force, had it been possible.
+
+Late one afternoon, Taffy was lying in one of his favourite nooks in
+the lee of the towans, when he heard voices and looked up.  And there
+sat the old gentleman gazing down on him from horseback, with Bill
+Udy at his side.  The Squire was in hunting dress.
+
+"What be doin' down there?" he asked.  "Praying?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"I wish you would.  I wish you'd pray for me.  I've heerd that a
+child'll do good sometimes when grown folk can't.  I doubt your
+father isn't goin' to do the good I looked for from en.  He don't
+believe in sudden conversion.  Here, Bill, take the mare and lead her
+home."
+
+He dismounted, and seated himself with a groan on the edge of the
+sand-pit.
+
+"Look here; I've got convictions of sin, but I can't get no forrader.
+What's to be done?"
+
+"I don't know, sir," Taffy stammered, with his eyes on the Squire's
+spurs.
+
+"You can pray for me, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, do it.  Do it to-night.  I've got convictions, boy; but my
+heart's like a stone.  I've had a wisht day of it.  If the weather
+holds back, we'll kill a May fox this year.  But where's the comfort?
+All the time to-day 'twas '_Lippety-lop, no peace for the wicked!
+Lippety-lop, no peace for the wicked!_' I couldn't stand it; I came
+away.  You'll do it, won't 'ee?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Is your father at home?  I'll call an' speak to en.  He does me
+good; but he can't melt what I carry here."
+
+He tapped his breast and rising without another word strode off
+across the sand-hills with his head down and his hands clasped
+beneath his coat-tails, which flapped in the wind as he went.
+
+Taffy ran and overtook Bill Udy and the mare.
+
+"He's in a wisht poor state, id'n a'?" said Bill Udy, who was parish
+clerk.  "Bless 'ee, tidn' no manner of use.  His father before en was
+took in just the same way.  Turned religious late in life.  What
+d'ee think he did?  Got his men together one Sunday mornin', marched
+them up to Meetin' house, up to Four Turnin's; slipped his ridin'
+crop through the haps o' the door, an' 'Now my Billies,' says he,
+through the key-hole, 'not a man or woman of 'ee leaves the place
+till you've said that Amazin' Creed.  Come along,' he says,
+'_Whosoever will be saved_ an' the sooner 'tis over, the sooner
+you gets home to dinner.'  A fine talk there was!  Squire, he's just
+such another.  Funny things he've a-done.  Married a poor soul from
+Roseland way--a Miss Trevanion--quite a bettermost lady.  When Miss
+Susannah was born--that's Miss Honoria's mother--she went to be
+churched.  What must he do, to show his annoyance that 'twasn't a
+boy, but drive a she-ass into church?  Very stiff behaviour.
+He drove the beast right fore an' into the big pew.  The Moyles, you
+see, 've got a mule for their shield of arms.  He've had his own way
+too much; that's of it.
+
+"One day he dropped into church just before sarmon-time.  There was a
+rabbit squattin' outside 'pon his father's tombstone.  Squire crep'
+up an' clapped his Sunday hat 'pon top of en.  Took en into church.
+One o' the curate chaps was preachin'--a timorous little fellah.
+By-'n'-by Squire slips out his rabbit.  'Wirroo, boys!  Coorse en,
+coorse en--we'll have en for dinner!'  Aw, a pretty dido!  The curate
+fellah ran out to door an' the rabbit after en.  Folks did say the
+rabbit was the old Squire's soul, an' that he'd turned black inside
+the young Squire's hat.  Very stiff behaviour.
+
+"He've had his own way too much; that's what it is.  When he was
+pricked for sheriff, he hired a ramshackle po'shay, painted a mule
+'pon the panel, an' stuffed the footmen's stockings with bran till it
+looked a case of dropsy.  He was annoyed at bein' put to the expense.
+The judge lost his temper at bein' met in such a way, an' pitched
+into en in open court, specially about the mule.  He didn't know
+'twas the Squire's shield of arms.  Squire stood it for some time;
+but at last he ups an' says, 'If you was an old woman of _mine_, I'd
+dress 'ee different; an' if you was an old woman of mine an' kep'
+scolding like that, I'd have 'ee in the duckin'-stool for your
+sauce!'  He almost went to gaol for that.  But they put it on the
+ground the judge had insulted his shield of arms, an' so he got off.
+
+"Well, wish-'ee-well! Don't you trouble about _he_.  He've had his
+own way too much, but he won't get it this time."
+
+That night Taffy dreamt that he met Squire Moyle walking along the
+shore; but the sand clogged him, and his spurs sank in it and his
+riding-boots.  When he was ankle deep he began to call out, "Pray for
+me!"  Then Taffy saw a black rabbit running on the firm sand to the
+breakers; and the Squire cried "Pray for me!  I must catch en!
+'Tis my father's soul running off!" and put his hand into his breast
+and drew out a stone and flung it.  But the stone, as soon as it
+touched the sand, turned into another rabbit, and the pair ran off
+together along the shore.  The old man tried to follow, but the sand
+held him; and the tide was rising. . . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+ENTER THE KING'S POSTMAN.
+
+A faint south wind murmured beneath the eaves.  It died away, and for
+an hour there was peace on the towans.  Then the sands began to
+trickle again, and the rushes to whisper and bend away from the sea,
+toward the high moors over which the gulls had flown yesterday and
+disappeared.  By-and-by a spit or two of rain came flying out of the
+black north-west.  The drops fell in the path of the sand, but the
+sand drove over and covered them, racing faster and faster.
+
+Day rose, and Taffy awoke.  The house walls were shaking.  With each
+blow the wind ran up a scale of notes and ended with a howl.
+He looked out.  Sea and sky had melted into one; only now and then
+white surf line heaved into sight, and melted back into grey.
+After breakfast he and his father started to battle their way to
+Tredinnis House, while Humility barricaded the door behind them.
+Taffy wore a suit of oilers, of which he was mightily proud.
+
+They made their way under the lee of the towans to escape the
+stinging sand.  Within Tredinnis Gates they found a couple of
+pine-trees blown down across the road, and scrambled over their
+trunks.  Before lessons, Taffy boasted a lot of his journey to
+Honoria, and almost forgot to be sorry that George did not appear,
+though it was Wednesday.
+
+They had no trouble in reaching home.  The gale hurled them along.
+Taffy, leaning his back against it, could scarcely feel his feet
+touching ground.  Humility unfastened the door, looking white and
+anxious.  Before they could close it again, the wind swept a big dish
+off the dresser with a crash.
+
+Taffy slept soundly that night.  He did not hear a knocking which
+sounded on the house-door, soon after eleven o'clock.  The man who
+knocked came from Tresedder, one of the moor farms.  "Oh, sir! did
+'ee see the rockets go up over Innis?  There'll be dead men down 'pon
+the Island rocks."
+
+Taffy slept on.  When he came downstairs next morning there was a
+stranger in the kitchen--a little old man, huddled in a blanket
+before the great fireplace, where a line of clothes hung drying.
+Humility was stooping to wedge a sand-bag under the door.  She looked
+up at Taffy with a wan little smile.
+
+"There has been a wreck," she said.
+
+"Glory be!" exclaimed the stranger from the fire-place.
+
+Taffy glanced at him, but could see little more than the back of a
+bald head above the blankets.
+
+"Where's the ship?" he asked.
+
+"Gone," answered the Vicar, coming at that moment from the inner room
+where his books were.  "She must have broken up in less than ten
+minutes after she struck the Island--parted and gone down in six
+fathoms of water."
+
+"And the men?  Was father there?"  It bewildered Taffy that all this
+should have happened while he was sleeping.
+
+"There was no time to fix the rocket apparatus.  She was late in
+making her distress signals.  But I doubt if anything could have been
+done.  She went down too quickly."
+
+"But--"  Taffy's gaze wandered to the bald head.
+
+"He was washed clean over the ridge where she struck, and swept into
+Innis Pool--one big wave carried him into safety--one man out of
+six."
+
+"Hallelujah!" cried the rescued man facing round in his chair.
+"Might ha' been scat like an egg-shell, and here I be shoutin'
+praises!"  Taffy saw that he was a clean-shaven little fellow, with
+puckered cheeks and two wisps of grey hair curling forward from his
+ears.
+
+Mr. Raymond frowned.  "I am sure," said he, "you ought not to be
+talking so much."
+
+"I will sing and give praise, sir, beggin' you pardon, with the best
+member that I have.  Who is weak, and I am not weak?  Who is offended
+and I burn not?  Hallelujah!  A-men!"
+
+He took his basin of bread and milk from Humility's hand, and ate by
+the fire.  She had wrung his clothes through fresh water, and as soon
+as they were thoroughly dry he retired upstairs to change.  He came
+back to his seat by the fire.
+
+"Now, I be like 'Possel Paul," he said, rubbing his hands, and
+stretching them out to the blaze.  "After his shipwreck, you know,
+when the folks 'pon the island showed en kindness.  This is the
+Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in your eyes.
+
+     "'Not fearing nor doubting,
+         With Christ by my side,
+       I hopes to die shouting,
+         The Lord will provide!'"
+
+Humility thought that for certain the shipwreck had turned his head.
+
+"But where do you come from?" she asked.
+
+"They call me Jacky Pascoe, ma'am; but I calls myself the King's
+Postman--
+
+     "'Jacky Pascoe is my name,
+         Wendron is my nation,
+       Nowhere is my dwelling-place,
+         For Christ is my salvation--'
+
+"I was brought to a miner, over to Wheal Jewel, in Illogan Parish;
+but got conversion fifteen years since, an' now I go about praising
+the Name.  I've been miner, cafender, cooper, mason, seaman,
+scissor-grinder, umbrella-mender, holli-bubber, all by turns.
+I sticks my hands in my pockets, an' waits on the Lord; an' what he
+tells me to do, I do.  This day week I was up to Fowey, working on
+the tip.[1]  There was a little schooner there, the _Garibaldi_, of
+Newport, discharging coal.  The Lord said to me, 'Arise, go in that
+there schooner!'  I sought out the skipper, and said, 'Where be bound
+for next?'  'Back to Newport,' says he.  'That'll suit me,' I says,
+an' persuaded en to take me.  But the Lord knew where she were bound
+better'n the skipper; and here I be!"
+
+It seemed to his hearers that this man took little thought of his
+drowned shipmates.  Mr. Raymond looked up as he strapped his books
+together.
+
+"You were not the only man in that schooner," he said, rather
+severely.
+
+"Glory be!  Who be I, to question the Lord's ways?  One day I picked
+up a map, an' seed a place on it called 'Little Sins.'  'Little Sins
+wants great Deliverance,' says I, an' I started clane off an' walked
+to the place, though I'd never so much as heard of it till then.
+'Twas harvest-time there, an' I danced into the field, shouting
+'Glory, glory.  The harvest is plenty, but the labourers be few!'
+The farmer was moved to give me a job 'pon the spot.  I bided there
+two year, an' built them a chapel an' preached the Word in it.
+They offered me money to stop an' preach; and I laid it before the
+Lord.  But He said, 'You're the King's Postman.  Keep moving, keep on
+moving!  'I've built two more chapels since then."
+
+Late that afternoon three bodies were recovered from the sea--the
+captain, the mate, and a boy of about sixteen; and were buried in the
+churchyard next day, as soon as the inquest was over.  Pascoe
+followed the coffins, and pointed the service at the grave-side with
+interjaculations of his own.  "Glory be!"  "A-men!"  "Hallelujah!"
+"Great Redemption!"  To the Vicar's surprise the small crowd after a
+minute began to follow the man's lead, until at length he could
+scarcely read for these interruptions.
+
+At supper that night Pascoe sprang a question on the Vicar.
+
+"Be you convarted?" he asked, looking up with his mouth full of bread
+and cheese.
+
+"I hope so."
+
+"Aw, you _hopes!_ 'Tis a bad case with 'ee, then.  When a man's
+convarted, he _knows_.  Seemin' to me, you baint.  You don't show
+enough of the bright side.  Now, as I go along, my very toes keep
+ticking salvation.  Down goes one foot, 'Glory be!'  Down goes the
+other, 'A-men!'  Aw! I must dance for joy!"
+
+He got up and danced around the kitchen.
+
+"I wish the man would go," Humility thought to herself.
+
+His very next words answered her wish.  "I'll be leavin' to-morrow,
+friends.  I've got a room down to the village, an' I've borreyed a
+razor.  I'm goin' to tramp round the mines at the back here, an'
+shave the miners at a ha'penny a chin.  That'll pay my way.  There's
+a new preacher planned to the Bible Christians, down to Innis, an'
+I'm goin' to help he.  My dears, don't 'ee tell me the Lord didn'
+know what He was about when He cast the _Garibaldi_ ashore!"
+
+He left the Parsonage next day.  "Ma'am," he said to Humility on
+leaving, "I salute this here house.  Peace be on this here house, for
+it is worthy.  He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet
+shall receive a prophet's reward."
+
+Two mornings later, Taffy, looking out from his bedroom window soon
+after daybreak, saw the prophet trudging along the road.  He had a
+clean white bag slung across his shoulder; it carried his soap and
+razors, no doubt.  And every now and then he waved his walking-stick
+and skipped as he went.
+
+[1] Loading vessels from the jetties.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+A HAPPY DAY.
+
+A volley of sand darkened and shook the pane.  Taffy, sponging
+himself in his tub and singing between his gasps, looked up hastily,
+then flung a big towel about him and ran to the window.
+
+Honoria was standing below; and Comedy, her gray pony, with a creel
+and a couple of fishing rods strapped to his canvas girth.
+
+"Wake up!  I've come to take you fishing."
+
+Mr. Raymond had started off at daybreak to walk to Truro on business;
+so there would be no lessons that morning, and Taffy had been looking
+forward to a lonely whole holiday.
+
+"I've brought two pasties," said Honoria, "and a bottle of milk.
+We'll go over to George's country and catch trout.  He is to meet us
+at Vellingey Bridge.  We arranged it all yesterday, only I kept it
+for a surprise."
+
+Taffy could have leapt for joy.  "Go in and speak to mother," he
+said; "she's in the kitchen."
+
+Honoria hitched Comedy's bridle over the gate, walked up the barren
+little garden, and knocked at the door.  When Mrs. Raymond opened it
+she held out a hand politely.
+
+"How do you do?" she said, "I have come to ask if Taffy may go
+fishing with me."
+
+Except in church, and outside the porch for a formal word or two,
+Humility and Honoria had never met.  This was Honoria's first visit
+to the Parsonage, and the sight of the clean kitchen and shining pots
+and pans filled her with wonder.  Humility shook hands and made a
+silent note of the child's frock, which was torn and wanted brushing.
+
+"He may go, and thank you.  It's lonely for him here, very often."
+
+"I suppose," said Honoria gravely, "I ought to have called before.
+I wish--"  She was about to say that she wished Humility would come
+to Tredinnis.  But her eyes wandered to the orderly dresser and the
+scalding-pans by the fireplace.
+
+"I mean--if Taffy had a sister it would be different."
+
+Humility bent to lift a kettle off the fire.  When she faced round
+again, her eyes were smiling though her lip trembled a little.
+
+"How bright you keep everything here!" said Honoria.
+
+"There's plenty of sand to scour with; it's bad for the garden
+though."
+
+"Don't you grow any flowers?"
+
+"I planted a few pansies the first year; they came from my home up in
+Devonshire.  But the sand covered them.  It covers everything."
+She smiled, and asked suddenly, "May I kiss you?"
+
+"Of course you may," said Honoria.  But she blushed as Humility did
+it, and they both laughed shyly.
+
+"Hullo!" cried Taffy from the foot of the stairs.  Honoria moved to
+the window.  She heard the boy and his mother laughing and making
+pretence to quarrel, while he chose the brownest of the hot cakes
+from the wood-ashes.  She stared out upon Humility's buried pansies.
+It was strange--a minute back she had felt quite happy.
+
+Humility set them off, and watched them till they disappeared in the
+first dip of the towans; and then sat down in the empty kitchen and
+wept a little before carrying up her mother's breakfast.
+
+Honoria rode in silence for the first mile; but Taffy sang and
+whistled by turns as he skipped alongside.  The whole world flashed
+and glittered around the boy and girl; the white gulls fishing, the
+swallows chasing one another across the dunes, the lighthouse on the
+distant spit, the white-washed mine-chimneys on the ridge beside the
+shore.  Away on the rises of the moor one hill-farm laughed to
+another in a steady flame of furze blossom--laughed with a tinkling
+of singing larks.  And beyond the last rise lay the land of wonders,
+George's country.  "Hark!"  Honoria reined up.  "Isn't that the
+cuckoo?"  Taffy listened.  Yes, somewhere among the hillocks seaward
+its note was dinning.
+
+"Count!"
+
+     "Cuckoo, cherry-tree,
+      Be a good bird and tell to me
+      How many years before I die?"
+
+"Ninety-six!" Taffy announced.
+
+"Ninety-two," said Honoria, "but we won't quarrel about it.
+Happy month to you!"
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"It is the first of May.  Come along; perhaps we shall meet the
+Mayers, though we're too late, I expect.  Hullo!  there's a miner--
+let's ask him."
+
+The miner came upon them suddenly--footsteps make no sound among the
+towans; a young man in a suit stained orange-tawny, with a tallow
+candle stuck with a lump of clay in the brim of his hat, and a
+striped tulip stuck in another lump of clay at the back and nodding.
+
+"Good-morning, miss.  You've come a day behind the fair."
+
+"Is the Maying over?" Honoria asked.
+
+"Iss, fay.  I've just been home to shift myself."
+
+He walked along with them and told them all about it in the
+friendliest manner.  It had been a grand Maying--all the boys and
+girls in the parish--with the hal-an-tow, of course--such dancing!
+Fine and tired some of the maids must be--he wouldn't give much for
+the work they'd do to-day.  Two May mornings in one year would make a
+grass-captain mad, as the saying was.  But there--'twas a poor spirit
+that never rejoiced.
+
+"Which do you belong to?" Taffy nodded toward the mine-chimneys on
+the sky-line high on their left, which hid the sea, though it lay
+less than half a mile away and the roar of it was in their ears--just
+such a roar as the train makes when rushing through a tunnel.
+
+"Bless you, I'm a tinner.  I belong to Wheal Gooniver, up the valley.
+Wheal Vlo there, 'pon the cliff, he's lead.  And the next to him,
+Wheal Penhale, he's iron.  I came a bit out of my way with you for
+company."
+
+Soon after parting from him they crossed the valley-stream (Taffy had
+to wade it), and here they happened on a dozen tall girls at work
+"spalling" the tin-ore, but not busy.  The most of them leaned on
+their hammers or stood with hands on hips, their laughter drowning
+the _thud, thud_ of the engine-house and the rattle of the stamps up
+the valley.  And the cause of it all seemed to be a smaller girl who
+stood by with a basket in her arms.
+
+"Here you be, Lizzie!" cried one.  "Here's a young lady and gentleman
+coming with money in their pockets."
+
+Lizzie turned.  She was a child of fourteen, perhaps; brown skinned,
+with shy, wild eyes.  Her stockings were torn, her ragged clothes
+decorated with limp bunches of bluebells, and her neck and wrists
+with twisted daisy chains.  She skipped up to Honoria and held out a
+basket.  Within it, in a bed of fern, lay a May-doll among a few
+birds' eggs--a poor wooden thing in a single garment of pink calico.
+
+"Give me something for my doll, miss!" she begged.
+
+"Aw, that's too tame," one of the girls called out, and pitched her
+voice to the true beggar's whine: "Spare a copper!  My only child,
+dear kind lady, and its only father broke his tender neck in a
+blasting accident, and left me twelve to maintain!"
+
+All the girls began laughing again.  Honoria did not laugh.  She was
+feeling in her pocket.
+
+"What is your name?" she asked.
+
+"Lizzie Pezzack.  My father tends the lighthouse.  Give me something
+for my doll, miss!"
+
+Honoria held out a half-crown piece.
+
+"Hand it to me."
+
+The child did not understand.  "Give me something--" she began again
+in her dull, level voice.
+
+Honoria stamped her foot.  "Give it to me!" She snatched up the doll
+and thrust it into the fishing creel, tossed the coin into Lizzie's
+basket, and taking Comedy by the bridle, moved up the path.
+
+"She've adopted en!" They laughed and called out to Lizzie that she
+was in luck's way.  But Taffy saw the child's face as she stared into
+the empty basket, and that it was perplexed and forlorn.
+
+"Why did you do that?" he asked, as he caught up with Honoria.
+She did not answer.
+
+And now they turned away from the sea, and struck a high road which
+took them between upland farms and across the ridge of cultivated
+land to a valley full of trees.  A narrow path led inland up this
+valley.  They had followed it under pale green shadows, in Indian
+file, the pony at Honoria's heels and Taffy behind, and stepped out
+into sunlight again upon a heathery moor where a trout stream
+chattered and sparkled.  And there by a granite bridge they found
+George fishing, with three small trout shining on the turf beside
+him.
+
+This was a day which Taffy remembered all his life, and yet most
+confusedly.  Indeed there was little to remember it by--little to be
+told except that all the while the stream talked, the larks sang, and
+in the hollow of the hills three children were happy.  George landed
+half a dozen trout before lunch-time; but Taffy caught none, partly
+because he knew nothing about fishing, partly because the chatter of
+the stream set him telling tales to himself and he forgot the rod in
+his hand.  And Honoria, after hooking a tiny fish and throwing it
+back into the water, wandered off in search of larks' nests.
+She came slowly back when George blew a whistle announcing lunch.
+
+"Hullo! What's this?" he asked, as he dived a hand into her creel.
+"Ugh! a doll!  I say, Taffy, let's float her down the river.
+What humbug, Honoria!"
+
+But she had snatched the doll and crammed it back roughly into the
+creel.  A minute later, when they were not looking, she lifted the
+lid again and disposed the poor thing more gently.
+
+"Why don't you talk, one of you?" George demanded, with his mouth
+full.
+
+Taffy shook himself out of his waking dream--"I was wondering where
+it goes to," he said, and nodded toward the running water.
+
+"It goes down to Langona," said George, "and that's just a creek full
+of sand, with a church right above it in a big grass meadow--the
+queerest small church you ever saw.  But I've heard my father tell
+that hundreds of years back a big city stood there, with seven fine
+churches and quays, and deep water alongside and above, so that ships
+could sail right up to the ford.  They came from all parts of the
+world for tin and lead, and the people down in the city had nothing
+to do but sit still and grow rich."
+
+"Somebody must have worked," interrupted Honoria; "on the buildings
+and all that."
+
+"The building was done by convicts.  The story is that convicts were
+transported here from all over the kingdom."
+
+"Did they live in the city?"
+
+"No; they had a kind of camp across the creek.  They dug out the
+harbour too, and kept it clear of sand.  You can still see the marks
+of their pickaxes along the cliffs; I'll show them to you some day.
+My father knows all about it, because his great-great-great-great--
+grandfather (and a heap more 'greats,' I don't know how many) was the
+only one saved when the city was buried."
+
+"Was he from the city, or one of the convicts?" asked Honoria, who
+had not forgiven George's assault upon her doll.
+
+"He was a baby at the time, and couldn't remember," George answered,
+with fine composure.  "They say he was found high up the creek, just
+where you cross it by the foot-bridge.  The bridge is covered at high
+water; and if you try to cross below, especially when the tide is
+flowing, just you look out!  Twice a day the sands become quick
+there.  They've swallowed scores.  I'll tell you another thing:
+there's a bird builds somewhere in the cliffs there--a crake, the
+people call it--and they say that whenever he goes crying about the
+sands, it means that a man will be drowned there."
+
+"Rubbish!  I don't believe in your city."
+
+"Very well, then, I'll tell you something else.  The fishermen have
+seen it--five or six of them.  You know the kind of haze that gets up
+sometimes on hot days, when the sun's drawing water?  They say that
+if you're a mile or two out and this happens between you and Langona
+Creek, you can see the city quite plain above the shore, with the
+seven churches and all."
+
+"_I_ can see it!" Taffy blurted this out almost without knowing that
+he spoke; and blushed furiously when George laughed.  "I mean--I'm
+sure--" he began to explain.
+
+"If you can see it," said Honoria, "you had better describe George's
+property for him."  She yawned.  "He can't tell the story himself--
+not one little bit."
+
+"Right you are, miss," George agreed.  "Fire away, Taffy."
+
+Taffy thought for a minute, then, still with a red face, began.
+"It is all true, as George says.  A fine city lies there, covered
+with the sands; and this was what happened.  The King of Langona had
+a son, a handsome young Prince, who lived at home until he was
+eighteen, and then went on his travels.  That was the custom, you
+know.  The Prince took only his foster-brother, whose name was John,
+and they travelled for three years.  On their way back, as they came
+to Langona Creek, they saw the convicts at work, and in one of the
+fields was a girl digging alone.  She had a ring round her ankle,
+like the rest, with a chain and iron weight, but she was the most
+beautiful girl the Prince had ever seen.  So he pulled up his horse
+and asked her who she was, and how she came to be wearing the chain.
+She told him she was no convict, but the daughter of a convict, and
+it was the law for the convict's children to wear these things.
+'To-night,' said the Prince, 'you shall wear a ring of gold and be a
+Princess,' and he commanded John to file away the ring and take her
+upon his horse.  They rode across the creak and came to the palace;
+and the Prince, after kissing his father and mother, said, 'I have
+brought you all kinds of presents from abroad; but best of all I have
+brought home a bride.'  His parents, who wondered at her beauty, and
+never doubted but that she must be a king's daughter, were full of
+joy, and set the bells ringing in all the seven churches.  So for a
+year everybody was happy, and at the end of that time a son was
+born."
+
+"You're making it up," said Honoria.  Taffy's _own_ stories always
+puzzled her, with hints and echoes from other stories she
+half-remembered, but could seldom trace home.  He had too cunning a
+gift.
+
+George said, "Do be quiet! Of course he's making it up, but who wants
+to know _that?_"
+
+"Two days afterward," Taffy went on, "the Prince was out hunting with
+his foster-brother.  The Princess in her bed at home complained to
+her mother-in-law, 'Mother, my feet are cold.  Bring me another rug
+to wrap them in.'  The Queen did so, but as she covered the
+Princess's feet she saw the red mark left by the ankle ring, and knew
+that her son's wife was no true Princess, but a convict's daughter.
+And full of rage and shame she went away and mixed two cups.
+The first she gave to the Princess to drink; and when it had killed
+her (for it was poison) she dipped a finger into the dregs and rubbed
+it inside the child's lips, and very soon he was dead too.  Then she
+sent for two ankle-chains and weights--one larger and one very
+small--and fitted them on the two bodies and had them flung into the
+creek.  When the Prince came home he asked after his wife.  'She is
+sleeping,' said the Queen, 'and you must be thirsty with hunting?'
+She held out the second cup, and the Prince drank and passed it to
+John, who drank also.  Now in this cup was a drug which took away all
+memory.  And at once the Prince forgot all about his wife and child;
+and John forgot too.
+
+"For weeks after this the Prince complained that he felt unwell.
+He told the doctors that there was an empty place in his head, and
+they advised him to fill it by travelling.  So he set out again, and
+John went with him as before.  On their journey they stayed for a
+week with the King of Spain, and there the Prince fell in love with
+the King of Spain's daughter, and married her, and brought her home
+at the end of a year, during which she, too, had brought him a son.
+
+"The night after their return, when the Prince and his second wife
+slept, John kept watch outside the door.  About midnight he heard the
+noise of a chain dragging, but very softly, and up the stairs came a
+lady in white with a child in her arms.  John knew his former
+mistress at once, and all his memory came back to him, but she put a
+finger to her lips and went past him into the bed-chamber.  She went
+to the bed, laid a hand on her husband's pillow, and whispered:"
+
+      'Wife and babe below the river,
+       Twice will I come and then come never.'
+
+"Without another word she turned and went slowly past John and down
+the stairs."
+
+"I know _that_, anyhow," Honoria interrupted.  "That's 'East of the
+Sun and West of the Moon,' or else it's the Princess whose brother
+was changed into a Roebuck, or else--"  But George flicked a pebble
+at her, and Taffy went on, warming more and more to the story:--
+
+"In the morning, when the Prince woke, his second wife saw his pillow
+on the side farthest from her, and it was wet.  'Husband,' she said,
+'you have been weeping to-night.'  'Well,' said he, 'that is queer,
+though, for I haven't wept since I was a boy.  It's true, though,
+that I had a miserable dream.'  But when he tried to remember it, he
+could not.
+
+"The same thing happened on the second night, only the dead wife
+said:"
+
+      'Wife and babe below the river,
+       Once will I come and then come never.'
+
+"And again in the morning there was a mark on the pillow where her wet
+hand had rested.  But the Prince in the morning could remember
+nothing.  On the third night she came and said:"
+
+      'Wife and babe below the river,
+       Now I am gone and gone for ever,'
+
+"And went down the stairs with such a reproachful look at John that
+his heart melted and he ran after her.  But at the outer door a flash
+of lightning met him, and such a storm broke over the palace and city
+as had never been before and never will be again.
+
+"John heard screams, and the noise of doors banging and feet running
+throughout the palace; he turned back and met the Prince, his master,
+coming downstairs with his child in his arms.  The lightning stroke
+had killed his second wife where she lay.  John followed him out into
+the streets, where the people were running to and fro, and through
+the whirling sand to the ford which crossed the creek a mile above
+the city.  And there, as they stepped into the water, a woman rose
+before John, with a child in her arms, and said: 'Carry us.'
+The Prince, who was leading, did not see.  John took them on his
+back, but they were heavy because of the iron chains and weights on
+their ankles, and the sands sank under him.  Then, by-and-by, the
+first wife put her child into John's arms and said, 'Save him,' and
+slipped off his back into the water.  'What sound was that?' asked
+the Prince.  'That was my heart cracking,' said John.  So they went
+on till the sand rose half-way to their knees.  Then the Prince
+stopped and put his child into John's arms.  'Save him,' he said, and
+fell forward on his face; and John's heart cracked again.  But he
+went forward in the darkness until the water rose to his waist, and
+the sand to his knees.  He was close to the farther shore now, but
+could not reach it unless he dropped one of the children; and this he
+would not do.  He bent forward, holding out one in each arm, and
+could just manage to push them up the bank and prop them there with
+his open hand; and while he bent, the tide rose and his heart cracked
+for the third time.  Though he was dead, his stiff arms kept the
+children propped against the bank.  But just at the turning of the
+tide the one with the ankle-weight slipped and was drowned.
+The other was found next morning by the inland people, high and dry.
+And some _do_ say," Taffy wound up, "that his brother was not really
+drowned, but turned into a bird, and that, though no one has seen
+him, it is his voice that gives the '_crake_,' imitating the sound
+made by John's heart when it burst; but others say it comes from John
+himself, down there below the sands."
+
+There was silence for a minute.  Even Honoria had grown excited
+toward the end.
+
+"But it was unfair!" she broke out.  "It ought to have been the
+convict-child that was saved."
+
+"If so, I shouldn't be here," said George; "and it's not very nice of
+you to say it."
+
+"I don't care.  It was unfair; and anyone but a boy "--with scorn--"
+would see it."  She turned upon the staring Taffy--"I hate your tale;
+it was horrid."
+
+She repeated it, that evening, as they turned their faces homeward
+across the heathery moor.  Taffy had halted on the top of a hillock
+to wave good-night to George.  For years he remembered the scene--the
+brown hollow of the hills; the clear evening sky, with the faint
+purple arch, which is the shadow of the world, climbing higher and
+higher upon it; and his own shadow stretching back with his heart
+toward George, who stood fronting the level rays and waved his
+glittering catch of fish.
+
+"What was that you said?" he asked, when at length he tore himself
+away and caught up with Honoria.
+
+"That was a horrid story you told.  It spoiled my afternoon, and I'll
+trouble you not to tell any more of the sort."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+LIZZIE REDEEMS HER DOLL AND HONORIA THROWS A STONE.
+
+A broad terrace ran along the southern front of Tredinnis House.
+It had once been decorated with leaden statues, but of these only the
+pedestals remained.
+
+Honoria, perched on the terraced wall, with her legs dangling, was
+making imaginary casts with a trout-rod, when she heard footsteps.  A
+child came timidly round the angle of the big house--Lizzie Pezzack.
+
+"Hullo!  What do you want?"
+
+"If you please, miss--"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"If you please, miss--"
+
+"You've said that twice."
+
+Lizzie held out a grubby palm with a half-crown in it: "I wants my
+doll back, if you please, miss."
+
+"But you sold it."
+
+"I didn't mean to.  You took me so sudden."
+
+"I gave you ever so much more than it was worth.  Why, I don't
+believe it cost you three ha'pence!"
+
+"Tuppence," said Lizzie.
+
+"Then you don't know when you're well off.  Go away."
+
+"'Tisn't that, miss--"
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+Lizzie broke into a flood of tears.
+
+Honoria, the younger by a year or so, stood and eyed her scornfully;
+then turning on her heel marched into the house.
+
+She was a just child.  She went upstairs to her bedroom, unlocked her
+wardrobe, and took out the doll, which was clad in blue silk, and
+reposed in a dog-trough lined with the same material.  Honoria had
+recklessly cut up two handkerchiefs (for underclothing) and her
+Sunday sash, and had made the garments in secret.  They were
+prodigies of bad needlework.  With the face of a Medea she stripped
+the poor thing, took it in her arms as if to kiss it, but checked
+herself sternly.  She descended to the terrace with the doll in one
+hand and its original calico smock in the other.
+
+"There, take your twopenny baby!"
+
+Lizzie caught and strained it to her breast; covered its poor
+nakedness hurriedly, and hugged it again with passionate kisses.
+
+"You silly!  Did you come all this way by yourself?"
+
+Lizzie nodded.  "Father thinks I'm home, minding the house.  He's off
+duty this evening, and he walked over here to the Bryanite Chapel, up
+to Four Turnings.  There's going to be a big Prayer Meeting to-night.
+When his back was turned I slipped out after him, so as to keep him
+in sight across the towans."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I'm terrible timid.  I can't bear to walk across the towans by
+myself.  You can't see where you be--they're so much alike--and it
+makes a person feel lost.  There's so many bones, too."
+
+"Dead rabbits."
+
+"Yes, and dead folks, I've heard father say."
+
+"Well, you'll have to go back alone, any way."
+
+Lizzie hugged the doll.  "I don't mind so much now.  I'll keep along
+by the sea and run, and only open my eyes now and then.  Here's your
+money, miss."
+
+She went off at a run.  Honoria pocketed the half-crown and went back
+to her fly-fishing.  But after a few casts she desisted, and took her
+rod to pieces slowly.  The afternoon was hot and sultry.  She sat
+down in the shadow of the balustrade and gazed at the long, blank
+facade of the house baking in the sun; at the tall, uncurtained
+windows; at the peacock stalking to and fro like a drowsy sentinel.
+
+"You are a beast of a house," she said contemplatively; "and I hate
+every stone of you!"
+
+She stood up and strolled toward the stables.  The stable yard was
+empty but for the Gordon setter dozing by the pump-trough.
+Across from the kitchens came the sound of the servants' voices
+chattering.  Honoria had never made friends with the servants.
+
+She tilted her straw hat further over her eyes, and sauntered up the
+drive with her hands behind her; through the great gates and out upon
+the towans.  She had started with no particular purpose, and had none
+in her mind when she came in sight of the Parsonage, and of Humility
+seated in the doorway with her lace pillow across her knees.
+
+It had been the custom among the women of Beer Village to work in
+their doorways on sunny afternoons, and Humility followed it.
+
+She looked up smiling.  "Taffy is down by the shore, I think."
+
+"I didn't come to look for him.  What beautiful work!"
+
+"It comes in handy.  Won't you step inside and let me make you a cup
+of tea?"
+
+"No, I'll sit here and watch you." Humility pulled in her skirts, and
+Honoria found room on the doorstep beside her.  "Please don't stop.
+It's wonderful.  Now I know where Taffy gets his cleverness."
+
+"You are quite wrong.  This is only a knack.  All his cleverness
+comes from his father."
+
+"Oh, books!  Of course, Mr. Raymond knows all about books.
+He's writing one, isn't he?"
+
+Mrs. Raymond nodded.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"It's about St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews; in Greek, you know.
+He has been working at it for years."
+
+"And he's indoors working at it now?  What funny things men do!"
+She was silent for a while, watching Humility's bobbins.  "But I
+suppose it doesn't matter just _what_ they do.  The great thing is to
+do it better than anyone else.  Does Mr. Raymond think Taffy clever?"
+
+"He never talks about it."
+
+"But he _thinks_ so.  I know; because at lessons when he says
+anything to Taffy it's quite different from the way he talks to
+George and me.  He doesn't favour him, of course; he's much too fair.
+But there's a difference.  It's as if he _expected_ Taffy to
+understand.  Did Mr. Raymond teach him all those stories he knows?"
+
+"What stories?"
+
+"Fairy tales, and that sort of thing."
+
+"Good gracious me, no!"
+
+"Then _you_ must have.  And you _are_ clever, after all.  Asking me
+to believe you're not, and making that beautiful lace all the while,
+under my very eyes!"
+
+"I'm not a bit clever.  Here's the pattern, you see, and there's the
+thread, and the rest is only practice.  I couldn't make the pattern
+out of my head.  Besides, I don't like clever women."
+
+"A woman must try to be _something_."  Honoria felt that this was
+vague, but wanted to argue.
+
+"A woman wants to be loved," said Mrs. Raymond thoughtfully.
+"There's such a heap to be done about the house that she won't find
+time for much else.  Besides, if she has children, she'll be planning
+for them."
+
+"Isn't that rather slow?"
+
+Humility wondered where the child had picked up the word.
+"Slow?" she echoed, with her eyes on the horizon beyond the dunes.
+"Most things are slow when you look forward to them."
+
+"But these fairy-tales of yours?"
+
+"I'll tell you about them.  When my mother was a girl of sixteen she
+went into service as a nursemaid in a clergyman's family.
+Every evening the clergyman used to come into the nursery and tell
+the children a fairy-tale.  That's how it started.  My mother left
+service to marry a farmer--it was quite a grand match for her--and
+when I was a baby she told the stories to me.  She has a wonderful
+memory still, and she tells them capitally.  When I listen I believe
+every word of them; I like them better than books, too, because they
+always end happily.  But I can't repeat them a bit.  As soon as I
+begin they fall to pieces, and the pieces get mixed up, and, worst of
+all, the life goes right out of them.  But Taffy, he takes the pieces
+and puts them together, and the tale is better than ever: quite
+different, and new, too.  That's the puzzle.  It's not memory with
+him; it's something else."
+
+"But don't you ever make up a story of your own?" Honoria insisted.
+
+Now you might talk with Mrs. Raymond for ten minutes, perhaps, and
+think her a simpleton; and then suddenly a cloud (as it were) parted,
+and you found yourself gazing into depths of clear and beautiful
+wisdom.
+
+She turned on Honoria with a shy, adorable smile: "Why, of course I
+do--about Taffy.  Come in and let me show you his room and his
+books."
+
+An hour later, when Taffy returned, he found Honoria seated at the
+table and his mother pouring tea.  They said nothing about their
+visit to his room; and though they had handled every one of his
+treasures, he never discovered it.  But he did notice--or rather, he
+felt--that the two understood each other.  They did; and it was an
+understanding he would never be able to share, though he lived to be
+a hundred.
+
+Mr. Raymond came out from his study and drank his tea in silence.
+Honoria observed that he blinked a good deal.  He showed no surprise
+at her visit, and after a moment seemed unaware of her presence.
+At length he raised the cup to his lips, and finding it empty set it
+down and rose to go back to his work.  Humility interfered and
+reminded him of a call to be paid at one of the upland farms.
+The children might go too, she suggested.  It would be very little
+distance out of Honoria's way.
+
+Mr. Raymond sighed, but went for his walking-stick; and they set out.
+
+When they reached the farmhouse he left the children outside.
+The town-place was admirably suited for a game of "Follow-my-leader,"
+which they played for twenty minutes with great seriousness, to the
+disgust of the roosting poultry.  Then Taffy spied a niche, high up,
+where a slice had been cut out of a last year's haystack.  He fetched
+a ladder.  Up they climbed, drew the ladder after them, and played at
+being Outlaws in a Cave, until the dusk fell.
+
+Still Mr. Raymond lingered indoors.  "He thinks we have gone home,"
+said Honoria.  "Now the thing would be to creep down and steal one of
+the fowls, and bring it back and cook it."
+
+"We can make believe to do it," Taffy suggested.
+
+Honoria considered for a moment.  "I'll tell you what: there's a
+great Bryanite meeting to-night, down at the Chapel.  I expect
+there'll be a devil hunt."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"They turn out the lights and hunt for him in the dark."
+
+"But he isn't _really_ there?"
+
+"I don't know.  Suppose we play at scouts and creep down the road?
+If the Chapel is lit up we can spy in on them; and then you can
+squeeze your nose on the glass and make a face, while I say 'Boo!'
+and they'll think the Old Gentleman is really come."
+
+They stole down the ladder and out of the town-place.  The Chapel
+stood three-quarters of a mile away, on a turfed wastrel where two
+high roads met and crossed.
+
+Long before they reached it they heard clamorous voices and groans.
+
+"I expect the devil hunt has begun," said Honoria.  But when they
+came in sight of the building its windows were brightly lit.
+The noise inside was terrific.
+
+The two children approached it with all the precaution proper to
+scouts.  Suddenly the clamour ceased and the evening fell so silent
+that Taffy heard the note of an owl away in the Tredinnis plantations
+to his left.  This silence was daunting, but they crept on and soon
+were standing in the illuminated ring of furze whins which surrounded
+the Chapel.
+
+"Can you reach up to look in?"
+
+Taffy could not; so Honoria obligingly went on hands and knees, and
+he stood on her back.
+
+"Can you see?  What's the matter?"
+
+Taffy gasped.  "_He's_ in there!"
+
+"What?--the Old Gentleman?"
+
+"Yes; no--your grandfather!"
+
+"What?  Let me get up.  Here, you kneel--"
+
+It was true.  Under the rays of a paraffin lamp, in face of the
+kneeling congregation, sat Squire Moyle; his body stiffly upright on
+the bench, his jaws rigid, his eyes with horror in them fastened upon
+the very window through which Honoria peered--fastened, it seemed to
+her, upon her face.  But, no; he saw nothing.  The Bryanites were
+praying; Honoria saw their lips moving.  Their eyes were all on the
+old man's face.  In the straining silence his mouth opened--but only
+for a moment--while his tongue wetted his parched lips.
+
+A man by the pulpit-stairs shuffled his feet.  A sigh passed through
+the Chapel as he rose and relaxed the tension.  It was Jacky Pascoe.
+He stepped up to the Squire, and, laying a hand on his shoulder,
+said, gently, persuasively, yet so clearly that Honoria could hear
+every word:
+
+"Try, brother.  Keep on trying.  O, I've knowed cases--You can never
+tell how near salvation is.  One minute the heart's like a stone, and
+the next maybe 'tis melted and singing like fat in a pan.
+'Tis working!  'tis working!"
+
+The congregation broke out with cries: "Amen!"  "Glory, glory!"
+The Squire's lips moved and he muttered something.  But stony despair
+sat in his eyes.
+
+"Ay, glory, glory!  You've been a doubter, and you doubt no longer.
+Soon you'll be a shouter.  Man, you'll dance like as David danced
+before the Ark!  You'll feel it in your toes!  Come along, friends,
+while he's resting a minute!  Sing all together--oh, the blessed
+peace of it!--
+
+     "'I long to be there, His glory to share--'"
+
+He pitched the note, and the congregation took up the second line
+with a rolling, gathering volume of song.  It broke on the night like
+the footfall of a regiment at charge.  Honoria scrambled off Taffy's
+back, and the two slipped away to the high road.
+
+"Shall you tell your father?"
+
+"I--I don't know."
+
+She stooped and found a loose stone.  "He shan't find salvation
+to-night," she said heroically.
+
+As the stone crashed through the window the two children pelted off.
+They ran on the soft turf by the wayside, and only halted to listen
+when they reached Tredinnis's great gates.  The sound of feet running
+far up the road set them off again, but now in opposite ways.
+Honoria sped down the avenue, and Taffy headed for the Parsonage,
+across the towans.  Ordinarily this road at night would have been
+full of terrors for him; but now the fear at his heels kept him
+going, while his heart thumped on his ribs.  He was just beginning to
+feel secure, when he blundered against a dark figure which seemed to
+rise straight out of the night.
+
+"Hullo!"
+
+Blessed voice!  The wayfarer was his own father.
+
+"Taffy! I thought you were home an hour ago.  Where on earth have you
+been?"
+
+"With Honoria."  He was about to say more, but checked himself.
+"I left her at the top of the avenue," he explained.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+TAFFY'S CHILDHOOD COMES TO AN END.
+
+The summer passed.  There was a talk in the early part of it that the
+Bishop would be coming, next spring, to consecrate the restored
+church and hold a confirmation service.  Taffy and Honoria were to be
+confirmed, and early in August Mr. Raymond began to set apart an hour
+each day for preparing them.  In a week or two the boy's head was
+full of religion.  He spent much of his time in the church, watching
+the carpenter at work upon the new seats; his mind ran on the story
+of Samuel, and he wished his mother had followed Hannah's example and
+dedicated him to God; he had a suspicion that God would be angry with
+her for not doing so.
+
+He did not observe that, as the autumn crept on, a shadow gathered on
+Humility's face.  One Sunday the old Squire did not come to church;
+and again on the next Wednesday, at the harvest festival, Honoria sat
+alone in the Tredinnis pew.  The shadow was on his mother's face as
+he chatted about this on their way home to the Parsonage; but the boy
+did not perceive it.  He loved his parents, but their lives lay
+outside his own, and their sayings and doings passed him like a vain
+show.  He walked in the separate world of childhood, and it seemed an
+enormous world yet, though a few weeks were to bring him abruptly to
+the end of it.
+
+But just before he came to the precipice he was given a glimpse of
+the real world--and of a world beyond that, far more splendid and
+romantic than any region of his dreams.
+
+The children had no lessons during Christmas, or for three weeks
+after.  On the last morning before the holidays George brought a
+letter for Mr. Raymond, who read it, considered for a while, and laid
+it among his papers.
+
+"It's an invitation," George announced in a whisper.  "I wonder if
+he'll let you come."
+
+"Where?" whispered Taffy.
+
+"Up to Plymouth--to the Pantomime."
+
+"What's that?"
+
+"Oh--clowns, and girls dressed up like boys, and policemen on slides,
+and that sort of thing."
+
+Taffy sat bewildered.  He vaguely remembered Plymouth as a mass of
+roofs seen from the train, as it drew up for a minute or two on a
+high bridge.  Someone in the railway carriage had talked of an engine
+called _Brutus_, which (it appeared) had lately run away and crashed
+into the cloak-room at the end of the platform.  He still thought of
+railway engines as big, blundering animals, with wills of their own,
+and of Plymouth as a town rendered insecure by their vagaries; but
+the idea that its roofs covered girls dressed up like boys and
+policemen on slides was new to him, and pleasant on the whole, though
+daunting.
+
+"Will you give my thanks to Sir Harry," said Mr. Raymond, after
+lessons, "and tell him that Taffy may go."
+
+So on New Year's Day Taffy found himself in Plymouth.  It was an
+experience which he could never fit into his life except as a gaudy
+interlude; for when he awoke and looked back upon it, he was no
+longer the boy who had climbed up beside Sir Harry and behind Sir
+Harry's restless pair of bays.  The whirl began with that drive to
+the station; began again in the train; began again as they stepped
+out on the pavement at Plymouth, just as a company of scarlet-coated
+soldiers came down the roadway with a din of brazen music.
+The crowd, the shops, the vast hotel, completely dazed him, and he
+seriously accepted the waiter, in his black suit and big white
+shirt-front, as a contribution to the fun of the entertainment.
+
+"We must dine early," Sir Harry announced at lunch; "the Pantomime
+begins at seven."
+
+"Isn't--isn't this the Pantomime?" Taffy stammered.
+
+George giggled.  Sir Harry set down his glass of claret, stared at
+the boy, and broke into musical laughter.  Taffy perceived he had
+made some ridiculous mistake and blushed furiously.
+
+"God bless the child--the Pantomime's at the theatre!"
+
+"Oh!" Taffy recalled the canvas booth and wheezy cornet of his early
+days with a chill of disappointment.
+
+But with George at his side it was impossible to be anything but
+happy.  After lunch they sallied out, and it would have been hard to
+choose the gayest of the three.  Sir Harry's radiant good-temper
+seemed to gild the streets.  He took the boys up to the Hoe and
+pointed out the war-ships; he whisked them into the Camera Obscura;
+thence to the Citadel, where they watched a squad of recruits at
+drill; thence to the Barbican, where the trawling-fleet lay packed
+like herring, and the shops were full of rope and oilskin suits and
+marine instruments, and dirty children rolled about the roadway
+between the legs of seabooted fishermen; and so up to the town again,
+where he lingered in the most obliging manner while the boys stared
+into the fishing-tackle shops and toy shops.  On the way he led them
+up a narrow passage and into a curious room, where fifteen or twenty
+men were drinking, and talking at the top of their voices.  The most
+of them seemed to know Sir Harry well and greeted him with an odd
+mixture of respect and familiarity.  Their talk was full of
+mysterious names and expressions, and Taffy thought at first they
+must be Freemasons.  "The Moor point-to-point was a walk-over for the
+Milkman; Lapidary was scratched, which left it a soft thing, unless
+Sir Harry fancied a fox-catcher like Nursery Governess, in which
+case Billy behind the bar would do as much business as he liked at
+six-to-one."  After a while Taffy discovered they were talking about
+horses, and wondered why they should meet to discuss horses in a
+dingy room up a back yard.  "Youngster of yours is growin',
+Surrarry," said a red-faced man.  "Who's his stable companion?" Taffy
+was introduced, and to his embarrassment Sir Harry began to relate
+his ridiculous mistake at lunch.  The men roared with laughter.
+
+He made another, quite as ridiculous, at the pastry-cook's where Sir
+Harry ordered tea.  "What'll you take with it?  Call for what you
+like, only don't poison yourselves."  Taffy referring his gaze from
+the buns and confections on the counter to the card in his hands,
+which was inscribed with words in unknown tongues, made a bold plunge
+and announced that he would take a "_marasheno_."
+
+This tickled Sir Harry mightily.  He ordered the waitress with a wink
+to "bring the young gentleman a _marasheno_"; and Taffy, who had
+expected something in the shape of a macaroon, was confronted with a
+tiny glass of a pale liquor, which, when tasted, in the most
+surprising manner put sunshine into his stomach and brought tears
+into his eyes.  But under Sir Harry's quizzical gaze he swallowed it
+down bravely, and sat gasping and blinking.
+
+It may have been that the maraschino induced a haze upon the rest of
+the afternoon.  The gas-lamps were lit when they left the
+pastry-cook's and entered a haberdasher's where Taffy, without
+knowing why, was fitted with a pair of white kid gloves.  Of dinner
+at the hotel he remembered nothing except that the candles on the
+tables had red shades, of which the silverware gave funny
+reflections; that the same waiter flitted about in the penumbra; and
+that Sir Harry, who was dressed like the waiter, said, "Wake up,
+young Marasheno!  Do you take your coffee black?"  "It's usually pale
+brown at home," answered Taffy; at which Sir Harry laughed again.
+"Black will suit you better to-night," he said, and poured out a
+small cupful, which Taffy drank and found exceedingly nasty.  And a
+moment later he was wide awake, and the three were following a young
+woman along a passage which seemed to run in a complete circle.
+The young woman flung open a door; they entered a little room with a
+balcony in front; and the first glorious vision broke on the child
+with a blaze of light, a crash of music, and the murmur of hundreds
+of voices.
+
+Faces, faces, faces!--faces mounting from the pit below him, up and
+up to the sky-blue ceiling, where painted goddesses danced and
+scattered pink roses around the enormous gasalier.  Fauns piping on
+the great curtain, fiddles sawing in the orchestra beneath, ladies in
+gay silks and jewels leaning over the gilt balconies opposite--which
+were real, and which a vision only?  He turned helplessly to George
+and Sir Harry.  Yes, _they_ were real.  But what of Nannizabuloe, and
+the sand-hills, and the little parsonage to which that very morning
+he had turned to wave his handkerchief?
+
+A bell rang, and the curtain rose upon a company of russet-brown
+elves dancing in a green wood.  The play was _Jack the Giant-killer_;
+but Taffy, who knew the story in the book by heart, found the story
+on the stage almost meaningless.  That mattered nothing; it was the
+world, the new and unimagined world, stretching deeper and still
+deeper as the scenes were lifted--a world in which solid walls
+crumbled, and forests melted, and loveliness broke through the ruins,
+unfolding like a rose; it was this that seized on the child's heart
+until he could have wept for its mere beauty.  Often he had sought
+out the trout-pools on the moors behind the towans, and lying at full
+length had watched the fish moving between the stones and
+water-plants; and watching through a summer's afternoon had longed to
+change places with them and glide through their grottoes or anchor
+among the reed-stalks and let the ripple run over him.  As long back
+as he could remember, all beautiful sights had awakened this ache,
+this longing--
+
+     "O, that I were where I would be!
+        Then would I be where I am not;
+      For where I am I would not be,
+        And where I would be, I cannot."
+
+It seemed to him that these bright beings on the stage had broken
+through the barriers, had stepped beyond the flaming ramparts, and
+were happy.  Their horseplay, at which George laughed so
+immoderately, called to Taffy to come and be happy, too; and when
+Jack the Giant-killer changed to Jack in the Beanstalk, and when in
+the Transformation Scene a real beanstalk grew and unfolded its
+leaves, and each leaf revealed a fairy seated, with the limelight
+flashing on star and jewelled wand, the longing became unbearable.
+The scene passed in a minute.  The clown and pantaloon came on, and
+presently Sir Harry saw Taffy's shoulders shaking, and set it down
+to laughter at the harlequinade.  He could not see the child's face.
+
+But, perhaps, the queerest event of the evening (when Taffy came to
+review his recollections) was this: He must have fallen into a stupor
+on leaving the theatre, for when he awoke he found himself on a couch
+in a gas-lit room, with George beside him, and Sir Harry was shaking
+him by the collar, and saying, "God bless the children, I thought
+they were in bed hours ago!"  A man--the same who had talked about
+racehorses that afternoon--was standing by the table, on which a
+quantity of cards lay scattered among the drinking-glasses; and he
+laughed at this, and his laugh sounded just like the rustling of
+paper.  "It's all very well--" began Sir Harry, but checked himself
+and lit a candle, and led the two boys off shivering to bed.
+
+The next morning, too, had its surprises.  To begin with, Sir Harry
+announced at breakfast that he must go and buy a horse.  He might be
+an hour or two over the business, and meanwhile the boys had better
+go out into the town and enjoy themselves.  Perhaps a sovereign
+apiece might help them.
+
+Taffy, who had never in his life possessed more than a shilling, was
+staring at the gold piece in his hand, when the door opened, and Sir
+Harry's horse-racing friend came in to breakfast and nodded
+"Good-morning."
+
+"Pity you're leaving to-day," he said, as he took his seat at a table
+hard by them.
+
+"My revenge must wait," Sir Harry answered.
+
+It seemed a cold-blooded thing to be said so carelessly.
+Taffy wondered if Sir Harry's search for a horse had anything to do
+with this revenge, and the notion haunted him in the intervals of his
+morning's shopping.
+
+But how to lay out his sovereign?  That was the first question.
+George, who within ten minutes had settled his own problem by
+purchasing a doubtful fox-terrier of the Boots of the hotel, saw no
+difficulty.  The Boots had another pup for sale--one of the same
+litter.
+
+"But I want something for mother, and the others--and Honoria."
+
+"Botheration!  I'd forgotten Honoria, and now the money's gone!
+ Never mind; she can have my pup."
+
+"Oh!" said Taffy ruefully.  "Then she won't think much of my
+present."
+
+"Yes, she will.  Suppose you buy a collar for him--you can get one
+for five shillings."
+
+They found a saddler's and chose the dog-collar which came to four
+shillings; and for eighteenpence the shopman agreed to have
+"_Honoria from Taffy_," engraved on it within an hour.  Humility's
+present was chosen with surprising ease--a large, framed photograph
+of the Bishop of Exeter; price, six shillings.
+
+"I don't suppose," objected George, "your mother cares much for the
+Bishop of Exeter."
+
+"Oh, yes, she does," said Taffy; "he's coming to confirm us next
+spring.  Besides," he added, with one of those flashes of wisdom
+which surely he derived from her, "mother won't care what it is, so
+long as she's remembered.  And it costs more than the collar."
+
+This left him with eight-and-sixpence; and for three-and-sixpence he
+bought a work-box for his grandmother, with a view of Plymouth Hoe on
+the lid.  But now came the crux.  What should he get for his father?
+
+"It must be a book," George suggested.
+
+"But what kind of a book?  He has so many."
+
+"Something in Latin."
+
+The bookseller's window was filled with yellow-backed novels and
+toy-books, which obviously would not do.  So they marched in and
+demanded a book suitable for a clergyman who had a good many books
+already--"a middle-aged clergyman," George added.
+
+"You can't go far wrong with this," suggested the bookseller,
+producing Crockford's "Clerical Directory" for the current year.
+But this was too expensive; "and," said Taffy, "I think he would
+rather have something in Latin."  The bookseller rubbed his chin,
+went to his shelves, and took down a small _De Imitatione Christi_,
+bound in limp calf.  "You can't go far wrong with this, either," he
+assured them.  So Taffy paid down his money.
+
+Just as the boys reached the hotel, Sir Harry drove up in a cab; and
+five minutes later they were all rattling off to the railway station.
+Taffy eyed the cab-horse curiously, never doubting it to be Sir
+Harry's new purchase; and was extremely surprised when the cabman
+whipped it up and trotted off--after receiving his money, too.
+But in the bustle there was no time to ask questions.
+
+It was about three in the afternoon, and the sun already low in the
+south-west, when they came in sight of the cross-roads and Sir Harry
+pulled up his bays.  And there, on the green by the sign-post, stood
+Mrs. Raymond.  She caught Taffy in her arms and hugged him till he
+felt ashamed, and glanced around to see if the others were looking;
+but the phaeton was bowling away down the road.
+
+"But why are _you_ here, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Raymond gazed a while after the carriage before speaking.
+"Your father had to be at the church," she said.
+
+"But there's no service--"  He broke off "See what I've brought for
+you!"  And he pulled out the portrait.  "Do you know who it is?"
+
+Humility thanked him and kissed him passionately.  There was
+something odd with her this afternoon.
+
+"Don't you like your present?"
+
+"Darling, it is beautiful," she stooped and kissed him again,
+passionately.
+
+"I've a present for father, too; a book.  Why are you walking so
+fast?" In a little while he asked again, "Why are you walking so
+fast?"
+
+"I--I thought you would be wanting your tea."
+
+"Mayn't I take father his book first?"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"But mayn't I?" he persisted.
+
+They had reached the garden-gate.  Humility seemed to hesitate.
+"Yes; go," she said at length; and he ran, with the _De Imitatione
+Christi_ under his arm.
+
+As he came within view of the church he saw a knot of men gathered
+about the door.  They were pulling something out from the porch.
+He heard the noise of hammering, and Squire Moyle, at the back of the
+crowd, was shouting at the top of his voice:
+
+"The church is yours, is it?  I'll see about that!  Pitch out the
+furnitcher, my billies--_that's_ mine, anyway!"
+
+Still the hammers sounded within the church.
+
+"Don't believe in sudden convarsion, don't 'ee?  I reckon you will
+when you look round your church.  Bishop coming to consecrate it, is
+he?  Consecrate _my_ furnitcher?  I'll see you and your bishop to
+blazes first!"
+
+A heap of shattered timber came flying through the porch.
+
+"_Your_ church, hey?  _Your_ church?"
+
+The crowd fell back and Mr. Raymond stood in the doorway, between
+Bill Udy and Jim the Huntsman.  Bill Udy held a brazen ewer and
+paten, and Jim a hammer; and Mr. Raymond had a hand on one shoulder
+of each.
+
+For a moment there was silence.  As Taffy came running through the
+lych-gate a man who had been sitting on a flat tombstone and
+watching, stood up and touched his arm.  It was Jacky Pascoe, the
+Bryanite.
+
+"Best go back," he said, "'tis a wisht poor job of it."
+
+Taffy halted for a moment.  The Squire's voice had risen to a sudden
+scream--he sputtered as he pointed at Mr. Raymond.
+
+"There he is, naybours!  Get behind the varmint, somebody, and stop
+his earth!  Calls hisself a minister of God!  Calls it _his_ church!"
+
+Mr. Raymond took his hands off the men's shoulders, and walked
+straight up to him.  "Not _my_ church," he said, aloud and
+distinctly.  "God's church!"
+
+He stretched out an arm.  Taffy, running up, supposed it stretched
+out to strike.  "Father!"
+
+But Mr. Raymond's palm was open as he lifted it over the Squire's
+head.  "God's church," he repeated.  "In whose service, sir, I defy
+you.  Go! or if you will, and have the courage, come and stand while
+I kneel amid the ruin you have done and pray God to judge between
+us."
+
+He paused, with his eyes on the Squire's.
+
+"You dare not, I see.  Go, poor coward, and plan what mischief you
+will.  Only now leave me in peace a little."
+
+He took the boy's hand and they passed into the church together.
+No one followed.  Hand in hand they stood before the dismantled
+chancel.  Taffy heard the sound of shuffling feet on the walk
+outside, and looked up into Mr. Raymond's face.
+
+"Father!"
+
+"Kiss me, sonny."
+
+The _De Imitatione Christi_ slipped from Taffy's fingers and fell
+upon the chancel step.
+
+So his childhood ended.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+THE BUILDERS.
+
+These things happened on a Friday.  After breakfast next morning
+Taffy went to fetch his books.  He did so out of habit and without
+thinking; but his father stopped him.
+
+"Put them away," he said.  "Some day we'll go back to them, but not
+yet."
+
+Instead of books Humility packed their dinner in the satchel.
+They reached the church and found the interior just as they had left
+it.  Taffy was set to work to pick up and sweep together the scraps
+of broken glass which littered the chancel.  His father examined the
+wreckage of the pews.
+
+While the boy knelt at his task, his thoughts were running on the
+Pantomime.  He had meant, last night, to recount all its wonders and
+the wonders of Plymouth; but somehow the words had not come.
+After displaying his presents he could find no more to say: and
+feeling his father's hand laid on his shoulder, had burst into tears
+and hidden his face in his mother's lap.  He wanted to console them,
+and they were pitying _him_--why he could not say--but he knew it was
+so.
+
+And now the Pantomime, Plymouth, everything, seemed to have slipped
+away from him into a far past.  Only his father and mother had drawn
+nearer and become more real.  He tried to tell himself one of the old
+stories; but it fell into pieces like the fragments of coloured glass
+he was handling, and presently he began to think of the glass in his
+hands and let the story go.
+
+"On Monday we'll set to work," said his father.  "I dare say Joel"--
+this was the carpenter down at Innis village--"will lend me a few
+tools to start with.  But the clearing up will take us all to-day."
+
+They ate their dinner in the vestry.  Taffy observed that his father
+said: "_We_ will do this," or "_Our_ best plan will be so-and-so,"
+and spoke to him as to a grown man.  On the whole, though the dusk
+found them still at work, this was a happy day.
+
+"But aren't you going to lock the door?" he asked, as they were
+leaving.
+
+"No," said Mr. Raymond.  "We shall win, sonny; but not in that way."
+
+On the morrow Taffy rang the bell for service as usual.  To his
+astonishment Squire Moyle was among the first-comers.  He led Honoria
+by the hand, entered the Tredinnis pew and shut the door with a slam.
+It was the only pew left unmutilated.  The rest of the congregation--
+and curiosity made it larger than usual--had to stand; but a wife of
+one of the miners found a hassock and passed it to Humility, who
+thanked her for it with brimming eyes.  Mr. Raymond said afterward
+that this was the first success of the campaign.
+
+Not willing to tire his audience, he preached a very short sermon;
+but it was his manifesto, and all the better for being short.  He
+took his text from Nehemiah, Chapter II., verses 19 and 20--
+"_But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the
+Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn,
+and despised us, and said: 'What is this thing that ye do?  Will ye
+rebel against the King?_'"
+
+"_Then answered I them and said unto them, 'The God of Heaven, He
+will prosper us; therefore, we His servants will arise and build_.'
+
+"Fellow-parishioners," he said, "you see the state of this church.
+Concerning the cause of it I require none of you to judge.  I enter
+no plea against any man.  Another will judge, who said, '_Destroy
+this temple and in three days I will rear it up_.'  But He spake of
+the temple of His body; which was destroyed and is raised up; and its
+living and irrevocable triumph I, or some other servant of God,
+will celebrate at this altar, Sunday by Sunday, that whosoever will
+may see, yes, and taste it.  The state of this poor shell is but a
+little matter to a God whose majesty once inhabited a stable; yet the
+honour of this, too, shall be restored.  You wonder how, perhaps.
+_It may be the Lord will work for us; for there is no restraint to
+the Lord to save by many or by few_.  Go to your homes now and ponder
+this; and having pondered, if you will, pray for us."
+
+As the Raymonds left the church they found Squire Moyle waiting by
+the porch.  Honoria stood just behind him.  The rest of the
+congregation had drawn off a little distance to watch.  The Squire
+lifted his hat to Humility, and turned to Mr. Raymond with a sour
+frown.
+
+"That means war?"
+
+"It means that I stay," said the Vicar.  "The war, if it comes, comes
+from your side."
+
+"I don't think the worse of 'ee for fighting.  You're not going to
+law then?"
+
+Mr. Raymond smiled.  "I don't doubt you've put yourself within the
+reach of it.  But if it eases your mind to know, I am not going to
+law."
+
+The Squire grunted, raised his hat again and strode off, gripping
+Honoria by the hand.
+
+She had not glanced towards Taffy.  Clearly she was not allowed to
+speak to him.
+
+The meaning of the Vicar's sermon became plain next morning, when he
+walked down to the village and called on Joel Hugh, the carpenter.
+
+"I knows what thee'rt come after," began Joel, "but 'tis no use,
+parson dear.  Th' old fellow owns the roofs over us, and if I do a
+day's work for 'ee, out I goes, neck and crop."
+
+Mr. Raymond had expected this.  "It's not for work I'm come," said
+he; "but to hire a few tools, if you're minded to spare them."
+
+Joel scratched his head.  "Might manage that, now.  But, Lord bless
+'ee! thee'll never make no hand of it."  He chose out saw, hammer,
+plane and auger, and packed them up in a carpenter's frail, with a
+few other tools.  "Don't 'ee talk about payment, now; naybors must be
+nayborly.  Only, you see, a man must look after his own."
+
+Mr. Raymond climbed the hill toward the towans with the carpenter's
+frail slung over his shoulder.  As luck would have it, near the top
+he met Squire Moyle descending on horseback.  The Vicar nodded
+"Good-morning" in passing, but had not gone a dozen steps when the
+old man reined up and called after him.
+
+"Hi!"
+
+The Vicar halted.
+
+"Whose basket is that you're carrying?"  Then, getting no answer,
+"Wait till next Saturday night, when Joel Hugh comes to thank you.
+I suppose you know he rents his cottage by the week?"
+
+"No harm shall come to him through me," said the Vicar, and retraced
+his steps down the hill.  The Squire followed at a foot-pace,
+grinning as he went.
+
+That night Mr. Raymond went back to his beloved books, but not to
+read; and early next morning was ready at the cross-roads for the van
+which plied twice a week between Innis village and Truro.  He had
+three boxes with him--heavy boxes, as Calvin the van-driver remarked
+when it came to lifting them on board.
+
+"Thee'rt not leaving us, surely?" said he.
+
+"No."
+
+"But however didst get these lumping boxes up the hill?"
+
+"My son helped me."
+
+He had modestly calculated on averaging a shilling a volume for his
+books; but discovered on leaving the shop at Truro that it worked out
+at one-and-threepence.  He returned to Nannizabuloe that night with
+one box only--but it was packed full of tools--and a copy of Fuller's
+"Holy State," which at the last moment had proved too precious to be
+parted with--at least, just yet.
+
+The woodwork of the old pews--painted deal for the most part, but
+mixed with a few boards of good red pine and one or two of teak,
+relics of some forgotten shipwreck--lay stacked in the belfry and
+around the font under the west gallery.  Mr. Raymond and Taffy spent
+an hour in overhauling it, chose out the boards for their first pew,
+and fell to work.
+
+At the end of another hour the pair broke off and looked at each
+other.  Taffy could not help laughing.  His own knowledge of
+carpentry had been picked up by watching Joel Hugh at work, and just
+sufficed to tell him that his father was possibly the worst carpenter
+in the world.
+
+"I think my fingers must be all thumbs," declared Mr. Raymond.
+
+The puckers in his face set Taffy laughing afresh.  They both laughed
+and fell to work again, the boy explained his notions of the
+difficult art of mortising.  They were rudimentary, but sound as far
+as they went, and his father recognised this.  Moreover, when the boy
+had a tool to handle he did it with a natural deftness, in spite of
+his ignorance.  He was Humility's child, born with the skill-of-hand
+of generations of lace-workers.  He did a dozen things wrongly, but
+he neither fumbled, nor hammered his fingers, nor wounded them with
+the chisel--which was Humility's husband's way.
+
+At the end of four days of strenuous effort, they had their first pew
+built.  It was a recognisable pew, though it leaned to one side, and
+the door (for it had a door) fell to with a bang if not cautiously
+treated.  The triumph was, the seat could be sat upon without risk.
+Mr. Raymond and Taffy tested it with their combined weight on the
+Saturday evening, and went home full of its praises.
+
+"But look at your clothes," said Humility; and they looked.
+
+"This is serious," said Mr. Raymond.  "Dear, you must make us a
+couple of working suits of corduroy or some such stuff: otherwise
+this pew-making won't pay."
+
+Humility stood out against this for a day or two.  That _her_ husband
+and child should go dressed like common workmen!  But there was no
+help for it, and on the Monday week Taffy went forth to work in
+moleskin breeches, blue guernsey, and loose white smock.  As for Mr.
+Raymond, the only badge of his calling was his round clerical hat;
+and as all the miners in the neighbourhood wore hats of the same soft
+felt and only a trifle higher in the crown, this hardly amounted to a
+distinction.
+
+Humility's eyes were full of tears as she watched them from the door
+that morning.  But Taffy felt as proud as Punch.  A little before
+noon he carried out a board that required sawing, and rested it on a
+flat tombstone where, with his knee upon it, he could get a good
+purchase.  He was sawing away when he heard a dog barking, and looked
+up to see Honoria coming along the path with George's terrier
+frisking at her heels.
+
+She halted outside the lych-gate, and Taffy, vain of his new clothes,
+drew himself up and nodded.
+
+"Good-morning," said Honoria.  "I'm not allowed to speak to you and
+I'm not going to, after this."  She swooped on the puppy and held
+him.  "See what George brought home from Plymouth for me.  Isn't he
+a beauty?"
+
+Held so, by the scruff of his neck, he was not a beauty.  Taffy had
+it on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the collar.  He wished
+he had brought it.
+
+"I wonder," she went on pensively, "your mother had the heart to
+dress you out in that style.  But I suppose now you'll be growing up
+into quite a common boy."
+
+Taffy decided to say nothing about the collar.  "I like the clothes,"
+he declared defiantly.
+
+"Then you can't have the common instincts of a gentleman.  Well,
+good-bye!  Grandfather has salvation all right this time; he said
+he'd put the stick about me if I dared to speak to you."
+
+"He won't know."
+
+"Won't know?  Why I shall tell him, of course, when I get back."
+
+"But--but he _mustn't_ beat you!"
+
+She eyed him for a moment or two in silence.  "Mustn't he? I advise
+you to go and tell him." She walked away slowly, whistling; but
+by-and-by broke into a run and was gone, the puppy scampering behind
+her.
+
+As the days grew longer and the weather milder, Taffy and his father
+worked late into the evenings; sometimes, if the job needed to be
+finished, by the light of a couple of candles.
+
+One evening, about nine o'clock, the boy as he planed a bench paused
+suddenly.  "What's that?"
+
+They listened.  The door stood open, and after a second or two they
+heard the sound of feet tiptoeing away up the path outside.
+
+"Spies, perhaps," said his father.  "If so, let them go in peace."
+
+But he was not altogether easy.  There had been strange doings up at
+the Bryanite Chapel of late.  He still visited a few of his
+parishioners regularly--hill farmers and their wives for the most
+part, who did not happen to be tenants of Squire Moyle, and on whom
+his visits therefore could bring no harm; and one or two had hinted
+of strange doings, now that the Bryanites had hold of the old Squire.
+They themselves had been up--just to look; they confessed it
+shamefacedly, much in the style of men who have been drinking
+overnight.  Without pressing them and showing himself curious, the
+Vicar could get at no particulars.  But as the summer grew he felt a
+moral sultriness, as it were, growing with it.  The people were off
+their balance, restless; and behind their behaviour he had a sense,
+now of something electric, menacing, now of a hand holding it in
+check.  Slowly in those days the conviction deepened in him that he
+was an alien on this coast, that between him and the hearts of the
+race he ministered to there stretched an impalpable, impenetrable
+veil.  And all this while the faces he passed on the road, though
+shy, were kindlier than they had been in the days before his
+self-confidence left him--it seemed not so long ago.
+
+On a Saturday night early in May, the footsteps were heard again, and
+this time in the porch itself.  While Mr. Raymond and Taffy listened
+the big latch went up with a creak, and a dark figure slipped into
+the church.
+
+"Who is there?" challenged Mr. Raymond from the chancel where he
+stood peering out of the small circle of light.
+
+"A friend.  Pass, friend, and all's well!" answered a squeaky voice.
+"Bless you, I've sarved in the militia before now."
+
+It was Jacky Pascoe, with his coat-collar turned up high about his
+ears.
+
+"What do you want?" Mr. Raymond demanded sharply.
+
+"A job."
+
+"We can pay for no work here."
+
+"Wait till thee'rt asked, Parson, dear.  I've been spying in upon 'ee
+these nights past.  Pretty carpenters you be!  T'other night, as I
+was a-peeping, the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go, and for goodness'
+sake show them chaps how to do it fitty.'  'Dear Lord,' I said,
+'Thou knowest I be a Bryanite.'  The Lord said to me, 'None of your
+back answers!  Go and do as I tell 'ee.'  So here I be."
+
+Mr. Raymond hesitated.  "Squire Moyle is your friend, I hear, and the
+friend of your chapel.  What will he say if he discovers that you are
+helping us?"
+
+Jacky scratched his head.  "I reckon the Lord must have thought o'
+that, too.  Suppose you put me to work in the vestry?  There's only
+one window looks in on the vestry: you can block that up with a
+curtain, and there I'll be like a weevil in a biscuit."
+
+When this screen was fixed, the little Bryanite looked round and
+rubbed his hands.  "Now I'll tell 'ee a prabble," he said--"a
+prabble about this candle I'm holding.  When God Almighty said
+'_let there be light_,' He gave every man a candle--to some folks,
+same as you, long sixes perhaps and best wax; to others, a farthing
+dip.  But they all helps to light up; and the beauty of it is,
+Parson"--he laid a hand on Mr. Raymond's cuff--"there isn't one of
+'em burns a ha'porth the worse for every candle that's lit from en.
+Now sit down, you and the boy, and I'll larn 'ee how to join a board."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+VOICES FROM THE SEA.
+
+Before winter and the long nights came around again, Taffy had become
+quite a clever carpenter.  From the first his quickness fairly
+astonished the Bryanite, who at the best was but a journeyman and
+soon owned himself beaten.
+
+"I doubt," said he, "if you'll ever make so good a man as your
+father; but you can't help making a better workman."  He added, with
+his eyes on the boy's face, "There's one thing in which you might
+copy en.  He hasn't much of a gift: _but he lays it 'pon the altar_."
+
+By this time Taffy had resumed his lessons.  Every day he carried a
+book or two in his satchel with his dinner, and read or translated
+aloud while his father worked.  Two hours were allowed for this in
+the morning, and again two in the afternoon.  Sometimes a day would
+be set apart during which they talked nothing but Latin.
+Difficulties in the text of their authors they postponed until the
+evening, and worked them out at home, after supper, with the help of
+grammar and dictionary.
+
+The boy was not unhappy, on the whole; though for weeks together he
+longed for sight of George Vyell, who seemed to have vanished into
+space, or into that limbo where his childhood lay like a toy in a
+lumber room.  Taffy seldom turned the key of that room.  The stories
+he imagined now were not about fairies or heroes, but about himself.
+He wanted to be a great man and astonish the world.  Just how the
+world was to be astonished he did not clearly see; but the triumph,
+in whatever shape it came, was to involve a new gown for his mother,
+and for his father a whole library of books.
+
+Mr. Raymond never went back to his books now, except to help Taffy.
+The Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews was laid aside.
+"Some day!" he told Humility.  The Sunday congregation had dwindled
+to a very few, mostly farm people; Squire Moyle having threatened to
+expel any tenant of his who dared to set foot within the church.
+
+In the autumn two things happened which set Taffy wondering.
+
+During the first three years at Nannizabuloe, old Mrs. Venning had
+regularly been carried downstairs to dine with the family.
+The sea-air (she said) had put new life into her.  But now she seldom
+moved from her room, and Taffy seldom saw her except at night, when--
+after the old childish custom--he knocked at her door to wish her
+pleasant dreams and pull up the weights of the tall clock which stood
+by her bed's head.
+
+One night he asked carelessly, "What do you want with the clock?
+Lying here you don't need to know the time; and its ticking must keep
+you awake."
+
+"So it does, child; but bless you, I like it."
+
+"Like being kept awake?"
+
+"Dear, yes! I have enough of rest and quiet up here.  You mind the
+litany I used to say over to you?--Parson Kempthorne taught it to us
+girls when I was in service with him; 'twas made up, he said, by
+another old Devonshire parson, years and years ago--"
+
+     "'When I lie within my bed
+       Sick in heart and sick in head,
+       And with doubts discomforted,
+           Sweet Spirit, comfort me!
+       When the house do sigh and weep--'"
+
+"That's it.  You wouldn't think how quiet it is up here all day.
+But at night, when you're in bed and sleeping, all the house begins
+to talk; little creakings of furniture, you know, and the wind in the
+chimney and sometimes the rain in the gutter, running--it's all talk
+to me.  Mostly it's quite sociable, too; but sometimes, in rainy
+weather, the tune changes and then it's like some poor soul in bed
+and sobbing to itself.  That's when the verse comes in:"
+
+     "'When the house do sigh and weep
+       And the world is drowned in sleep,
+       Yet my eyes the watch do keep,
+            Sweet Spirit, comfort me!'"
+
+"And then the clock's ticking is a wonderful comfort.  _Tick-tack,
+tick-tack!_ and I think of you stretched asleep and happy and growing
+up to be a man, and the minutes running and trickling away to my
+deliverance--"
+
+"Granny!"
+
+"My dear, I'm as well off as most; but that isn't saying I shan't be
+glad to go and take the pain in my joints to a better land.
+Before we came here, in militia-time, I used to lie and listen for
+the buglers, but now I've only the clock.  No more bugles for me, I
+reckon, till I hear them blown across Jordan."
+
+Taffy remembered how he too had lain and listened to the bugles; and
+with that he saw his childhood, as it were a small round globe set
+within a far larger one and wrapped around with other folks'
+thoughts.  He kissed his grandmother and went away wondering; and as
+he lay down that night it still seemed wonderful to him that she
+should have heard those bugles, and more wonderful, that night after
+night for years she should have been thinking of him while he slept,
+and he never have guessed it.
+
+One morning, some three weeks later, he and his father were putting
+on their oil-skins before starting to work--for it had been blowing
+hard through the night and the gale was breaking up in floods of
+rain--when they heard a voice hallooing in the distance.
+Humility heard it too and turned swiftly to Taffy.  "Run upstairs,
+dear.  I expect it's someone sent from Tresedder farm; and if so,
+he'll want to see your father alone."
+
+Mr. Raymond frowned.  "No," he said; "the time is past for that."
+
+A fist hammered on the door.  Mr. Raymond threw it open.
+
+"Brigantine--on the sands!  Half a mile this side of the
+light-house!"  Taffy saw across his father's shoulder a gleam of
+yellow oilskins and a flapping sou'-wester hat.  The panting voice
+belonged to Sam Udy--son of old Bill Udy--a labourer at Tresedder.
+
+"I'll go at once," said Mr. Raymond.  "Run you for the coast-guard!"
+
+The oilskins went by the window; the side gate clashed to.
+
+"Is it a wreck?" cried Taffy.  "May I go with you?"
+
+"Yes, there may be a message to run with."
+
+From the edge of the towans, where the ground dipped steeply to the
+long beach, they saw the wreck, about a mile up the coast, and as
+well as they could judge a hundred or a hundred and twenty yards out.
+She lay almost on her beam ends, with the waves sweeping high across
+her starboard quarter and never less than six ranks of ugly breakers
+between her and dry land.  A score of watchers--in the distance they
+looked like emmets--were gathered by the edge of the surf.  But the
+coast-guard had not arrived yet.
+
+"The tide is ebbing, and the rocket may reach.  Can you see anyone
+aboard?"
+
+Taffy spied through his hands, but could see no one.  His father set
+off running, and he followed, half-blinded by the rain, now
+floundering in loose sand, now tripping in a rabbit hole.  They had
+covered three-fourths of the distance when Mr. Raymond pulled up and
+waved his hat as the coast-guard carriage swept into view over a
+ridge to the right and came plunging across the main valley of the
+towans.  It passed them close--the horses fetlock-deep in sand, with
+heads down and heaving, smoking shoulders; the coast-guardsmen with
+keen strong faces like heroes'--and the boy longed to copy his father
+and send a cheer after them as they went galloping by.  But something
+rose in his throat.
+
+He ran after the carriage, and reached the shore just as the first
+rocket shot singing out towards the wreck.  By this time at least a
+hundred miners had gathered, and between their legs he caught a
+glimpse of two figures stretched at length on the wet sand.  He had
+never looked on a dead body before.  The faces of these were hidden
+by the crowd; and he hung about the fringe of it dreading, and yet
+courting, a sight of them.
+
+The first rocket was swept down to leeward of the wreck.  The chief
+officer judged his second beautifully, and the line fell clean across
+the vessel and all but amidships.  A figure started up from the lee
+of the deckhouse, and springing into the main shrouds, grasped it and
+made it fast.  The beach being too low for them to work the cradle
+clear above the breakers, the coast-guardsmen carried the shore end
+of the line up the shelving cliff and fixed it.  Within ten minutes
+the cradle was run out, and within twenty the first man came swinging
+shoreward.
+
+Four men were brought ashore alive, the captain last.  The rest of
+the crew of six lay on the sands with Mr. Raymond kneeling beside
+them.  He had covered their faces, and now gave the order to lift
+them into the carriage.  Taffy noticed that he was obeyed without
+demur or question.  And there flashed on his memory a grey morning,
+not unlike this one, when he had missed his father at breakfast:
+"He had been called away suddenly," Humility explained, "and there
+would be no lessons that day," and she kept the boy indoors all the
+morning and busy with a netting-stitch he had been bothering her to
+teach him.
+
+"Father," he asked as they followed the cart, "does this often
+happen?"
+
+"Your mother hasn't thought it well for you to see these sights."
+
+"Then it _has_ happened, often?"
+
+"I have buried seventeen," said Mr. Raymond.
+
+That afternoon he showed Taffy their graves.  "I know the names of
+all but two.  The bodies have marks about them--tattooed, you know--
+and that helps.  And I write to their relatives or friends and
+restore whatever small property may be found on them.  I have often
+wished to put up some gravestone, or a wooden cross at least, with
+their names."
+
+He went to his chest in the vestry and took out a book--a cheap
+account book, ruled for figures.  Taffy turned over the pages.
+
+     Nov. 3rd, 187-.  Brig "James and Maria": J. D., fair-haired,
+     height 5 ft. 8 in., marked on chest with initials and cross
+     swords, tattooed, also anchor and coil of rope on right
+     fore-arm: large brown mole on right shoulder-blade.
+     Striped flannel drawers: otherwise naked: no property of any
+     kind.
+
+     Ditto.  Grown man, age 40 or thereabouts: dark; iron grey beard:
+     lovers' knot tattooed on right forearm, with initials R. L.,
+     E. W., in the loops: clad in flannel shirt, guernsey, trousers
+     (blue sea-cloth), socks (heather-mixture), all unmarked.
+     Silver chain in pocket, with Freemason's token: a half-crown, a
+     florin, and fourpence--
+
+And so on.  On the opposite page were entered the full names and
+details afterwards discovered, with notes of the Vicar's
+correspondence, and position of the grave.
+
+"They ought to have gravestones," said Mr. Raymond.  "But as it is, I
+can only get about thirty shillings for the funeral from the county
+rate.  The balance has come out of my pocket--from two to three
+pounds for each.  From the beginning the Squire refused to help to
+bury sailors.  He took the ground that it wasn't a local claim."
+
+"Hullo!" said Taffy, for as he turned the leaves his eye fell on this
+entry:--
+
+     Jan 30th, 187-.  S.S.  "Rifleman" (all hands).  Cargo, China
+     clay: W. P., age about eighteen, fair skin, reddish hair, short
+     and curled, height 5ft.  10 and 3/4 in.  Initials tattooed on
+     chest under a three-masted ship and semicircle of seven stars;
+     clad in flannel singlet and trousers (cloth): singlet marked
+     with same initials in red cotton: pockets empty--
+
+"But he was in the Navy!" cried Taffy, with his finger on the entry.
+
+"Which one?  Yes, he was in the Navy.  You'll see it on the opposite
+page.  He deserted, poor boy, in Cork Harbour, and shipped on board a
+tramp steamer as donkey-man.  She loaded at Fowey and was wrecked on
+the voyage back.  William Pellow he was called: his mother lives but
+ten miles up the coast: she never heard of it until six weeks after."
+
+"But we--I, I mean--knew him.  He was one of the sailor boys on
+Joby's van.  You remember their helping us with the luggage at
+_Indian Queens'?_  He showed me his tattoo marks that day."
+
+And again he saw his childhood as it were set about with an enchanted
+hedge, across which many voices would have called to him, and some
+from near, but all had hung muted and arrested.
+
+The inquest on the two drowned sailors was held next day at the
+_Fifteen Balls_, down in Innis village.  Later in the afternoon, the
+four survivors walked up to the church, headed by the Captain.
+
+"We've been hearing," said the Captain, "of your difficulties, sir:
+likewise your kindness to other poor seafaring chaps.  We'd have
+liked to make ye a small offering for your church, but sixteen
+shillings is all we can raise between us.  So we come to say that if
+you can put us on to a job, why we're staying over the funeral, and a
+day's work or more after that won't hurt us one way or another."
+
+Mr. Raymond led them to the chancel and pointed out a new beam, on
+which he and Jacky Pascoe had been working a week past, and over
+which they had been cudgelling their brains how to get it lifted and
+fixed in place.
+
+"I can send to one of the miners and borrow a couple of ladders."
+
+"Ladders? Lord love ye, sir, and begging your pardon, we don't want
+ladders.  With a sling, Bill, hey?--and a couple of tackles.
+You leave it to we, sir."
+
+He went off to turn over the gear salved from his vessel, and early
+next forenoon had the apparatus rigged up and ready.  He was obliged
+to leave it at this point, having been summoned across to Falmouth to
+report to his agents.  His last words, before starting were addressed
+to his crew.  "I reckon you can fix it now, boys.  There's only one
+thing more, and don't you forget it: Hats off; and any man that wants
+to spit must go outside."
+
+That afternoon Taffy learnt for the first time what could be done
+with a few ropes and pulleys.  The seamen seemed to spin ropes out of
+themselves like spiders.  By three o'clock the beam was hoisted and
+fixed; and they broke off their work to attend their shipmates'
+funeral.  After the funeral they fell to again, though more silently,
+and before nightfall the beam shone with a new coat of varnish.
+
+They left early next morning, after a good deal of handshaking, and
+Taffy looked after them wistfully as they turned to wave their caps
+and trudged away over the rise towards the cross-roads.  Away to the
+left in the wintry sunshine a speck of scarlet caught his eye against
+the blue-grey of the towans.  He watched it as it came slowly towards
+him, and his heart leapt--yet not quite as he had expected it to
+leap.
+
+For it was George Vyell.  George had lately been promoted to "pink"
+and made a gallant figure on his strapping grey hunter.  For the
+first time Taffy felt ashamed of his working-suit, and would have
+slipped back to the church.  But George had seen him, and pulled up.
+
+"Hullo!" said he.
+
+"Hullo!" said Taffy; and, absurdly enough, could find no more to say.
+
+"How are you getting on?"
+
+"Oh, I'm all right." There was another pause.  "How's Honoria?"
+
+"Oh, she's all right.  I'm riding over there now: they meet at
+Tredinnis to-day."  He tapped his boot with his hunting crop.
+
+"Don't you have any lessons now?" asked Taffy, after a while.
+
+"Dear me, yes; I've got a tutor.  He's no good at it.  But what made
+you ask?"
+
+Really Taffy could not tell.  He had asked merely for the sake of
+saying something.  George pulled out a gold watch.
+
+"I must be getting on.  Well, good-bye!"
+
+"Good-bye!"
+
+And that was all.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+TAFFY'S APPRENTICESHIP.
+
+They could manage the carpentering now.  And Jacky Pascoe, who, in
+addition to his other trades, was something of a glazier, had taken
+the damaged east window in hand.  For six months it had remained
+boarded up, darkening the chancel.  Mr. Raymond removed the boards
+and fixed them up again on the outside, and the Bryanite worked
+behind them night after night.  He could only be spied upon through
+two lancet windows at the west end of the church, and these they
+curtained.
+
+But what continually bothered them was their ignorance of iron-work.
+Staples, rivets, hinges were for ever wanted.  At length, one
+evening, toward the end of March, the Bryanite laid down his tools.
+
+"Tell 'ee what 'tis, Parson.  You must send the boy to someone
+that'll teach en smithy-work.  There's no sense in this cold
+hammering."
+
+"Wheelwright Hocken holds his shop and cottage from the Squire."
+
+"Why not put the boy to Mendarva the Smith, over to Benny Beneath?
+He's a first-rate workman."
+
+"That is more than six miles away."
+
+"No matter for that.  There's Joll's Farm close by; Farmer Joll would
+board and lodge en for nine shillings a week, and glad of the chance;
+and he could come home for Sundays."
+
+Mr. Raymond, as soon as he reached home, sat down and wrote a letter
+to Mendarva the Smith and another to Farmer Joll.  Within a week the
+bargains were struck, and it was settled that Taffy should go at
+once.
+
+"I may be calling before long, to look you up," said the Bryanite,
+"but mind you do no more than nod when you see me."
+
+Joll's Farm lay somewhere near Carwithiel, across the moor where
+Taffy had gone fishing with George and Honoria.  On the Monday
+morning when he stepped through the white front gate, with his bag on
+his shoulder, and paused for a good look at the building, it seemed
+to him a very comfortable farmstead, and vastly superior to the
+tumble-down farms around Nannizabuloe.  The flagged path, which led
+up to the front door between great bunches of purple honesty, was
+swept as clean as a dairy.
+
+A dark-haired maid opened the door and led him to the great kitchen
+at the back.  Hams wrapped in paper hung from the rafters, and
+strings of onions.  The pans over the fire-place were bright as
+mirrors, and through the open window he heard the voices of children
+at play as well as the clacking of poultry in the town-place.
+
+"I'll go and tell the mistress," said the maid; but she paused at the
+door.  "I suppose you don't remember me, now?"
+
+"No," said Taffy truthfully.
+
+"My name's Lizzie Pezzack.  You was with the young lady, that day,
+when she bought my doll.  I mind you quite well.  But I put my hair
+up last Easter, and that makes a difference."
+
+"Why, you were only a child!"
+
+"I was seventeen last week.  And--I say, do you know the Bryanite,
+over to St. Ann's--Preacher Jacky Pascoe?"
+
+He nodded, remembering the caution given him.
+
+"I got salvation off him.  Master and mis'-ess they've got salvation
+too; but they take it very quiet.  They're very fond of one another;
+if you please one, you'll please 'em both.  They let me walk over to
+prayer-meetin' once a week.  But I don't go by Mendarva's shop--
+that's where you work--though 'tis the shortest way; because there's
+a woman buried in the road there, with a stake through her, and I'm
+a terrible coward for ghosts."
+
+She paused as if expecting him to say something; but Taffy was
+staring at a "neck" of corn, elaborately plaited, which hung above
+the mantel-shelf.  And just then Mrs. Joll entered the kitchen.
+
+Taffy--without any reason--had expected to see a middle-aged
+housewife.  But Mrs. Joll was hardly over thirty; a shapely woman,
+with a plain, pleasant face and auburn hair, the wealth of which she
+concealed by wearing it drawn straight back from the forehead and
+plaited in the severest coil behind.  She shook hands.
+
+"You'll like a drink of milk before I show you your room?"
+
+Taffy was grateful for the milk.  While he drank it, the voices of
+the children outside rose suddenly to shouts of laughter.
+
+"That will be their father come home," said Mrs. Joll, and going to
+the side door called to him.  "John, put the children down!
+Mr. Raymond's son is here."
+
+Mr. Joll, who had been galloping round the farmyard with a small girl
+of three on his back, and a boy of six tugging at his coat-tails,
+pulled up, and wiped his good-natured face.
+
+"Kindly welcome," said he, coming forward and shaking hands, while
+the two children stared at Taffy.
+
+After a minute the boy said, "My name's Bob.  Come and play horses,
+too."
+
+Farmer Joll looked at Taffy with a shyness that was comic.
+"Shall we?"
+
+"Mr. Raymond will be tired enough already," his wife suggested.
+
+"Not a bit," declared Taffy; and hoisting Bob on his back, he set off
+furiously prancing after the farmer.
+
+By dinner-time he and the family were fast friends, and after dinner
+the farmer took him off to be introduced to Mendarva the Smith.
+
+Mendarva's forge stood on a triangle of turf beside the high-road,
+where a cart-track branched off to descend to Joll's Farm in the
+valley.  And Mendarva was a dark giant of a man with a beard like
+those you see on the statues of Nineveh.  On Sundays he parted his
+beard carefully and tied the ends with little bows of scarlet ribbon;
+but on week days it curled at will over his mighty chest.  He had one
+assistant whom he called "the Dane"; a red-haired youth as tall as
+himself and straighter from the waist down.  Mendarva's knees had
+come together with years of poising and swinging his great hammer.
+
+"He's little, but he'll grow," said he, after eyeing Taffy up and
+down.  "Dane, come fore and tell me if we'll make a workman of en."
+
+The Dane stepped forward and passed his hands over the boy's
+shoulders and down his ribs.  "He's slight, but he'll fill out.
+Good pair o' shoulders.  Give's hold o' your hand, my son."
+
+Taffy obeyed; not very well liking to be handled thus like a prize
+bullock.
+
+"Hand like a lady's.  Tidy wrist, though.  He'll do, master."
+
+So Taffy was passed, given a leathern apron, and set to his first
+task of keeping the forge-fire raked and the bellows going, while the
+hammers took up the music he was to listen to for a year to come.
+
+This music kept the day merry; and beyond the window along the
+bright high-road there was usually something worth seeing--
+farm-carts, jowters' carts, the doctor and his gig, pedlars and
+Johnny-fortnights, the miller's waggons from the valley-bottom below
+Joll's Farm, and on Tuesdays and Fridays the market-van going and
+returning.  Mendarva knew or speculated upon everybody, and with half
+the passers-by broke off work and gave the time of day, leaning on
+his hammer.  But down at the farm all was strangely quiet, in spite
+of the children's voices; and at night the quietness positively kept
+him awake, listening to the pur-r of the pigeons in their cote
+against the house-wall, thinking of his grandmother awake at home and
+harkening to the _tick-tack_ of her tall clock.  Often when he awoke
+to the early summer daybreak and saw through his attic-window the
+grey shadows of the sheep still and long on the slope above the
+farmstead, his ear was wanting something, asking for something; for
+the murmur of the sea never reached this inland valley.  And he would
+lie and long for the chirruping of the two children in the next room
+and the drawing of bolts and clatter of milk-pails below stairs.
+
+He had plenty to eat, and that plenty simple and good, and clean
+linen to sleep between.  The kitchen was his except on Saturday
+nights, when Mrs. Joll and Lizzie tubbed the children there, and then
+he would carry his books off to the best parlour or stroll around the
+farm with Mr. Joll and discuss the stock.  There were no loose rails
+in Mr. Joll's gates, no farm implements lying out in the weather to
+rust.  Mr. Joll worked early and late, and his shoulders had a
+tell-tale stoop--for he was a man in the prime of life, perhaps some
+five years older than his wife.
+
+One Saturday evening he unburdened his heart to Taffy.  It happened
+at the end of the hay-harvest, and the two were leaning over a gate
+discussing the yet unthatched rick.
+
+"What I say is," declared the farmer quite in-consequently, "a man
+must be able to lay his troubles 'pon the Lord.  I don't mean his
+work, but his troubles; and go home and shut the door and be happy
+with his wife and children.  Now, I tell you that for months--iss,
+years--after Bob was born I kept plaguing myself in the fields,
+thinking that some harm might have happened to the child.  Why, I
+used to make an excuse and creep home, and then if I see'd a blind
+pulled down you wouldn't think how my heart'd go thump; and I'd stand
+wi' my head on the door-hapse an' say, 'If so be the Lord have
+took'n, I must go and comfort Susan--not my will, but Thine, Lord--
+but, Lord, don't 'ee be cruel this time!'  And then find the cheeld
+right as ninepence and the blind only pulled down to keep the sun off
+the carpet.  After a while my wife guessed what was wrong--I used to
+make up such poor twiddling pretences.  She said, 'Look here, the
+Lord and me'll see after Bob; and if you can't keep to your own work
+without poking your nose into ours, then I married for worse and not
+for better.'  Then it came upon me that by leaving the Lord to look
+after my job I'd been treating Him like a farm labourer.  It's the
+things you can't help he looks after--not the work."
+
+A few evenings later there came a knock at the door, and Lizzie, who
+went to open it, returned with the Bryanite skipping behind her.
+
+"Blessings be upon this here house!" he cried, cutting a sort of
+double shuffle on the threshold.  He shook hands with the farmer and
+his wife, and nodded toward Taffy.  "So you've got Parson Raymond's
+boy here!"
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Joll; and turned to Taffy.  "He've come to pray a
+bit: perhaps you would rather be in the parlour?"
+
+Taffy asked to be allowed to stay; and presently Mr. Pascoe had them
+all down on their knees.  He began by invoking God's protection on
+the household; but his prayer soon ceased to be a prayer.  It broke
+into ejaculations of praise--"Friends, I be too happy to ask for
+anything--Glory, glory!  The blood!  The precious blood!
+O deliverance!  O streams of redemption running!"  The farmer and his
+wife began to chime in--"Hallelujah!"  "Glory!" and Lizzie Pezzack to
+sob.  Taffy, kneeling before a kitchen chair, peeped between his
+palms, and saw her shoulders heaving.
+
+The Bryanite sprang to his feet, overturning the settle with a crash.
+"Tid'n no use.  I must skip!  Who'll dance wi' me?"
+
+He held out his hands to Mrs. Joll.  She took them, and skipped once
+shamefacedly.  Lizzie, with flaming cheeks, pushed her aside.
+"Leave me try, mis'ess; I shall die if I don't."  She caught the
+preacher's hands, and the two leapt about the kitchen.  "I can dance
+higher than mis'ess!"  Farmer Joll looked on with a dazed face.
+"Hallelujah!"  "Amen!" he said at intervals, quite mechanically.
+The pair stood under the bacon rack and began to whirl like
+dervishes--hands clasped, toes together, bodies leaning back and
+almost rigid.  They whirled until Taffy's brain whirled with them.
+
+With a louder sob Lizzie let go her hold and tottered back into a
+chair, laughing hysterically.  The Bryanite leaned against the table,
+panting.
+
+There was a long pause.  Mrs. Joll took a napkin from the dresser and
+fell to fanning the girl's face, then to slapping it briskly.
+"Get up and lay the table," she commanded; "the preacher'll stay to
+supper."
+
+"Thank 'ee, ma'am, I don't care if I do," said he; and ten minutes
+later they were all seated at supper and discussing the fall in wheat
+in the most matter-of-fact voices.  Only their faces twitched now and
+again.
+
+"I hear you had the preacher down to Joll's last night," said
+Mendarva the Smith.  "What'st think of en?"
+
+"I can't make him out," was Taffy's colourless but truthful answer.
+
+"He's a bellows of a man.  I do hear he's heating up th' old Squire
+Moyle's soul to knack an angel out of en.  He'll find that a job and
+a half.  You mark my words, there'll be Dover over in your parish one
+o' these days."
+
+During work-hours Mendarva bestowed most of his talk on Taffy.
+The Dane seldom opened his lips except to join in the anvil chorus--
+
+     "Here goes one--
+          Sing, sing, Johnny!
+      Here goes two--
+          Sing, Johnny, sing!
+      Whack'n till he's red,
+      Whack'n till he's dead,
+      And whop! goes the widow with
+         A brand new ring!"
+
+And when the boy took a hammer and joined in he fell silent.
+Taffy soon observed that a singular friendship knit these two men,
+who were both unmarried.  Mendarva had been a famous wrestler in his
+day, and his great ambition now was to train the other to win the
+County belt.  Often after work the pair would try a hitch together on
+the triangle of turf, with Taffy for stickler, Mendarva illustrating
+and explaining, the Dane nodding seriously whenever he understood,
+but never answering a word.  Afterwards the boy recalled these bouts
+very vividly--the clear evening sky, the shoulders of the two big men
+shining against the level sun as they gripped and swayed, their long
+shadows on the grass under which (as he remembered) the poor
+self-murdered woman lay buried.
+
+He thought of her at night, sometimes, as he worked alone at the
+forge; for Mendarva allowed him the keys and use of the smithy
+overtime, in consideration of a small payment for coal.  And then he
+blew his fire and hammered, with a couple of candles on the bench and
+a Homer between them; and beat the long hexameters into his memory.
+The incongruity of it never struck him.  He was going to be a great
+man, and somehow this was going to be the way.  These scraps of
+iron--these tools of his forging--were to grow into the arms and
+shield of Achilles.  In its own time would come the magic moment, the
+shield find its true circumference and swing to the balance of his
+arm, proof and complete.
+
+   en d etithei thotamoio mega stheuos okeanoio
+   antuga pad pumatev sakeos puka poietoi. . .
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+LIZZIE AND HONORIA.
+
+His apprenticeship lasted a year and six months, and all this while
+he lived with the Jolls, walking home every Sunday morning and
+returning every Sunday night, rain or shine.  He carried his deftness
+of hand into his new trade, and it was Mendarva who begged and
+obtained an extension of the time agreed on,  "Rather than lose the
+boy I'll tache en for love."  So Taffy stayed on for another six
+months.  He was now in his seventeenth year--a boy no longer.
+One evening, as he blew up his smithy fire, the glow of it fell on
+the form of a woman standing just outside the window and watching
+him.  He had no silly fears of ghosts: but the thought of the buried
+woman flashed across his mind and he dropped his pincers with a
+clatter.
+
+"'Tis only me," said the woman.  "You needn't to be afeard."  And he
+saw it was the girl Lizzie.
+
+She stepped inside the forge and seated herself on the Dane's anvil.
+
+"I was walking back from prayer-meeting," she said.  "'Tis nigher
+this way, but I don't ever dare to come.  Might, I dessay, if I'd
+somebody to see me home."
+
+"Ghosts?" asked Taffy, picking up the pincers and thrusting the bar
+back into the hot cinders.
+
+"I dunno: I gets frightened o' the very shadows on the road
+sometimes.  I suppose, now, you never walks out that way?"
+
+"Which way?"
+
+"Why, towards where your home is.  That's the way I comes."
+
+"No, I don't."  Taffy blew at the cinders until they glowed again.
+"It's only on Sundays I go over there."
+
+"That's a pity," said Lizzie candidly.  "I'm kept in, Sunday
+evenings, to look after the children while farmer and mis'ess goes to
+Chapel.  That's the agreement I came 'pon."
+
+Taffy nodded.
+
+"It would be nice now, wouldn't it--"  She broke off, clasping her
+knees and staring at the blaze.
+
+"What would be nice?"
+
+Lizzie laughed confusedly.  "Aw, you make me say't.  I can't abear
+any of the young men up to the Chapel.  If me and you--"
+
+Taffy ceased blowing.  The fire died down, and in the darkness he
+could hear her breathing hard.
+
+"They're so rough," she went on, "and t'other night I met young
+Squire Vyell riding along the road, and he stopped me and wanted to
+kiss me."
+
+"George Vyell?  Surely he didn't?"  Taffy blew up the fire again.
+
+"Iss he did.  I don't see why not, neither."
+
+"Why he shouldn't kiss you?"
+
+"Why he shouldn't want to."
+
+Taffy frowned, carried the white hot bar to his anvil, and began to
+hammer.  He despised girls, as a rule, and their ways.  Decidedly
+Lizzie annoyed him; and yet as he worked he could not help glancing
+at her now and then, as she sat and watched him.  By-and-by he saw
+that her eyes were full of tears.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"I--I can't walk home alone.  I'm afeard!"  He tossed his hammer
+aside, raked out the fire, and reached his coat off its peg.  As he
+swung round in the darkness to put it on, he blundered against Lizzie
+or Lizzie blundered against him.  She clutched at him nervously.
+
+"Clumsy!  can't you see the doorway?"  She passed out, and he
+followed and locked the door.  As they crossed the turf to the
+high-road, she slipped her arm into his.  "I feel safe, that way.
+Let it stay, co!"  After a few paces, she added, "You're different
+from the others--that's why I like you."
+
+"How?"
+
+"I dunno; but you _be_ diff'rent.  You don't think about girls, for
+one thing."
+
+Taffy did not answer.  He felt angry, ashamed, uncomfortable.  He did
+not turn once to look at her face, dimly visible by the light of the
+young moon--the hunter's moon--now sinking over the slope of the
+hill.  Thick dust--too thick for the heavy dew to lay--covered the
+cart-track down to the farm, muffling their footsteps.  Lizzie paused
+by the gate.
+
+"Best go in separate," she said; paused again and whispered, "You may
+if you like."
+
+"May do what?"
+
+"What--what young Squire Vyell wanted."
+
+They were face to face now.  She held up her lips, and as she did so
+they parted in an amorous little laugh.  The moonlight was on her
+face.  Taffy bent swiftly and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, you hurt!" With another little laugh she slipped up the garden
+path and into the house.
+
+Ten minutes later Taffy followed, hating himself.
+
+
+For the next fortnight he avoided her; and then, late one evening she
+came again.  He was prepared for this, and had locked the door of the
+smithy and let down the shutter while, he worked.  She tapped upon
+the outside of the shutter with her knuckles.
+
+"Let me in!"
+
+"Can't you leave me alone?" he answered pettishly.  "I want to work,
+and you interrupt."
+
+"I don't want no love-making--I don't indeed.  I'll sit quiet as a
+mouse.  But I'm afeard, out here."
+
+"Nonsense!"
+
+"I'm afeard o' the ghost.  There's something comin'--let me in,
+co-o!"
+
+Taffy unlocked the door and held it half opened while he listened.
+
+"Yes, there's somebody coming, on horseback.  Now, look here--it's no
+ghost, and I can't have you about here with people passing.
+I--I don't want you here at all; so make haste and slip away home,
+that's a good girl."
+
+Lizzie glided like a shadow into the dark lane as the trample of
+hoofs drew close, and the rider pulled up beside the door.
+
+"You're working late, I see.  Is it too late to make a shoe for
+Aide-de-camp here?"
+
+It was Honoria.  She dismounted and stood at the doorway, holding her
+horse's bridle.
+
+"No," said Taffy: "that is, if you don't mind the waiting."
+
+With his leathern apron he wiped the Dane's anvil for a seat, while
+she hitched up Aide-de-camp and stepped into the glow of the
+forge-fire.
+
+"The hounds took us three miles beyond Carwithiel: and there, just as
+they lost, Aide-de-camp cast his off-hind shoe.  I didn't find it out
+at first, and now I've had to walk him all the way back.  Are you
+alone here?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who was that I saw leaving as I came up?"
+
+"You saw someone?"
+
+"Yes." She nodded, looking him straight in the face.  "It looked like
+a woman.  Who was she?"
+
+"That was Lizzie Pezzack, the girl who sold you her doll, once.
+She's a servant down at the farm where I lodge."
+
+Honoria said no more for the moment, but seated herself on the Dane's
+anvil, while Taffy chose a bar of iron and stepped out to examine
+Aide-de-camp's hoof.  He returned and in silence began to blow up the
+fire.
+
+"I dare say you were astonished to see me," she remarked at length.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm still forbidden to speak to you.  The last time I did it,
+grandfather beat me."
+
+"The old brute!"  Taffy nipped the hot iron savagely in his pincers.
+
+"I wonder if he'll do it again.  Somehow I don't think he will."
+
+Taffy looked at her.  She had drawn herself up, and was smiling.
+In her close-fitting habit she seemed very slight, yet tall, and a
+woman grown.  He took the bar to the anvil and began to beat it flat.
+His teeth were shut, and with every blow he said to himself "Brute!"
+
+"That's beautiful," Honoria went on.  "I stopped Mendarva the other
+day, and he told me wonders about you.  He says he tried you with a
+hard-boiled egg, and you swung the hammer and chipped the shell all
+round without bruising the white a bit.  Is that true?"
+
+Taffy nodded.
+
+"And your learning--the Latin and Greek, I mean; do you still go on
+with it?"
+
+He nodded again, towards a volume of Euripides that lay open on the
+workbench.
+
+"And the stories you used to tell George and me; do you go on telling
+them to yourself?"
+
+He was obliged to confess that he never did.  She sat for a while
+watching the sparks as they flew.  Then she said, "I should like to
+hear you tell one again.  That one about Aslog and Orm, who ran away
+by night across the ice-fields and took a boat and came to an island
+with a house on it, and found a table spread and the fire lit, but no
+inhabitants anywhere--You remember?  It began 'Once upon a time, not
+far from the city of Drontheim, there lived a rich man--'"
+
+Taffy considered a moment and began "Once upon a time, not far from
+the city of Drontheim--"  He paused, eyed the horse-shoe cooling
+between the pincers, and shook his head.  It was no use.  Apollo had
+been too long in service with Admetus, and the tale would not come.
+
+"At any rate," Honoria persisted, "you can tell me something out of
+your books: something you have just been reading."
+
+So he began to tell her the story of Ion, and managed well enough in
+describing the boy and how he ministered before the shrine at Delphi,
+sweeping the temple and scaring the birds away from the precincts:
+but when he came to the plot of the play and, looking up, caught
+Honoria's eyes, it suddenly occurred to him that all the rest of the
+story was a sensual one, and he could not tell it to her.
+He blushed, faltered, and finally broke down.
+
+"But it was beautiful," said she, "so far as it went: and it's just
+what I wanted.  I shall remember that boy Ion now, whenever I think
+of you helping your father in the church at home.  If the rest of the
+story is not nice, I don't want to hear it."  How had she guessed?
+It was delicious, at any rate, to know that she thought of him; and
+Taffy felt how delicious it was, while he fitted and hammered the
+shoe on Aide-de-camp's hoof, she standing by with a candle in either
+hand, the flame scarcely quivering in the windless night.
+
+When all was done, she raised a foot for him to give her a mount.
+"Good-night!" she called, shaking the reins.  Half a minute later
+Taffy stood by the door of the forge, listening to the echoes of
+Aide-de-camp's canter, and the palm of his hand tingled where her
+foot had rested.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+THE SQUIRE'S WEIRD.
+
+He took leave of Mendarva and the Jolls just before Christmas.
+The smith was unaffectedly sorry to lose him.  "But," said he, "the
+Dane will be entered for the championship next summer, so I s'pose I
+must look forward to that."
+
+Every one in the Joll household gave him a small present on his
+leaving.  Lizzie's was a New Testament, with her name on the flyleaf,
+and under it, "Converted April 19, 187-."  Taffy did not want the
+gift, but took it rather than hurt her feelings.
+
+Farmer Joll said, "Well, wish 'ee well!  Been pretty comfiable, I
+hope.  Now you'm goin', I don't mind telling 'ee I didn't like your
+coming a bit.  But now 'tis wunnerful to me you've been wi' us less
+than two year'; we've made such friends."
+
+At home Taffy bought a small forge and set it up in the church at the
+west end of the north aisle.  Mr. Raymond, under his direction, had
+been purchasing the necessary tools for some months past, and now the
+main expense was the cost of coal, which pinched them a little.
+But they managed to keep the fire alight, and the work went forward
+briskly.  Save that he still forbade the parish to lend them the
+least help, the old Squire had ceased to interfere.
+
+Mr. Raymond's hair was greyer, and Taffy might have observed--but did
+not--how readily towards the close of a day's laborious carpentry he
+would drop work and turn to Dindorf's _Poetae Scenici Graeci_,
+through which they were reading their way.  On Sundays the
+congregation rarely numbered a dozen.  It seemed that, as the end of
+the Vicar's task drew nearer, so the prospect of filling the church
+receded and became more shadowy.  And if his was a queer plight,
+Jacky Pascoe's was queerer.  The Bryanite continued to come by night
+and help, but at rarer intervals.  He was discomforted in mind, as
+anyone could see, and at length he took Mr. Raymond aside and made
+confession.
+
+"I must go away; that's what 'tis.  My burden is too great for me to
+bear."
+
+"Why," said Mr. Raymond, who had grown surprisingly tolerant during
+the last twelve months, "what cause have you, of all men, to feel
+dejected?  You can set the folk here on fire like flax." He sighed.
+
+"That's azactly the reason--I can set 'em afire with a breath, but I
+can't hold 'em under.  I make 'em too strong for me--_and I'm
+afeard_.  Parson, dear, it's the gospel truth; for two years I've a
+been strivin' agen myself, wrastlin' upon my knees, and all to hold
+this parish in."  He mopped his face.  "'Tis like fightin' with
+beasts at Ephesus," he said.
+
+"Do you want to hold them in?"
+
+"I do, and I don't.  I've got to try, anyway.  Sometimes I tell
+mysel' 'tis putting a hand to the plough and turning back; and then I
+reckon I'll go on.  But when the time comes I can't.  I'm afeard, I
+tell 'ee." He paused.  "I've laid it before the Lord, but He don't
+seem to help.  There's two voices inside o' me.  'Tis a terrible
+responsibility."
+
+"But the people: what are you afraid of their doing?"
+
+"I don't know.  You don't know what a runaway hoss will do, but
+you're afeared all the same."  He sank his voice.  "There's
+wantonness, for one thing--six love-children born in the parish this
+year, and more coming.  They do say that Vashti Clemow destroyed her
+child.  And Old Man Johns--him they found dead on the rocks under the
+Island--he didn't go there by accident.  'Twas a calm day, too."
+
+As often as not Taffy worked late and blew his forge-fire alone in
+the church, the tap of his hammer making hollow music in the desolate
+aisles.  He was working thus one windy night in February, when the
+door rattled open and in walked a totally unexpected visitor--Sir
+Harry Vyell.
+
+"Good evening!  I was riding by and saw your light in the windows
+dancing up and down.  I thought I would hitch up the mare and drop in
+for a chat.  But go on with your work."
+
+Taffy wondered what had brought him so far from his home at that time
+of night, but asked no questions.  And Sir Harry placed a hassock on
+one of the belfry steps, and taking his seat, watched for a while in
+silence.  He wore his long riding-boots and an overcoat with the
+collar turned up about a neckcloth less nattily folded than usual.
+
+"I wish," he said at length, "that my boy George was clever like you.
+You were great friends once--you remember Plymouth, hey?  But I dare
+say you've not seen much of each other lately."
+
+Taffy shook his head.
+
+"George is a bit wild.  Oxford might have done something for him;
+made a man of him, I mean.  But he wouldn't go.  I believe in wild
+oats to a certain extent.  I have told him from the first he must
+look after himself and decide for himself.  That's my theory.
+It makes a youngster self-reliant.  He goes and comes as he likes.
+If he comes home late from hunting I ask no questions; I don't wait
+dinner.  Don't you agree with me?"
+
+"I don't know," Taffy answered, wondering why he should be consulted.
+
+"Self-reliance is what a man wants."
+
+"Couldn't he have learnt that at school?"
+
+Sir Harry fidgeted with the riding-crop in his hands.  "Well, you
+see, he's an only son--I dare say it was selfish of me.  You don't
+mind my talking about George?"
+
+Taffy laughed.  "I like it.  But--"
+
+Sir Harry laughed too, in an embarrassed way.  "But you don't suppose
+I rode over from Carwithiel for that?  Well, well!  The fact is--one
+gets foolish as one grows old--George went out hunting this morning,
+and didn't turn up for dinner.  I kept to my rule and dined alone.
+Nine o'clock came; half-past; no George.  At ten Hoskins locked up as
+usual, and off I went to bed.  But I couldn't sleep.  After a while
+it struck me that he might be sleeping here over at Tredinnis; that
+is, if no accident had happened.  No sleep for me until I made sure;
+so I jumped out, dressed, slipped down to the stables, saddled the
+mare and rode over.  I left the mare by Tredinnis great gates and
+crept down to Moyle's stables like a housebreaker, looked in through
+the window, and sure enough there was George's grey in the loose box
+to the right.  So George is sleeping there, and I'm easy in my mind.
+No doubt you think me an old fool?"
+
+But Taffy was not thinking anything of the sort.
+
+"I couldn't wish better than that.  You understand?"
+
+"Not quite."
+
+"He lost his mother early.  He wants a woman to look after him, and
+for him to think about.  If he and Honoria would only make up a
+match. . . . And Carwithiel would be quite a different house."
+
+Taffy hesitated, with a hand on the forge-bellows.
+
+"I dare say it's news to you, what I'm telling.  But it has been in
+my mind this long while.  Why don't you blow up the fire?  I bet Miss
+Honoria has thought of it too: girls are deep.  She has a head on her
+shoulders.  I'll warrant she sends half a dozen of my servants
+packing within a week.  As it is, they rob me to a stair.  I know it,
+and I haven't the pluck to interfere."
+
+"What does the old Squire say?"  Taffy managed to ask.
+
+"It has never come to _saying_ anything.  But I believe he thinks of
+it, too, when he happens to think of anything but his soul.  He'll be
+pleased; everyone will be pleased.  The properties touch, you see."
+
+"I see."
+
+"To tell you the truth, he's failing fast.  This religion of his is a
+symptom: all of his family have taken to it in the end.  If he hadn't
+the constitution of a horse, he'd have been converted ten years
+before this.  What puzzles me is, he's so quiet.  You mark my words
+"--Sir Harry rose, buttoned his coat and shook his riding-crop
+prophetically--"he's brewing up for something.  There'll be the devil
+of a flare-up before he has done."
+
+
+It came with the Midsummer bonfires.  At nine o'clock on St. John's
+Eve, Mr. Raymond read prayers in the church.  It was his rule to
+celebrate thus the vigils of all saints in the English calendar and
+some few Cornish saints besides; and he regularly announced these
+services on the preceding Sundays: but no parishioner dreamed of
+attending them.
+
+To-night, as usual, he and Taffy had prayed alone: and the lad was
+standing after service at the church door, with his surplice on his
+arm (for he always wore a surplice and read the lessons on these
+vigils), when the flame of the first bonfire shot up from the
+headland over Innis village.
+
+Almost on the moment, a flame answered it from the point where the
+lighthouse stood; and, within ten minutes, the horizon of the towans
+was cressetted with these beacon-fires: surely (thought Taffy) with
+many more than usual.  And he remembered that Jacky Pascoe had thrown
+out a hint of a great revival to be held on Baal-fire Night (as he
+called it).
+
+The night was sultry and all but windless.  For once the tormented
+sands had rest.  The flame of the bonfires shone yellow--
+orange-yellow--and steady.  He could see the dark figures of men and
+women, passing between him and the nearest, on the high wastrel in
+front of Tredinnis great gates.  Their voices reached him in a
+confused murmur, broken now and then by a child's scream of delight.
+And yet a hush seemed to hang over sea and land: an expectant hush.
+For weeks the sky had not rained.  Day after day, a dull indigo blue
+possessed it, deepening with night into duller purple, as if the
+whole heavens were gathering into one big thundercloud, which menaced
+but never broke.  And in the hush of those nights a listener could
+almost fancy he heard, between whiles, the rabbits stirring uneasily
+in their burrows.
+
+By-and-by the bonfire on the wastrel appeared to be giving out sparks
+of light which blazed independently; yet without decreasing its own
+volume of flame.  The sparks came dancing, nearer and larger: the
+voices grew more distinct.  The revellers had kindled torches and
+were advancing in procession to visit other bonfires.  The torches,
+too, were supposed to bless the fields they passed across.  Small
+blessing had they ever brought to the barren towans.
+
+The procession rose and sank as it came over the uneven ridges like a
+fiery snake; topped the nearest ridge and came pouring down past the
+churchyard wall.  At its head danced Lizzie Pezzack, shrieking like a
+creature possessed, her hair loose and streaming while she whirled
+her torch.  Taffy knew these torches; bundles of canvas steeped in
+tar and fastened in the middle to a stout stick or piece of chain.
+Lizzie's was fastened to a chain; and as he watched her uplifted arm
+swinging the blazing mass he found time to wonder how she escaped
+setting her hair on fire.  Other torch-bearers tossed their arms and
+shouted as they passed.  The smoke was suffocating, and across the
+patch of quiet graveyard the heat smote on Taffy's face.  But in the
+crowd he saw two figures clearly--Jacky Pascoe and Squire Moyle; and
+the Bryanite's face was agitated and white in the infernal glare.
+He had given an arm to the Squire, who was clearly the centre of the
+procession and tottered forward with jaws working and cavernous eyes.
+
+"He's saved!" a voice shouted.
+
+Others took up the cry.  "Saved!"  "The Squire's saved!"
+"Saved to-night--saved to glory!"
+
+The Squire paused, still leaning on the Bryanite's arm.  While the
+procession swayed around him, he gazed across the gate as a man who
+had lost his bearings.  No glint of torchlight reached his cavernous
+eyes; but the sight of Mr. Raymond's surpliced figure standing behind
+Taff's shoulder in the full glare seemed to rouse him.  He lifted a
+fist and shook it slowly.
+
+"Com'st along, sir!" urged the Bryanite.  But the Squire stood
+irresolute, muttering to himself.
+
+"Com'st along, sir!"
+
+"Lev' me be, I tell 'ee!"  He laid both hands on the gate and spoke
+across it to Mr. Raymond, his head nodding while his voice rose.
+
+"D'ee hear what they say? I'm saved.  I'm the Squire of this parish,
+and I'm goin' to Heaven.  I make no account of you and your church.
+Old Satan's the fellow I'm after, and I'm going to have him out o'
+this parish to-night or my name's not Squire Moyle."
+
+"That's of it, Squire!"  "Hunt 'en!"  "Out with 'en!"
+
+He turned on the crowd.
+
+"Hunt 'en? Iss fay I will!  Come along, boys--back to Tredinnis!
+No, no"--this to the Bryanite--"we'll go back.  I'll show 'ee sport--
+we'll hunt th' old Divvle by scent and view to-night.  I'm Squire
+Moyle, ain't I?  And I've a pack o' hounds, ha'n't I?  Back, boys--
+back, I tell 'ee!"
+
+Lizzie Pezzack swung her torch.  "Back--back to Tredinnis!"  The
+crowd took up the cry, "Back to Tredinnis!"  The old man shook off
+the Bryanite's hand, and as the procession wheeled and reformed
+itself confusedly, rushed to the head of it, waving his hat--
+
+"Back!--Back to Tredinnis!"
+
+"God help them!" said Mr. Raymond; and taking Taffy by the arm, drew
+him back into the church.
+
+
+The shouting died away up the road.  For three-quarters of an hour
+father and son worked in silence.  The reddened sky shed its glow
+gently through the clear glass windows, suffusing the shadows beneath
+the arched roof.  And in the silence the lad wondered what was
+happening up at Tredinnis.
+
+
+Jim the Whip took oath afterward that it was no fault of his.  He had
+suspected three of the hounds for a day or two--Chorister, White Boy,
+and Bellman--and had separated them from the pack.  That very evening
+he had done the same with Rifler, who was chewing at the straw in a
+queer fashion and seemed quarrelsome.  He had said nothing to the
+Squire, whose temper had been ugly for a week past.  He had hoped it
+was a false alarm--had thought it better to wait, and so on.
+
+The Squire went down to the kennels with a lantern, Jim shivering
+behind him.  They had their horses saddled outside and ready, and the
+crowd was waiting along the drive and up by the great gates.
+The Squire saw at a glance that two couples were missing, and in two
+seconds had their names on his tongue.  He was like a madman.
+He shouted to Jim to open the doors.  "Better not, maister!" pleaded
+Jim.  The old man cursed, smote him across the neck with the butt-end
+of his whip, and unlocked the doors himself.  Jim, though half
+stunned, staggered forward to prevent him, and took another blow,
+which felled him.  He dropped across the threshold of Chorister's
+kennel; the doors of all opened outwards, and the weight of his body
+kept this one shut.  But he saw the other three hounds run out, saw
+the Squire turn with a ghastly face, drop the lantern, and run for it
+as White Boy snapped at his boot.  Jim heard the crash of the lantern
+and the snap of teeth, and with that he fainted off in the darkness.
+He had cut his forehead against the bars of the big kennel, and when
+he came to himself one of the hounds was licking his face through the
+grating.
+
+
+Men told for years after how the old Squire came galloping up the
+drive that night, hoof to belly, his chin almost on mare Nonsuch's
+neck, his face like a man's who hears hell cracking behind him, and
+of the three dusky hounds which followed (the tale said) with
+clapping jaws and eyes like coach-lamps.
+
+Down in the quiet church Taffy heard the outcry, and, laying down his
+plane, looked up and saw that his father had heard it too.
+Mr. Raymond's mild eyes, shining through his spectacles, asked as
+plainly as words: "What was _that?_"
+
+"Listen!"
+
+For a minute--two minutes--they heard nothing more.  Then out of the
+silence broke a rapid, muffled beat of hoofs, and Mr. Raymond
+clutched Taffy's arm as a yell--a cry not human, or if human,
+insane--ripped the night as you might rip linen, and fetched them to
+their feet.  Taffy gained the porch first; and just at that moment a
+black shadow heaved itself on the churchyard wall and came hurling
+over with a thud--a clatter of dropping stones--then a groan.
+
+Before they could grasp what was happening the old Squire had
+extricated himself from the fallen mare, and came staggering across
+the graves.
+
+"Hide me!--"
+
+He came with both arms outstretched, his face turned sideways.
+Behind him, from the far side of the wall, came sounds--horrible
+shuffling sounds--and in the dusk they saw the head of one of the
+hounds above the coping and his forepaws clinging as he strained to
+heave himself over.
+
+"Off!  Keep 'en off!"
+
+They caught him by both hands, dragged him within, and slammed the
+door.
+
+"Hide me!  Hi--!"
+
+The word ended with a thud as he pitched headlong on the slate
+pavement.  Through the barred door the scream of the mare Nonesuch
+answered it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+THE BARRIERS FALL.
+
+There were marks of teeth on his right boot, but no marks at all on
+his body.  Fright--or fright following on that evening's frenzy--had
+killed him.
+
+He was buried three days later, and Mr. Raymond read the service.
+No rain had fallen, and the blood of the three hounds still stained
+the gravel dividing the grave from the porch, where the crowd had
+shot them down.
+
+For a while his death made small difference to the family at the
+Parsonage.  They had fought his enmity and proved it not formidable
+for brave hearts.  But they had scarcely realised their success, and
+wondered why his death did not affect them more.
+
+About this time Taffy began to carry out a scheme which he and his
+father had often discussed, but hitherto had found no leisure for--
+the setting up of wooden crosses on the graves of the drowned
+sailormen.  They had wished for slate, but good slate was expensive
+and hard to come by, and Taffy had no skill in stone-cutting.
+Since wood it must be, he resolved to put his best work into it.
+The names, etc., should be engraved, not painted merely.  Some of the
+pew-fronts in the church had panels elaborately carved in flat and
+shallow relief--fine Jacobean designs, all of them.  He took careful
+rubbings of their traceries, and set to work to copy them on the face
+of his crosses.
+
+One afternoon, some three weeks after the Squire's funeral, he
+happened to return to the house for a tracing which he had forgotten,
+and found Honoria seated in the kitchen and talking with his father
+and mother.  She was dressed in black, of course, and either this or
+the solemnity of her visit gave her quite a grown-up look.  But, to
+be sure, she was mistress of Tredinnis now, and a child no longer.
+
+Taffy guessed the meaning of her visit at once.  And no doubt this
+act of formal reconciliation between Tredinnis House and the
+Parsonage had cost her some nervousness.  As Taffy entered his
+parents stood up and seemed just as awkward as their visitor.
+"Another time, perhaps," he heard his father say.  Honoria rose
+almost at once, and would not stay to drink tea, though Humility
+pressed her.
+
+"I suppose," said Taffy next day, looking up from his Virgil,
+"I suppose Miss Honoria wants to make friends now and help on the
+restoration?"
+
+Mr. Raymond, who was on his knees fastening a loose hinge in a
+pew-door, took a screw from between his lips.
+
+"Yes, she proposed that."
+
+"It must be splendid for you, dad!"
+
+"I don't quite see," answered Mr. Raymond, with his head well inside
+the pew.
+
+Taffy stood up, put his hands in his pockets, and took a turn up and
+down the aisle.
+
+"Why," said he, coming to a halt, "it means that you have won.
+It's victory, dad, and _I_ call it glorious!"  His lip trembled.
+He wanted to put a hand on his father's shoulder; but his abominable
+shyness stood between.
+
+"We won long ago, my boy." And Mr. Raymond wheeled round on his
+knees, pushed up his spectacles, and quoted the famous lines, very
+solemnly and slowly:
+
+     "'And not by eastern windows only,
+        When daylight comes, comes in the light;
+       In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
+        But westward, look, the land is bright!'"
+
+"I see," Taffy nodded.  "And--I say, that's jolly.  Who wrote it?"
+
+"A man I used to see in the streets of Oxford and always turned to
+stare after: a man with big ugly shaped feet and the face of a god--a
+young tormented god.  Those were days when young men's thoughts
+tormented them.  Taffy," he asked abruptly, "should you like to go to
+Oxford?"
+
+"Don't, father!"  The boy bit his lip to keep back the tears.
+"Talk of something else--something cheerful.  It has been a splendid
+fight, just splendid!  And now it's over I'm almost sorry."
+
+"What is over?"
+
+"Well, I suppose--now that Honoria wants to help--we can hire workmen
+and have the whole job finished in a month, or two at farthest: and
+you--"
+
+Mr. Raymond stood up, and leaning against a bench-end, examined the
+thread of the screw between his fingers.
+
+"That is one way of looking at it, no doubt," he said slowly; "and I
+hope God will forgive me if I have put my own pride before His
+service.  But a man desires to leave some completed work behind him--
+something to which people may point and say, '_he_ did it.'
+There was my book, now: for years I thought that was to be my work.
+But God thought otherwise and (to correct my pride, perhaps) chose
+this task instead.  To set a small forsaken country church in order
+and make it worthy of His presence--that is not the mission I should
+have chosen.  But so be it: I have accepted it.  Only, to let others
+step in at the last and finish even this--I say He must forgive me,
+but I cannot."
+
+"Your book--you can go back to it and finish it."
+
+"I have burnt it."
+
+"Dad!"
+
+"I burned it.  I had to.  It was a temptation to me, and until I
+lifted it from the grate and the flakes crumbled in my hands the
+surrender was not complete."
+
+Taffy felt a sudden gush of pity.  And as he pitied suddenly he
+understood his father.
+
+"It had to be complete?"
+
+"Either the book or the surrender.  My boy"--and in his voice there
+echoed the aspiration and the despair of the true scholar, who abhors
+imperfection and incompleteness in a world where nothing is either
+perfect or complete; "it is different with you.  I borrowed you, so
+to say, for the time.  Without you I must have failed; but this was
+never your work.  For myself, I have learnt my lessons; but, please
+God, you shall be my Solomon and be granted a temple to build."
+
+Taffy had lost his shyness now.  He laid a hand on his father's
+sleeve.
+
+"We will go on then."
+
+"Yes, we will go on."
+
+"And Jacky?  Where has he been?  I haven't seen him since the Squire
+died."
+
+Mr. Raymond searched in his coat-pocket and handed over a crumpled
+letter.  It ran:--
+
+     "Dear friend,--this is to say that you will not see me no more.
+      The dear Lord tells me that I have made a cauch of it.
+      He don't say how, all He says is go and do better somewheres
+      else.
+
+     "Seems to me a terrable thing to think _Religion_ can be bad for
+      any man.  It have done me such powars of good.  The late Moyle
+      esq he was like a dirty pan all the milk turned sour no matter
+      what.  Dear friend I pored Praise into him and it come out
+      Prayer and all for him self.  But the dear Lord says I was to
+      blame as much as Moyle esq so must do better next time but feel
+      terrable timid.
+
+     "My respects to Masr Taffy.  Dear friend I done my best I come
+      like _Nicodemus_ by night.  Seeming to me when Christians fall
+      out tis over what they pray for.  When they _praise God_ forget
+      diffnses and I cant think where the quaraling comes in and so
+      no more at present from
+
+     "Yours respffly
+
+     "J. Pascoe."
+
+After supper that night, in the Parsonage kitchen Humility kept
+rising from her chair, and laying her needlework aside to re-arrange
+the pans and kettles on the hearth.  This restlessness was so unusual
+that Taffy, seated in the ingle with a book on his knee, had half
+raised his head to twit her when he felt a hand laid softly on his
+hair, and looked up into his mother's eyes.
+
+"Taffy, should you like to go to Oxford?"
+
+"Don't, mother!"
+
+"But you can." The tears in her eyes answered his at once.
+She turned to his father.  "Tell him!"
+
+"Yes, my boy, you can go," said Mr. Raymond; "that is, if you can win
+a scholarship.  Your mother and I have been talking it over."
+
+"But--" Taffy began, and could get no further.
+
+"We have money enough--with care," said Mr. Raymond.
+
+But the boy's eyes were on his mother.  Her cheeks, usually so pale,
+were flushed; but she turned her face away and walked slowly back to
+her chair.  "The lace-work," he heard her say: "I have been saving--
+from the beginning--"
+
+"For this?"  He followed and took her hand.  With the other she
+covered her eyes; but nodded.
+
+"O mother--mother!" He knelt and let his brow drop on her lap.
+She ceased to weep; her palms rested on his bowed head, but now and
+then her body shook.  And but for the ticking of the tall clock there
+was silence in the room.
+
+It was wonderful; and the wonder of it grew when they recovered
+themselves and fell to discussing their plans.  In spite of his
+idolatry, Mr. Raymond could not help remembering certain slights
+which he, a poor miller's son, had undergone at Christ Church.
+He had chosen Magdalen, which Taffy knew to be the most beautiful of
+all the colleges; and the news that his name had been entered on the
+college books for years past gave him a delicious shock.  It was now
+July.  He would matriculate in the October term, and in January enter
+for a demyship.  But (the marvels followed so fast on each other's
+heels) there would be an examination held in ten days' time--actually
+in ten days' time--a "certificate" examination, Mr. Raymond called
+it--which would excuse the boy not only the ordinary Matriculation
+test, but Responsions too.  And, in short, Taffy was to pack his box
+and go.
+
+"But the subjects?"
+
+"You have been reading them and the prescribed books for four months
+past.  And I have had sets of the old papers by me for a guide.
+Your mathematics are shaky--but I think you should do well enough."
+
+It was now Humility's turn, and the discussion plunged among shirts
+and collars.  Never had evening been so happy; and whether they
+talked of mathematics or of collars, Taffy could not help observing
+how from time to time his father's and mother's eyes would meet and
+say, as plainly as words, "We have done rightly." "Yes, we have done
+rightly."
+
+And the wonder of it remained next morning, when he awoke to a
+changed world and took down his books with a new purpose.
+Already his box had been carried into old Mrs. Venning's room, and
+his mother and grandmother were busy, the one packing and repacking,
+the other making a new and important suggestion every minute.
+
+He was to go up alone, and to lodge in Trinity College, where an old
+friend of Mr. Raymond's, a resident fellow just then abroad and
+spending his Long Vacation in the Tyrol, had placed his own room at
+the boy's service.
+
+To see Oxford--to be lodging in college!  He had to hug his mother in
+the midst of her packing.
+
+"You will be going by the Great Western," she said.  "You won't be
+seeing Honiton on your way."
+
+When the great morning came, Mr. Raymond travelled with him in the
+van to Truro, to see him off.  Humility went upstairs to her mother's
+room, and the two women prayed together--
+
+     "They also serve who only stand and wait."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+OXFORD.
+
+     "Know you her secret none can utter?
+        Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?"
+
+"Eight o'clock, sir!"
+
+Taffy heard the voice speaking above a noise which his dreams
+confused with the rattle of yesterday's journey.  He was still in the
+train, rushing through the rich levels of Somersetshire.  He saw the
+broad horizon, the cattle at pasture, the bridges and flagged pools
+flying past the window--and sat up rubbing his eyes.  Blenkiron, the
+scout, stood between him and the morning sunshine emptying a can of
+water into the tub beside his bed.
+
+Blenkiron wore a white waistcoat and a tie of orange and blue, the
+colours of the College Servants' Cricket Club.  These were signs of
+the Long Vacation.  For the rest his presence would have become an
+archdeacon; and he guided Taffy's choice of a breakfast with an air
+which suggested the hand of iron beneath the glove of velvet.
+
+"And begging your pardon, sir, but will you be lunching in?"
+
+Taffy would consult Mr. Blenkiron's convenience.
+
+"The fact is, sir, we've arranged to play Teddy `All this afternoon
+at Cowley, and the drag starts at one-thirty sharp."
+
+"Then I'll get my lunch out of college," said Taffy, wondering who
+Teddy Hall might be.
+
+"I thank you, sir.  I had, indeed, took the liberty of telling the
+manciple that you was not a gentleman to give more trouble than you
+could 'elp.  Fried sole, pot of tea, toast, pot of blackberry jam,
+commons of bread--"  Mr. Blenkiron disappeared.
+
+Taffy sprang out of bed and ran to the open window in the next room.
+The gardens lay below him--smooth turf flanked with a border of gay
+flowers, flanked on the other side with yews, and beyond the yews
+with an avenue of limes, and beyond these with tall elms.  A straight
+gravelled walk divided the turf.  At the end of it two yews of
+magnificent spread guarded a great iron gate.  Beyond these the
+chimneys and battlements of Wadham College stood grey against the
+pale eastern sky, and over them the larks were singing.
+
+So this was Oxford; more beautiful than all his dreams!  And since
+his examination would not begin until to-morrow, he had a whole long
+day to make acquaintance with her.  Half a dozen times he, had to
+interrupt his dressing to run and gaze out of the window, skipping
+back when he heard Blenkiron's tread on the staircase.  And at
+breakfast again he must jump up and examine the door.  Yes, there was
+a second door outside--a heavy _oak_-just as his father had
+described.  What stories had he heard about these oaks!  He was
+handling this one almost idolatrously when Blenkiron appeared
+suddenly at the head of the stairs.  Blenkiron was good enough to
+explain at some length how the door worked, while Taffy, who did not
+need his instruction in the least, blushed to the roots of his hair.
+
+For, indeed, it was like first love, this adoration of Oxford;
+shamefast, shy of its own raptures; so shy, indeed, that when he put
+on his hat and walked out into the streets he could not pluck up
+courage to ask his way.  Some of the colleges he recognised from his
+father's description; of one or two he discovered the names by
+peeping through their gateways and reading the notices pinned up by
+the porters' lodges, for it never occurred to him that he was free to
+step inside and ramble through the quadrangles.  He wondered where
+the river lay, and where Magdalen, and where Christ Church.
+He passed along the Turl and down Brasenose Lane; and at the foot of
+it, beyond the great chestnut-tree leaning over Exeter wall, the
+vision of noble square, the dome of the Radcliffe, and St. Mary's
+spire caught his breath and held him gasping.  His feet took him by
+the gate of Brasenose and across the High.  On the farther pavement
+he halted, round-eyed, held at gaze by the beauty of the Virgin's
+porch, with the creeper drooping like a veil over its twisted
+pillars.
+
+High up, white pigeons wheeled round the spire or fluttered from
+niche to niche, and a queer fancy took him that they were the souls
+of the carved saints up there, talking to one another above the
+city's traffic.  At length he withdrew his eyes, and reading the name
+"Oriel Street" on an angle of the wall above him, passed down a
+narrow by-lane in search of further wonders.
+
+The clocks were striking three when, after regaining the High and
+lunching at a pastrycook's, Taffy turned down into St. Aldates and
+recognised Tom Tower ahead of him.  The great gates were closed.
+Through the open wicket he had a glimpse of green turf and an idle
+fountain; and while he peered in, a jolly-looking porter stepped out
+of the lodge for a breath of air and nodded in the friendliest
+manner.
+
+"You can walk through if you want to.  Were you looking for anyone?"
+
+"No," said Taffy, and explained proudly, "My father used to be at
+Christ Church."
+
+The porter seemed interested.  "What name?" he asked.
+
+"Raymond."
+
+"That must have been before my time.  I suppose you'll be wanting to
+see the Cathedral.  That's the door--right opposite."
+
+Taffy thanked him and walked across the great empty quadrangle.
+Within the Cathedral the organ was sounding and pausing, and from
+time to time a boy's voice broke in upon the music like a flute, the
+pure treble rising to the roof as though it were the very voice of
+the building, and every pillar sustained its petition, "_Lord have
+mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law!_"
+Neither organist nor chorister was visible, and Taffy tiptoed along
+the aisles in dread of disturbing them.  For the moment this voice
+adoring in the noble building expressed to him the completest, the
+most perfect thing in life.  All his own boyish handiwork, remember,
+under his father's eye had been guided toward the worship of God.
+
+". . . _And incline our hearts to keep this law_."  The music
+ceased.  He heard the organist speaking, up in the loft; criticising,
+no doubt: and it reminded him somehow of the small sounds of home and
+his mother moving about her housework in the hush between breakfast
+and noon.
+
+He stepped out into the sunlight again, and wandering through archway
+and cloister found himself at length beyond the college walls and at
+the junction of two avenues of elms, between the trunks of which
+shone the acres of a noble meadow, level and green.  The avenues ran
+at a right angle, east and south; the one old, with trees of
+magnificent girth, the other new and interset with poplars.
+
+Taffy stood irresolute.  One of these avenues, he felt sure, must
+lead to the river; but which?
+
+Two old gentlemen stepped out from the wicket of the Meadow
+Buildings, and passed him, talking together.  The taller--a lean
+man, with a stoop--was clearly a clergyman.  The other wore cap and
+gown, and Taffy remarked, as he went by, that his cap was of velvet;
+and also that he walked with his arms crossed just above the wrists,
+his right hand clutching his left cuff, and his left hand his right
+cuff, his elbows hugged close to his sides.
+
+After a few paces the clergyman paused, said something to his
+companion, and the two turned back towards the boy.
+
+"Were you wanting to know your way?"
+
+"I was looking for the river," Taffy answered.  He was thinking that
+he had never in his life seen a face so full of goodness.
+
+"Then this is your first visit to Oxford?  Suppose, now, you come
+with us?  and we will take you by the river and tell you the names of
+the barges.  There is not much else to see, I'm afraid, in Vacation
+time."
+
+He glanced at his companion in the velvet cap, who drew down an
+extraordinary bushy pair of eyebrows (yet he, too, had a beautiful
+face) and seemed to come out of a dream.
+
+"So much the better, boy, if you come up to Oxford to worship false
+gods."
+
+Taffy was taken aback.
+
+"Eight false gods in little blue caps, seated in a trough and tugging
+at eight poles; and all to discover if they can get from Putney to
+Mortlake sooner than eight others in little blue caps of a lighter
+shade.  What do they _do_ at Mortlake when they get there in such a
+hurry?  Eh, boy?"
+
+"I--I'm sure I don't know," stammered Taffy.
+
+The clergyman broke out laughing, and turned to him.  "Are you going
+to tell us your name?"
+
+"Raymond, sir.  My father used to be at Christ Church."
+
+"What?  Are you Sam Raymond's son?"
+
+"You knew my father?"
+
+"A very little.  I was his senior by a year or two.  But I know
+something about him."  He turned to the other.  "Let me introduce the
+son of a man after your own heart--of a man fighting for God in the
+wilds, and building an altar there with his own hands and by the lamp
+of sacrifice."
+
+"But how do you know all this?" cried Taffy.
+
+"Oh," the old clergyman smiled, "we are not so ignorant up here as
+you suppose."
+
+They walked by the river bank, and there Taffy saw the college barges
+and was told the name of each.  Also he saw a racing eight go by: it
+belonged to the Vacation Rowing Club.  From the barges they turned
+aside and followed the windings of the Cherwell.  The clergyman did
+most of the talking; but now and then the old gentleman in the velvet
+cap interposed a question about the church at home, its architecture,
+the materials it was built of, and so forth; or about Taffy's own
+work, his carpentry, his apprenticeship with Mendarva the Smith.
+And to all these questions the boy found himself replying with an
+ease which astonished him.
+
+Suddenly the old clergyman said, "There is your College!"
+
+And unperceived by Taffy a pair of kindly eyes watched his own as
+they met the first vision of that lovely tower rising above the trees
+and (so like a thing of life it seemed) lifting its pinnacles
+exultantly into the blue heaven.
+
+"Well?"
+
+All three had come to a halt.  The boy turned, blushing furiously.
+
+"This is the best of all, sir."
+
+"Boy," said old Velvet-cap, "do you know the meaning of
+'edification'?  There stands your lesson for four years to come, if
+you can learn it in that time.  Do you think it easy?  Come and see
+how it has been learnt by men who have spent their lives face to face
+with it."
+
+They crossed the street by Magdalen bridge, and passed under Pugin's
+gateway, by the Chapel door and into the famous cloisters.  All was
+quiet here; so quiet that even the voices of the sparrows chattering
+in the ivy seemed but a part of the silence.  The shadow of the great
+tower fell across the grass.
+
+"This is how one generation read the lesson.  Come and see how
+another, and a later, read it."
+
+A narrow passage led them out of gloom into sudden sunlight; and the
+sunlight spread itself on fair grass-plots and gravelled walks,
+flower-beds and the pale yellow facade of a block of buildings in the
+classical style, stately and elegant, with a colonnade which only
+needed a few promenading figures in laced coats and tie-wigs to
+complete the agreeable picture.
+
+"What do you make of that?"
+
+As a matter of fact Taffy's thoughts had run back to the theatre at
+Plymouth with its sudden changes of scenery.  And he stood for a
+moment while he collected them.
+
+"It's different: I mean," he added, feeling that this was intolerably
+lame, "it means something different; I cannot tell what."
+
+"It means the difference between godly fear and civil ease, between a
+house of prayer and one of no prayer.  It spells the moral change
+which came over this University when religion, the spring and source
+of collegiate life, was discarded.  The cloisters behind you were
+built for men who walked with God."
+
+"But why," objected Taffy, plucking up courage, "couldn't they do
+that in the sunlight?"
+
+Velvet-cap opened his mouth.  The boy felt he was going to be
+denounced; when a merry laugh from the old clergyman averted the
+storm.
+
+"Be content," he said to his companion; "we are Gothic enough in
+Oxford nowadays.  And the lad is right too.  There was hope even for
+eighteenth-century Magdalen while its buildings looked on sunlight
+and on that tower.  You and the rest of us lay too much stress on
+prayer.  The lesson of that tower (with all deference to your amazing
+discernment and equally amazing whims) is not prayer, but praise.
+And when all men unite to worship God, it'll be praise, not prayer,
+that brings them together.
+
+     "'Praise is devotion fit for noble minds,
+       The differing world's agreeing sacrifice.'"
+
+"Oh, if you're going to fling quotations from a tapster's son at my
+head. . . . Let me see . . . how does it go on? . . . Where--
+something or other--different faiths--
+
+     "'Where Heaven divided faiths united finds. . . .'"
+
+And in a moment the pair were in hot pursuit after the quotation,
+tripping each other up like two schoolboys at a game.  Taffy never
+forgot the final stanza, the last line of which they recovered
+exactly in the middle of the street, Velvet-cap standing between two
+tram-lines, right in the path of an advancing car, while he
+declaimed--
+
+     "'By penitence when we ourselves forsake,
+      'Tis but in wise design on piteous Heaven;
+       In praise--'"
+
+(The gesture was magnificent)
+
+     "'In praise we nobly give what God may take,
+       And are without a beggar's blush forgiven.'
+
+"--Confound these trams!"
+
+The old clergyman shook hands with Taffy in some haste.  "And when
+you reach home give my respects to your father.  Stay, you don't know
+my name.  Here is my card, or you'll forget it."
+
+"Mine, too," said Velvet-cap.
+
+Taffy stood staring after them as they walked off down the lane which
+skirts the Botanical Gardens.  The names on the two cards were famous
+ones, as even he knew.  He walked back toward Trinity a proud and
+happy boy.  Half-way up Queen's Lane, finding himself between blank
+walls, with nobody in sight, he even skipped.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+TAFFY GIVES A PROMISE.
+
+The postman halted by the foot-bridge and blew his horn.  The sound
+sent the rabbits scampering into their burrows; and just as they
+began to pop out again, Taffy came charging across the slope.
+Whereupon they drew back their noses in disgust, and to avoid the
+sand scattered by his toes.
+
+The postman held up a blue envelope and waved it.  "Here, 'tis come,
+at last!"
+
+"It may not be good news," said Taffy, clutching it, and then turning
+it over in his hand.
+
+"Well, that's true.  And till you open it, it won't be any news at
+all."
+
+"I wanted mother to be first to know."
+
+"Oh, very well--only, as you say, it mightn't be good news."
+
+"If it's bad news, I want to be alone.  But why should they trouble
+to write?"
+
+"True again.  I s'pose now you're sure it _is_ from them?"
+
+"I can tell by the seal."
+
+"Take it home, then," said the postman.  "Only if you think 'tis for
+the sake of a twiddling sixteen shilling a week that I traipse all
+these miles every day--"
+
+Taffy fingered the seal.  "If you would really like to know--"
+
+"Don't 'ee mention it.  Not on any account."  He waved his hand
+magnanimously and trudged off toward Tredinnis.
+
+Taffy waited until he disappeared behind the first sand-hill, and
+broke the seal.  A slip of parchment lay inside the envelope.
+
+"_This is to certify_--"
+
+He had passed!  He pulled off his cap and waved it round his head.
+And once more the rabbits popped back into their burrows.
+
+Toot--toot--toot!--It was that diabolical postman.  He had fetched a
+circuit round the sand-hill, and was peeping round the north side of
+it and grinning as he blew his horn.
+
+Taffy set off running, and never stopped until he reached the
+Parsonage and burst into the kitchen.  "Mother--It's all right!
+I've passed!"
+
+
+Somebody was knocking at the door.  Taffy jumped up from his knees,
+and Humility made the lap of her apron smooth.
+
+"May I come in?" asked Honoria, and pushed the door open.
+She stepped into the middle of the kitchen and dropped Taffy an
+elaborate courtesy.
+
+A thousand congratulations, sir!"
+
+"Why, how did you know?"
+
+"Well, I met the postman; and I looked in through the window before
+knocking."
+
+Taffy bit his lip.  "People seem to be taking a deal of interest in
+us all of a sudden," he said to his mother.
+
+Humility looked distressed, uncomfortable.  Honoria ignored the snub.
+"I am starting for Carwithiel to-day," she said, "for a week's visit,
+and thought I would look in--after hearing what the postman told me--
+and pay my compliments."
+
+She talked for a minute or two on matters of no importance, asked
+after old Mrs. Venning's health, and left, turning at the door and
+giving Humility a cheerful little nod.
+
+"Taffy, you ought not to have spoken so." Humility's eyes were
+tearful.
+
+Taffy's conscience was already accusing him.  He snatched up his cap
+and ran out.
+
+"Miss Honoria!"
+
+She did not turn.
+
+"Miss Honoria--I am sorry!"  He overtook her, but she turned her face
+away.  "Forgive me!"
+
+She halted, and after a moment looked him in the eyes.  He saw then
+that she had been crying.
+
+"The first time I came to see you he whipped me," she said slowly.
+
+"I am sorry; indeed I am."
+
+"Taffy--"
+
+"Miss Honoria."
+
+"I said--Taffy."
+
+"Honoria, then."
+
+"Do you know what it is to feel lonely here?"
+
+Taffy remembered the afternoons when he had roamed the sand-hills
+longing for George's company.  "Why, yes," said he; "it used to be
+always lonely."
+
+"I think we have been the loneliest children in the whole world--you
+and I and George--only George didn't feel it the same way.  And now
+it's coming to an end with you.  You are going up to Oxford, and soon
+you will have heaps of friends.  Can you not understand?  Suppose
+there were two prisoners, alone in the same prison, but shut in
+different cells, and one heard that the other's release had come.
+He would feel--would he not?--that now he was going to be lonelier
+than ever.  And yet he might be glad of the other's liberty, and if
+the chance were given, might be the happier for shaking hands with
+the other and wishing him joy."
+
+Taffy had never heard her speak at all like this.
+
+"But you are going to Carwithiel, and George is famous company."
+
+"I am going over to Carwithiel because I hate Tredinnis.  I hate
+every stone of it, and will sell the place as soon as ever I come of
+age.  And George is the best fellow in the world.  Some day I shall
+marry him (oh, it is all arranged!), and we shall live at Carwithiel
+and be quite happy; for I like him, and he likes people to be happy.
+And we shall talk of you.  Being out of the world ourselves, we shall
+talk of you, and the great things you are going to do, and the great
+things you are doing.  We shall say to each other, 'It's all very
+well for the world to be proud of him, but we have the best right,
+for we grew up with him and know the stories he used to tell us; and
+when the time came for his going, it was we who waved from the
+door--"
+
+"Honoria--"
+
+"But there is one thing you haven't told, and you shall now, if you
+care to--about your examination and what you did at Oxford."
+
+So he sat down beside her on a sand-hill and told her: about the long
+low-ceiled room in the quadrangle of the Bodleian, the old marbles
+which lined the walls, the examiner at the blue baize table, and the
+little deal tables (all scribbled over with names and dates and
+verses and ribald remarks) at which the candidates wrote; also of the
+_viva voce_ examination in the antechamber of the Convocation House,
+He told it all as if it were the great event he honestly felt it to
+be.
+
+"And the others," said she, "those who were writing around you, and
+the examiner--how did you feel towards them?"
+
+Taffy stared at her.  "I don't know that I thought much about them."
+
+"Didn't you feel as if it was a battle and you wanted to beat them
+all?"
+
+He broke out laughing.  "Why, the examiner was an old man, as dry as
+a stick!  And I hardly remember what the others were like--except
+one, a white-headed boy with a pimply face.  I couldn't help noticing
+him, because whenever I looked up there he was at the next table,
+staring at me and chewing a quill."
+
+"I can't understand," she confessed.  "Often and often I have tried
+to think myself a man--a man with ambition.  And to me that has
+always meant fighting.  I see myself a man, and the people between me
+and the prize have all to be knocked down or pushed out of the way.
+But you don't even see them--all you see is a pimply-faced boy
+sucking a quill.  Taffy--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I wish you would write to me when you get to Oxford.
+Write regularly.  Tell me all you do."
+
+"You will like to hear?"
+
+"Of course I shall.  So will George.  But it's not only that.
+You have such an easy way of going forward; you take it for granted
+you're going to be a great man--"
+
+"I don't."
+
+"Yes, you do.  You think it just lies with yourself, and it is
+nobody's business to interfere with you.  You don't even notice those
+who are on the same path.  Now a woman would notice every one, and
+find out all about them."
+
+"Who said I wanted to be a great man?"
+
+"Don't be silly, that's a good boy!  There's your father coming out
+of the church porch, and you haven't told him yet.  Run to him, but
+promise first."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That you will write."
+
+"I promise."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+HONORIA'S LETTERS.
+
+1.
+
+     "CARWITHIEL, Oct. 25, 18--."
+
+     "MY DEAR TAFFY,--Your letter was full of news, and I read it
+      over twice: once to myself, and again after dinner to George
+      and Sir Harry.  We pictured you dining in the college hall.
+      Thanks to your description, it was not very difficult: the long
+      tables, the silver tankards, the dark panels and the dark
+      pictures above, and the dons on the dais, aloof and very
+      sedate.  It reminded me of Ivanhoe--I don't know why; and no
+      doubt if ever I see Magdalen, it will not be like my fancy in
+      the least.  But that's how I see it; and you at a table near
+      the bottom of the hall, like the youthful squire in the
+      story-books--the one, you know, who sits at the feast below the
+      salt until he is recognised and forced to step up and take his
+      seat with honour at the high table.  I began to explain all
+      this to George, but found that he had dropped asleep in his
+      chair.  He was tired out after a long day with the pheasants."
+
+     "I shall stay here for a week or two yet, perhaps.  You know how
+      I hate Tredinnis.  On my way over, I called at the Parsonage
+      and saw your mother.  She was writing that very day, she said,
+      and promised to send my remembrances, which I hope duly reached
+      you.  The Vicar was away at the church, of course.  There is
+      great talk of the Bishop coming in February, when all will be
+      ready.  George sends his love; I saw him for a few minutes at
+      breakfast this morning, before he started for another day with
+      the pheasants."
+
+     "Your friend,"
+     "HONORIA."
+
+2.
+
+     "CARWITHIEL, Nov. 19, 18--."
+
+     "MY DEAR TAFFY,--Still here, you see!  I am slipping this into a
+      parcel containing a fire-screen which I have worked with my
+      very own hands; and I trust you will be able to recognise the
+      shield upon it and the Magdalen lilies.  I send it, first, as a
+      birthday present; and I chose the shield--well, I dare say that
+      going in for a demy-ship is a matter-of-fact affair to you, who
+      have grown so exceedingly matter-of-fact; but to me it seems a
+      tremendous adventure; and so I chose a shield--for I suppose
+      the dons would frown if you wore a cockade in your college cap.
+      I return to Tredinnis to-morrow; so your news, whatever it is,
+      must be addressed to me there.  But it is safe to be good
+      news."
+
+     "Your friend,"
+     "HONORIA."
+
+3.
+
+     "TREDINNIS, Nov. 27, 18--."
+
+     "MOST HONOURED SCHOLAR,--Behold me, an hour ago, a great lady,
+      seated in lonely grandeur at the head of my own ancestral
+      table.  This is the first time I have used the dining-room;
+      usually I take all my meals in the morning-room, at a small
+      table beside the fire.  But to-night I had the great table
+      spread and the plate spread out, and wore my best gown, and
+      solemnly took my grandfather's chair and glowered at the ghost
+      of a small girl shivering at the far end of the long white
+      cloth.  When I had enough of this (which was pretty soon) I
+      ordered up some champagne and drank to the health of
+      Theophilus John Raymond, Demy of Magdalen College, Oxford.
+      I graciously poured out a second glass for the small ghost at
+      the other end of the table; and it gave her the courage to
+      confess that she, too, in a timid way, had taken an interest in
+      you for years, and hoped you were going to be a great man.
+      Having thus discovered a bond between us, we grew very
+      friendly; and we talked a great deal about you afterwards in
+      the drawing-room, where I lost her for a few minutes and found
+      her hiding in the great mirror over the fire-place--a habit of
+      hers."
+
+     "It is time for me to practise ceremony, for it seems that
+      George and I are to be married some time in the spring.  For my
+      part I think my lord would be content to wait longer; for so
+      long as he is happy and sees others cheerful he is not one to
+      hurry or worry.  But Sir Harry is the impatient one: and has
+      begun to talk of his decease.  He doesn't believe in it a bit,
+      and at times when he composes his features and attempts to be
+      lugubrious I have to take up a book and hide my smiles.  But he
+      is clever enough to see that it worries George."
+
+     "I saw both your father and mother this morning. Mr. Raymond has
+      been kept to the house by a chill; nothing serious: but he is
+      fretting to be out again and at work in that draughty church.
+      He will accept no help; and the mistress of Tredinnis has no
+      right to press it on him.  I shall never understand men and how
+      they fight.  I supposed that the war lay between him and my
+      grandfather.  But it seems he was fighting an idea all the
+      while; for here is my grandfather beaten and dead and gone; and
+      still the Vicar will give no quarter.  If you had not assured
+      me that your demy-ship means eighty pounds a year, I could
+      believe that men fight for shadows only.  Your mother and
+      grandmother are both well. . . ."
+
+
+It was a raw December afternoon--within a week of the end of term--
+and Taffy had returned from skating in Christ Church meadow, when he
+found a telegram lying on his table.  There was just time to see the
+Dean, to pack, and to snatch a meal in hall, before rattling off to
+his train.  At Didcot he had the best part of an hour to wait for the
+night-mail westward.
+
+     "_Your father dangerously ill.  Come at once_."
+
+There was no signature.  Yet Taffy knew who had ridden to the office
+with that telegram.  The flying dark held visions of her, and the
+express throbbed westward to the beat of Aide-de-camp's gallop.
+Nor was he surprised at all to find her on the platform at Truro
+Station.  The Tredinnis phaeton was waiting outside.
+
+He seemed to her but a boy after all, as he stepped out of the train
+in the chill dawn: a wan-faced boy, and sorely in need of comfort.
+
+"You must be brave," said she, gathering up the reins as he climbed
+to the seat beside her.
+
+Surely yes; he had been telling himself this very thing all night.
+The groom hoisted in his portmanteau, and with a slam of the door
+they were off.  The cold air sang past Taffy's ears.  It put vigour
+into him, and his courage rose as he faced his shattered prospects,
+shattered dreams.  He must be strong now for his mother's sake; a man
+to work and be leant upon.
+
+And so it was that whereas Honoria had found him a boy, Humility
+found him a man.  As her arms went about him in her grief, she felt
+his body, that it was taller, broader; and knew in the midst of her
+tears that this was not the child she had parted from seven short
+weeks ago, but a man to act and give orders and be relied upon.
+
+"He called for you . . . many times," was all she could say.
+
+For Taffy had come too late.  Mr. Raymond was dead.  He had
+aggravated a slight chill by going back to his work too soon, and the
+bitter draughts of the church had cut him down within sight of his
+goal.  A year before he might have been less impatient.  The chill
+struck into his lungs.  On December 1st he had taken to his bed, and
+he never rallied.
+
+"He called for me?"
+
+"Many times."
+
+They went up the stairs together and stood beside the bed.  The
+thought uppermost in Taffy's mind was--"He called for me.  He wanted
+me.  He was my father and I never knew him."
+
+But Humility in her sorrow groped amid such questions as these,
+"What has happened?  Who am I?  Am I she who yesterday had a husband
+and a child?  To-day my husband is gone and my child is no longer the
+same child."
+
+In her room old Mrs. Venning remembered the first days of her own
+widowhood, and life seemed to her a very short affair, after all.
+
+Honoria saw Taffy beside the grave.  It was no season for out-of-door
+flowers, and she had rifled her hothouses for a wreath.  The exotics
+shivered in the north-westerly wind; they looked meaningless,
+impertinent, in the gusty churchyard.  Humility, before the coffin
+left the house, had brought the dead man's old blue working-blouse,
+and spread it for a pall.  No flowers grew in the Parsonage garden;
+but pressed in her Bible lay a very little bunch, gathered, years
+ago, in the meadows by Honiton.  This she divided and, unseen by
+anyone, pinned the half upon the breast of the patched garment.
+
+On the evening after the funeral and for the next day or two she was
+strangely quiet, and seemed to be waiting for Taffy to make some
+sign.  Dearly as mother and son loved one another, they had to find
+their new positions, each toward each.  Now Taffy had known nothing
+of his parents' income.  He assumed that it was little enough, and
+that he must now leave Oxford and work to support the household.
+He knew some Latin and Greek; but without a degree he had little
+chance of teaching what he knew. He was a fair carpenter, and a more
+than passable smith. . . . He revolved many schemes, but chiefly
+found himself wondering what it would cost to enter an architect's
+office.
+
+"I suppose," said he, "father left no will?"
+
+"Oh yes, he did," said Humility, and produced it: a single sheet of
+foolscap signed on her wedding day.  It gave her all her husband's
+property absolutely--whatever it might be.
+
+"Well," said Taffy, "I'm glad.  I suppose there's enough for you to
+rent a small cottage, while I look about for work?"
+
+"Who talks about your finding work?  You will go back to Oxford, of
+course."
+
+"Oh, shall I?" said Taffy, taken aback.
+
+"Certainly; it was your father's wish."
+
+"But the money?"
+
+"With your scholarship there's enough to keep you there for the four
+years.  After that, no doubt, you will be earning a good income."
+
+"But--"  He remembered what had been said about the lace-money, and
+could not help wondering.
+
+"Taffy," said his mother, touching his hand, "leave all this to me
+until your degree is taken.  You have a race to run and must not
+start unprepared.  If you could have seen _his_ joy when the news
+came of the demy-ship!"
+
+Taffy kissed her and went up to his room.  He found his books laid
+out on the little table there.
+
+
+4.
+
+     "TREDINNIS, February 13, 18--."
+
+     "MY DEAR TAFFY,--I have a valentine for you, if you care to
+      accept it; but I don't suppose you will, and indeed I hope in
+      my heart that you will not.  But I must offer it.
+      Your father's living is vacant, and my trustees (that is to
+      say, Sir Harry; for the other, a second cousin of mine who
+      lives in London, never interferes) can put in someone as a
+      stop-gap, thus allowing me to present you to it when the time
+      comes, if you have any thought of Holy Orders.  You will
+      understand exactly why I offer it; and also, I hope, you will
+      know that I think it wholly unworthy of you.  But turn it over
+      in your mind and give me your answer."
+
+     "George and I are to be married at the end of April.  May is an
+      unlucky month.  It shall be a week--even a fortnight--earlier,
+      if that fits in with your vacation, and you care to come.
+      See how obliging I am!  I yield to you what I have refused to
+      Sir Harry.  We shall try to persuade the Bishop to come and
+      open the church on the same day."
+
+     "Always your friend,"
+     "HONORIA."
+
+5.
+
+     "TREDINNIS, February 21. 18--."
+
+     "My Dear Taffy,--No, I am not offended in the least; but very
+      glad.  I do not think you are fitted for the priesthood; but my
+      doubts have nothing to do with your doubts, which I don't
+      understand, though you tried to explain them so carefully.
+      You will come through _them_, I expect.  I don't know that I
+      have any reasons that could be put on paper: only, somehow, I
+      cannot _see_ you in a black coat and clerical hat."
+
+     "You complain that I never write about George.  You don't
+      deserve to hear, since you refuse to come to our wedding.
+      But would _you_ talk, if you happened to be in love?  There, I
+      have told you more than ever I told George, whose conceit has
+      to be kept down.  Let this console you."
+
+     "Our new parson, when he comes, is to lodge down in Innis
+      Village.  Your mother--but no doubt she has told you--stays in
+      the Parsonage while she pleases.  She and your grandmother are
+      both well.  I see her every day: I have so much to learn, and
+      she is so wise.  Her beautiful eyes--but oh, Taffy, it must be
+      terrible to be a widow!  She smiles and is always cheerful; but
+      the _look_ in them!  How can I describe it? When I find her
+      alone with her lace-work, or sometimes (but it is not often)
+      with her hands in her lap, she seems to come out of her silence
+      with an effort, as others withdraw themselves from talk.
+      I wonder if she does talk in those silences of hers.
+      Another thing, it is only a few weeks now since she put on a
+      widow's cap, and yet I cannot remember her--can scarcely
+      picture her--without it.  I am sure that if I happened to call
+      one day when she had laid it aside, I should begin to talk
+      quite as if we were strangers."
+
+     "Believe me, yours sincerely,"
+     "HONORIA."
+
+But the wedding, after all, did not take place until the beginning of
+October, a week before the close of the Long Vacation; and Taffy,
+after all, was present.  The postponement had been enforced by many
+delays in building and furnishing the new wing at Carwithiel; for Sir
+Harry insisted that the young couple must live under one roof with
+him, and Honoria (as we know) hated the very stones of Tredinnis.
+
+The Bishop came to spend a week in the neighbourhood; the first three
+days as Honoria's guest.  On the Saturday he consecrated the work of
+restoration in the church, and in the afternoon held a confirmation
+service.  Taffy and Honoria knelt together to receive his blessing.
+It was the girl's wish.  The shadow of her responsibility to God and
+man lay heavy on her during the few months before her marriage: and
+Taffy, already weary and dispirited with his early doubtings,
+suffered her mood of exaltation to overcome him like a wave and sweep
+him back to rest for a while on the still waters of faith.
+Together they listened while the Bishop discoursed on the dead
+Vicar's labours with fluency and feeling; with so much feeling,
+indeed, that Taffy could not help wondering why his father had been
+left to fight the battle alone.
+
+On the Sunday and Monday two near parishes claimed the Bishop.
+On the Tuesday he sent his luggage over to Carwithiel, whither he was
+to follow after the wedding service, to spend a day or two with Sir
+Harry.  It had been Honoria's wish that George should choose Taffy
+for his best man; but George had already invited one of his sporting
+friends, a young Squire Philpotts from the eastern side of the Duchy;
+and as the date fell at the beginning of the hunting season, he
+insisted on a "pink" wedding.  Honoria consulted the Bishop by
+letter.  "Did he approve of a 'pink' wedding so soon after the
+bride's confirmation?"  The Bishop saw no harm in it.
+
+So a "pink" wedding it was, and the scarlet coats made a lively patch
+of colour in the gray churchyard: but it gave Taffy a feeling that he
+was left out in the cold.  He escorted his mother to the church, and
+left her for a few minutes in the Vicarage pew.  The bridegroom and
+his friends were gathered in a showy cluster by the chancel step, but
+the bride had not arrived, and he stepped out to help in marshalling
+the crowd of miners and mine-girls, fishermen, and mothers with
+unruly children--a hundred or so in all, lining the path or
+straggling among the graves.
+
+Close by the gate he came on a girl who stood alone.
+
+"Hullo, Lizzie--you here?"
+
+"Why not?" she asked, looking at him sullenly.
+
+"Oh, no reason at all."
+
+"There might ha' been a reason," said she, speaking low and
+hurriedly.  "You might ha' saved me from this, Mr. Raymond; and her
+too; one time, you might."
+
+"Why, what on earth is the matter?" He looked up.  The Tredinnis
+carriage and pair of grays came over the knoll at a smart trot, and
+drew up before the gate.
+
+"Matter?"  Lizzie echoed with a short laugh.  "Oh, nuthin'.
+I'm goin' to lay the curse on her, that's all."
+
+"You shall not!"  There was no time to lose.
+
+Honoria's trustee--the second cousin from London, a tall,
+clean-shaven man with a shiny bald head, and a shiny hat in his
+hand--had stepped out and was helping the bride to alight.
+What Lizzie meant Taffy could not tell; but there must be no scene.
+He caught her hand.  "Mind--I say you shall not!" he whispered.
+
+"Lemme go--you're creamin' my fingers."
+
+"Be quiet then."
+
+At that moment Honoria passed up the path.  Her wedding gown almost
+brushed him as he stood wringing Lizzie's hand.  She did not appear
+to see him; but he saw her face beneath the bridal veil, and it was
+hard and white.
+
+"The proud toad!" said Lizzie.  "I'm no better'n dirt, I suppose,
+though from the start she wasn' above robbin' me.  Aw, she's sly ...
+Mr. Raymond, I'll curse her as she comes out, see if I don't!"
+
+"And I swear you shall not," said Taffy.  The scent of Honoria's
+orange-blossom seemed to cling about them as they stood.
+
+Lizzie looked at him vindictively.  "You wanted her yourself, _I_
+know.  You weren't good enough, neither.  Let go my fingers!"
+
+"Go home, now.  See, the people have all gone in."
+
+"Go'st way in too, then, and leave me here to wait for her."
+
+Taffy shut his teeth, let go her hand, and taking her by the
+shoulders, swung her round face toward the gate.
+
+"March!" he commanded, and she moved off whimpering.  Once she looked
+back.  "March!" he repeated, and followed her down the road as one
+follows and threatens a mutinous dog.
+
+
+The scene by the church gate had puzzled Honoria, and in her first
+letter (written from Italy) she came straight to the point, as her
+custom was:
+
+     "I hope there is nothing between you and that girl who used to
+      be at Joll's.  I say nothing about our hopes for you, but you
+      have your own career to look to; and as I know you are too
+      honourable to flatter an ignorant girl when you mean nothing,
+      so I trust you are too wise to be caught by a foolish fancy.
+      Forgive a staid matron (of one week's standing) for writing so
+      plainly, but what I saw made me uneasy--without cause, no
+      doubt.  Your future, remember, is not yours only.  And now I
+      shall trust you, and never come back to this subject."
+
+     "We are like children abroad, George's French is wonderful, but
+      not so wonderful as his Italian.  When he goes to take a ticket
+      he first of all shouts the name of the station he wishes to
+      arrive at (for some reason he believes all foreigners to be
+      deaf), then he begins counting down francs one by one, very
+      slowly, watching the clerk's face.  When the clerk's face tells
+      him he has doled out enough, he shouts 'Hold hard!' and
+      clutches the ticket.  It takes time; but all the people here
+      are friends with him at once--especially the children, whom he
+      punches in the ribs and tells to 'buck up.'  Their mothers nod
+      and smile and openly admire him; and I--well, I am happy and
+      want everyone else to be happy."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+MEN AS TOWERS.
+
+It was May morning, and Taffy made one of the group gathered on the
+roof of Magdalen Tower.  In the groves below and across the river
+meadows all the birds were singing together.  Beyond the glimmering
+suburbs, St. Clement's and Cowley St. John, over the dark rise by
+Bullingdon Green, the waning moon seemed to stand still and wait,
+poised on her nether horn.  Below her the morning sky waited, clean
+and virginal, letting her veil of mist slip lower and lower until it
+rested in folds upon Shotover.  While it dropped a shaft of light
+tore through it and smote flashing on the vane high above Taffy's
+head, turning the dark side of the turrets to purple and casting
+lilac shadows on the surplices of the choir.  For a moment the whole
+dewy shadow of the tower trembled on the western sky, and melted and
+was gone as a flood of gold broke on the eastward-turned faces.
+The clock below struck five and ceased.  There was a sudden baring of
+heads; a hush; and gently, borne aloft on boys' voices, clear and
+strong, rose the first notes of the hymn--
+
+     "Te Deum Patrem colimus,
+      Te laudibus prosequimur,
+      Qui corpus cibo reficis,
+      Coelesti mentem gratia."
+
+In the pauses Taffy heard, faint and far below, the noise of cowhorns
+blown by the street boys gathered at the foot of the tower and beyond
+the bridge.  Close beside him a small urchin of a chorister was
+singing away with the face of an ecstatic seraph; whence that ecstasy
+arose the urchin would have been puzzled to tell.  There flashed into
+Taffy's brain the vision of the whole earth lauding and adoring--
+sun-worshippers and Christians, priests and small children; nation
+after nation prostrating itself and arising to join the chant--
+"the differing world's agreeing sacrifice."  Yes, it was Praise that
+made men brothers; Praise, the creature's first and last act of
+homage to his Creator; Praise that made him kin with the angels.
+Praise had lifted this tower; had expressed itself in its soaring
+pinnacles; and he for the moment was incorporate with the tower and
+part of its builder's purpose.  "Lord, make men as towers!"--he
+remembered his father's prayer in the field by Tewkesbury, and at
+last he understood.  "All towers carry a lamp of some kind"--why, of
+course they did.  He looked about him.  The small chorister's face
+was glowing--
+
+     "Triune Deus, hominum
+      Salutis auctor optime,
+      Immensum hoc mysterium
+      Ovante lingua canimus!"
+
+Silence--and then with a shout the tunable bells broke forth, rocking
+the tower.  Someone seized Taffy's college cap and sent it spinning
+over the battlements.  Caps?  For a second or two they darkened the
+sky like a flock of birds.  A few gowns followed, expanding as they
+dropped, like clumsy parachutes.  The company--all but a few severe
+dons and their friends--tumbled laughing down the ladder, down the
+winding stair, and out into sunshine.  The world was pagan after all.
+
+
+At breakfast Taffy found a letter on his table, addressed in his
+mother's hand.  As a rule she wrote twice a week, and this was not
+one of the usual days for hearing from her.  But nothing was too good
+to happen that morning.  He snatched up the letter and broke the
+seal.
+
+"My dearest boy," it ran, "I want you home at once to consult with
+me.  Something has happened (forgive me, dear, for not preparing you;
+but the blow fell on me yesterday so suddenly)--something which makes
+it doubtful, and more than doubtful, that you can continue at Oxford.
+And something else _they say_ has happened which I will never believe
+in unless I hear it from my boy's lips.  I have this comfort, at any
+rate, that he will never tell me a falsehood.  This is a matter which
+cannot be explained by letter, and cannot wait until the end of term.
+Come home quickly, dear; for until you are here I can have no peace
+of mind."
+
+So once again Taffy travelled homewards by the night mail.
+
+
+"Mother, it's a lie!"
+
+Taffy's face was hot, but he looked straight into his mother's eyes.
+She too was rosy-red: being ever a shamefast woman.  And to speak of
+these things to her own boy--
+
+"Thank God!" she murmured, and her fingers gripped the arms of her
+chair.
+
+"It's a lie!  Where is the girl?"
+
+"She is in the workhouse, I believe.  I don't know who spread it, or
+how many have heard.  But Honoria believes it."
+
+"Honoria!  She cannot--"  He came to a sudden halt.  "But, mother,
+even supposing Honoria believes it, I don't see--"
+
+He was looking straight at her.  Her eyes sank.  Light began to break
+in on him.
+
+"Mother!"
+
+Humility did not look up.
+
+"Mother!  Don't tell me that she--that Honoria--"
+
+"She made us promise--your father and me. . . . God knows it did no
+more than repay what your father had suffered. . . . Your future was
+everything to us. . . ."
+
+"And I have been maintained at Oxford by her money," he said, pausing
+in his bitterness on every word.
+
+"Not by that only, Taffy!  There was your scholarship . . . and it
+was true about my savings on the lace-work. . . ."
+
+But he brushed her feeble explanations away with a little gesture of
+impatience.  "Oh why, mother?--Oh why?"
+
+She heard him groan and stretched out her arms.
+
+"Taffy, forgive me--forgive us!  We did wrongly, I see--I see it as
+plain now as you.  But we did it for your sake."
+
+"You should have told me.  I was not a child.  Yes, yes, you should
+have told me."
+
+Yes; there lay the truth.  They had treated him as a child when he
+was no longer a child.  They had swathed him round with love,
+forgetting that boys grow and demand to see with their own eyes and
+walk on their own feet.  To every mother of sons there comes sooner
+or later the sharp lesson which came to Humility that morning; and
+few can find any defence but that which Humility stammered, sitting
+in her chair and gazing piteously up at the tall youth confronting
+her: "I did it for your sake."  Be pitiful, oh accusing sons, in that
+hour!  For, terrible as your case may be against them, your mothers
+are speaking the simple truth.
+
+Taffy took her hand.  "The money must be paid back, every penny of
+it."
+
+"Yes, dear."
+
+"How much?"
+
+Humility kept a small account-book in the work-box beside her.
+She opened the pages, but, seeing his outstretched hand, gave it
+obediently to Taffy, who took it to the window.
+
+"Almost two hundred pounds." He knit his brows and began to drum with
+his fingers on the window-pane.  "And we must put the interest at
+five per cent. . . . With my first in Moderations I might find some
+post as an usher in a small school. . . . There's an agency which
+puts you in the way of such things: I must look up the address. . . .
+We will leave this house, of course."
+
+"Must we?"
+
+"Why of course we must. We are living here by _her_ favour.
+A cottage will do--only it must have four rooms, because of
+grandmother. . . . I will step over and talk with Mendarva.
+He may be able to give me a job.  It will keep me going, at any rate,
+until I hear from the agency."
+
+"You forget that I have over forty pounds a year--or, rather, mother
+has.  The capital came from the sale of her farm, years ago."
+
+"Did it?" said Taffy grimly.  "You forget that I have never been
+told.  Well, that's good, so far as it goes.  But now I'll step over
+and see Mendarva.  If only I could catch this cowardly lie somewhere
+on my way!"
+
+He kissed his mother, caught up his cap, and flung out of the house.
+The sea breeze came humming across the sandhills.  He opened his
+lungs to it, and it was wine to his blood; he felt strong enough to
+slay dragons.  "But who could the liar be?  Not Lizzie herself,
+surely!  Not--"
+
+He pulled up short in a hollow of the towans.
+
+"Not--George?"
+
+Treachery is a hideous thing; and to youth so incomprehensibly
+hideous that it darkens the sun.  Yet every trusting man must be
+betrayed.  That was one of the lessons of Christ's life on earth.
+It is the last and severest test; it kills many, morally, and no man
+who has once met and looked it in the face departs the same man,
+though he may be a stronger one.
+
+"_Not George?_"
+
+Taffy stood there so still that the rabbits crept out and, catching
+sight of him, paused in the mouths of their burrows.  When at length
+he moved on it was to take, not the path which wound inland to
+Mendarva's, but the one which led straight over the higher moors to
+Carwithiel.
+
+It was between one and two o'clock when he reached the house and
+asked to see Mr. and Mrs. George Vyell, They were not at home, the
+footman said; had left for Falmouth the evening before to join some
+friends on a yachting cruise.  Sir Harry was at home; was, indeed,
+lunching at that moment; but would no doubt be pleased to see Mr.
+Raymond.
+
+Sir Harry had finished his lunch, and sat sipping his claret and
+tossing scraps of biscuits to the dogs.
+
+"Hullo, Raymond!--thought you were in Oxford.  Sit down, my boy;
+delighted to see you.  Thomas, a knife and fork for Mr. Raymond.
+The cutlets are cold, I'm afraid; but I can recommend the cold
+saddle, and the ham--it's a York ham.  Go to the sideboard and forage
+for yourself.  I wanted company.  My boy and Honoria are at Falmouth
+yachting, and have left me alone.  What, you won't eat?  A glass of
+claret, then, at any rate."
+
+"To tell the truth, Sir Harry," Taffy began awkwardly.  "I've come on
+a disagreeable business."
+
+Sir Harry's face fell.  He hated disagreeable business.  He flipped a
+piece of biscuit at his spaniel's nose and sat back, crossing his
+legs.
+
+"Won't it keep?"
+
+"To me it's important."
+
+"Oh, fire away then: only help yourself to the claret first."
+
+"A girl--Lizzie Pezzack, living over at Langona--has had a child
+born--"
+
+"Stop a moment.  Do I know her?--Ah, to be sure--daughter of old
+Pezzack, the light-keeper--a brown-coloured girl with her hair over
+her eyes.  Well, I'm not surprised.  Wants money, I suppose?
+Who's the father?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, but--damn it all!--somebody knows."  Sir Harry reached for the
+bottle and refilled his glass.
+
+"The one thing I know is that Honoria--Mrs. George, I mean--has heard
+about it, and suspects me."
+
+Sir Harry lifted his glass and glanced at him over the rim.
+"That's the devil.  Does she, now?"  He sipped.  "She hasn't been
+herself for a day or two--this explains it.  I thought it was change
+of air she wanted.  She's in the deuce of a rage, you bet."
+
+"She is," said Taffy grimly.
+
+"There's no prude like your young married woman.  But it'll blow
+over, my boy.  My advice to you is to keep out of the way for a
+while."
+
+"But--but it's a lie!" broke in the indignant Taffy.  "As far as I am
+concerned there's not a grain of truth in it!"
+
+"Oh--I beg your pardon, I'm sure."  Here Honoria's terrier (the one
+which George had bought for her at Plymouth) interrupted by begging
+for a biscuit, and Sir Harry balanced one carefully on its nose.
+"On trust--good dog!  What does the girl say herself?"
+
+"I don't know.  I've not seen her."
+
+"Then, my dear fellow--it's awkward, I admit--but I'm dashed if I see
+what you expect me to do."  The baronet pulled out a handkerchief and
+began flicking the crumbs off his knees.
+
+Taffy watched him for a minute in silence.  He was asking himself why
+he had come.  Well, he had come in a hot fit of indignation, meaning
+to face Honoria and force her to take back the insult of her
+suspicion.  But after all--suppose George were at the bottom of it?
+Clearly Sir Henry knew nothing, and in any case could not be asked to
+expose his own son.  And Honoria?  Let be that she would never
+believe--that he had no proof, no evidence even--this were a pretty
+way of beginning to discharge his debt to her!  The terrier thrust a
+cold muzzle against his hand.  The room was very still.  Sir Harry
+poured out another glassful and held out the decanter.  "Come, you
+must drink; I insist!"
+
+Taffy looked up.  "Thank you, I will."
+
+He could now and with a clear conscience.  In those quiet moments he
+had taken the great resolution.  The debt should be paid back, and
+with interest; not at five per cent., but at a rate beyond the
+creditor's power of reckoning.  For the interest to be guarded for
+her should be her continued belief in the man she loved.  Yes,
+_but if George were innocent?_  Why, then the sacrifice would be
+idle; that was all.
+
+He swallowed the wine, and stood up.
+
+"Must you be going?  I wanted a chat with you about Oxford," grumbled
+Sir Harry; but noting the lad's face, how white and drawn it was, he
+relented, and put a hand on his shoulder.  "Don't take it too
+seriously, my boy.  It'll blow over--it'll blow over.  Honoria likes
+you, I know.  We'll see what the trollop says: and if I get a chance
+of putting in a good word, you may depend on me."
+
+He walked with Taffy to the door--good, easy man--and waved a hand
+from the porch.  On the whole, he was rather glad than not to see his
+young friend's back.
+
+
+From his smithy window Mendarva spied Taffy coming along the road,
+and stepped out on the green to shake hands with him.
+
+"Pleased to see your face, my son!  You'll excuse my not asking 'ee
+inside; but the fact is"--he jerked his thumb towards the smithy--"
+we've a-got our troubles in there."
+
+It came on our youth with something of a shock that the world had
+room for any trouble beside his own.
+
+"'Tis the Dane.  He went over to Truro yesterday to the wrastlin',
+an' got thrawed.  I tell'n there's no call to be shamed.  'Twas Luke
+the Wendron fella did it--in the treble play--inside lock backward,
+and as pretty a chip as ever I see."  Mendarva began to illustrate it
+with foot and ankle, but checked himself, and glanced nervously over
+his shoulder.  "Isn' lookin', I hope?  He's in a terrible pore about
+it.  Won't trust hissel' to spake, and don't want to see nobody.
+But, as I tell'n, there's no call to be shamed; the fella took the
+belt in the las' round, and turned his man over like a tab.  He's a
+proper angletwitch, that Wendron fella.  Stank 'pon en both ends, and
+he'll rise up in the middle and look at 'ee.  There was no one a
+patch on en but the Dane; and I'll back the Dane next time they
+clinch. 'Tis a nuisance, though, to have'n like this--with a big job
+coming on, too, over to the light-house."
+
+Taffy looked steadily at the smith.  "What's doing at the
+light-house?"
+
+"Ha'n't 'ee heerd?"  Mendarva began a long tale, the sum of which was
+that the light-house had begun of late to show signs of age, to rock
+at times in an ominous manner.  The Trinity House surveyor had been
+down and reported, and Mendarva had the contract for some immediate
+repairs.  "But 'tis patching an old kettle, my son.  The foundations
+be clamped down to the rock, and the clamps have worked loose.
+The whole thing'll have to come down in the end; you mark my words."
+
+"But, these repairs?" Taffy interrupted: "You'll be wanting hands."
+
+"Why, o' course."
+
+"And a foreman--a clerk of the works--"
+
+
+While Mendarva was telling his tale, over a hill two miles to the
+westward a small donkey-cart crawled for a minute against the
+sky-line and disappeared beyond the ridge which hid the towans.
+An old man trudged at the donkey's head; and a young woman sat in the
+cart with a bundle in her arms.
+
+The old man trudged along so deep in thought that when the donkey
+without rhyme or reason came to a halt, half-way down the hill, he
+too halted, and stood pulling a wisp of grey side-whiskers.
+
+"Look here," he said.  "You ent goin' to tell?  That's your las'
+word, is it?"
+
+The young woman looked down on the bundle and nodded her head.
+
+"There, that'll do.  If you weant, you weant; I've tek'n 'ee back,
+an' us must fit and make the best o't.  The cheeld'll never be good
+for much--born lame like that.  But 'twas to be, I s'pose."
+
+Lizzie sat dumb, but hugged the bundle closer.
+
+"'Tis like a judgment.  If your mother'd been spared, 'twudn' have
+happened.  But 'twas to be, I s'pose.  The Lord's ways be past
+findin' out."
+
+He woke up and struck the donkey across the rump.
+
+"Gwan you!  Gee up!  What d'ee mean by stoppin' like that?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+THE SERVICE OF THE LAMP.
+
+The Chief Engineer of the Trinity House was a man of few words.
+He and Taffy had spent the afternoon clambering about the rocks below
+the light-house, peering into its foundations.  Here and there, where
+weed coated the rocks and made foothold slippery, he took the hand
+which Taffy held out.  Now and then he paused for a pinch of snuff.
+The round of inspection finished, he took an extraordinarily long
+pinch.
+
+"What's _your_ opinion?" he asked, cocking his head on one side and
+examining the young man much as he had examined the light-house.
+"You have one, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but of course it doesn't count for much."
+
+"I asked for it."
+
+"Well, then, I think, sir, we have wasted a year's work; and if we go
+on tinkering we shall waste more."
+
+"Pull it down and rebuild, you say?"
+
+"Yes, sir; but not on the same rock."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"This rock was ill-chosen.  You see, sir, just here a ridge of elvan
+crops up through the slate; the rock, out yonder, is good elvan, and
+that is why the sea has made an island of it, wearing away the softer
+stuff inshore.  The mischief here lies in the rock, not in the
+light-house."
+
+"The sea has weakened our base?"
+
+"Partly: but the light-house has done more.  In a strong gale the
+foundations begin to work, and in the chafing the rock gets the worst
+of it."
+
+"What about concrete?"
+
+"You might fill up the sockets with concrete; but I doubt, sir, if
+the case would hold for any time.  The rock is a mere shell in
+places, especially on the north-western side."
+
+"H'm.  You were at Oxford for a time, were you not?"
+
+"Yes, sir," Taffy answered, wondering.
+
+"I've heard about you.  Where do you live?"
+
+Taffy pointed to the last of a line of three whitewashed cottages
+behind the light-house.
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"No, sir; with my mother and my grandmother.  She is an invalid."
+
+"I wonder if your mother would be kind enough to offer me a cup of
+tea?"
+
+In the small kitchen, on the walls of which, and even on the dresser,
+Taffy's books fought for room with Humility's plates and tin-ware,
+the Chief Engineer proved to be a most courteous old gentleman.
+Towards Humility he bore himself with an antique politeness which
+flattered her considerably.  And when he praised her tea she almost
+forgave him for his detestable habit of snuff-taking.
+
+He had heard something (it appeared) from the President of Taffy's
+college, and also from--(he named Taffy's old friend in the velvet
+college-cap).  In later days Taffy maintained not only that every man
+must try to stand alone, but that he ought to try the harder because
+of its impossibility; for in fact it was impossible to escape from
+men's helpfulness.  And though his work was done in lonely places
+where in the end fame came out to seek him, he remained the same boy
+who, waking in the dark, had heard the bugles speaking comfort.
+
+As a matter of fact his college had generously offered him a chance
+which would have cost him nothing or next to nothing, of continuing
+to read for his degree.  But he had chosen his line, and against
+Humility's entreaties he stuck to it.  The Chief Engineer took a
+ceremonious leave.  He had to drive back to his hotel, and Taffy
+escorted him to his carriage.
+
+"I shall run over again to-morrow," he said at parting; "and we'll
+have a look at that island rock."  He was driven off, secretly a
+little puzzled.
+
+Well, it puzzled Taffy at times why he should be working here with
+Mendarva's men for twenty shillings a week (it had been eighteen, to
+begin with) when he might be reading for his degree and a fellowship.
+Yet in his heart he knew the reason.  _That_ would be building, after
+all, on the foundations which Honoria had laid.
+
+Pride had helped chance to bring him here, to the very spot where
+Lizzie Pezzack lived.  He met her daily, and several times a day.
+She, and his mother and grandmother, were all the women-folk in the
+hamlet--if three cottages deserve that name.  In the first cottage
+Lizzie lived with her father, who was chief light-houseman, and her
+crippled child; two under-keepers, unmarried men, managed together in
+the second; and this accident allowed Taffy to rent the third from
+the Brethren of the Trinity House and live close to his daily work.
+Unless brought by business, no one visited that windy peninsula; no
+one passed within sight of it; no tree grew upon it or could be seen
+from it.  At daybreak Taffy's workmen came trudging along the track
+where the short turf and gentians grew between the wheel-ruts; and in
+the evening went trudging back, the level sun flashing on their empty
+dinner-cans.  The eight souls left behind had one common gospel--
+Cleanliness.  Very little dust found its way thither; but the salt,
+spray-laden air kept them constantly polishing window-panes and
+brass-work.  To wash, to scour, to polish, grew into the one
+absorbing business of life.  They had no gossip; even in their own
+dwellings they spoke but little; their speech shrank and dwindled
+away in the continuous roar of the sea.  But from morning to night,
+mechanically, they washed and scoured and polished.  Paper was not
+whiter than the deal table and dresser which Humility scrubbed daily
+with soap and water, and once a week with lemon-juice as well.
+Never was cleaner linen to sight and smell than that which she pegged
+out by the furze-brake on the ridge.  All the life of the small
+colony, though lonely, grew wholesome as it was simple of purpose in
+cottages thus sweetened and kept sweet by limewash and the salt wind.
+
+And through it moved the forlorn figure of Lizzie Pezzack's child.
+Somehow Lizzie had taught the boy to walk, with the help of a crutch,
+as early as most children; but the wind made cruel sport with his
+first efforts in the open, knocking the crutch from under him at
+every third step, and laying him flat.  The child had pluck, however;
+and when autumn came round again, could face a fairly stiff breeze.
+
+
+It was about this time that word came of the Trinity Board's
+intention to replace the old lighthouse with one upon the outer rock.
+For the Chief Engineer had visited it and decided that Taffy was
+right.  To be sure no mention was made of Taffy in his report; but
+the great man took the first opportunity to offer him the post of
+foreman of the works, so there was certainly nothing to be grumbled
+at.  The work did not actually start until the following spring; for
+the rock, to receive the foundations, had to be bored some feet below
+high-water level, and this could only be attempted on calm days or
+when a southerly wind blew from the high land well over the workmen's
+heads, leaving the inshore water smooth.  On such days Taffy, looking
+up from his work, would catch sight of a small figure on the
+cliff-top leaning aslant to the wind and watching.
+
+For the child was adventurous and took no account of his lameness.
+Perhaps if he thought of it at all, having no chance to compare
+himself with other children, he accepted his lameness as a condition
+of childhood--something he would grow out of.  His mother could not
+keep him indoors; he fidgeted continually.  But he would sit or stand
+quiet by the hour on the cliff-top watching the men as they drilled
+and fixed the dynamite, and waiting for the bang of it.  Best of all,
+however, were the days when his grandfather allowed him inside the
+light-house, to clamber about the staircase and ladders, to watch the
+oiling and trimming of the great lantern, and the ships moving slowly
+on the horizon.  He asked a thousand questions about them.
+
+"I think," said he one day before he was three years old, "that my
+father is in one of those ships."
+
+"Bless the child!" exclaimed old Pezzack.  "Who says you have a
+father?"
+
+"_Everybody_ has a father.  Dicky Tregenza has one; they both work
+down at the rock.  I asked Dicky, and he told me."
+
+"Told 'ee what?"
+
+"That everybody has a father.  I asked him if mine was out in one of
+those ships, and he said very likely.  I asked mother, too, but she
+was washing-up and wouldn't listen."
+
+Old Pezzack regarded the child grimly.  "'Twas to be, I s'pose," he
+muttered.
+
+Lizzie Pezzack had never set foot inside the Raymonds' cottage.
+Humility, gentle soul as she was, could on some points be as
+unchristian as other women.  As time went on it seemed that not a
+soul beside herself and Taffy knew of Honoria's suspicion.  She even
+doubted, and Taffy doubted too, if Lizzie herself knew such an
+accusation had been made.  Certainly never by word or look had Lizzie
+hinted at it.  Yet Humility could not find it in her heart to
+forgive her.  "She may be innocent," was the thought; "but through
+her came the injury to my son."  Taffy by this time had no doubt at
+all.  It was George who poisoned Honoria's ear; George's shame and
+Honoria's pride would explain why the whisper had never gone
+further; and nothing else would explain.
+
+Did his mother guess this?  He believed so at times, but they never
+spoke of it.
+
+The lame child was often in the Raymonds' kitchen.  Lizzie did not
+forbid or resent this.  And he liked Humility, and would talk to her
+at length while he nibbled one of her dripping-cakes.  "People don't
+tell the truth," he observed sagely on one of these occasions.
+(He pronounced it "troof," by the way.) "_I_ know why we live here.
+It's because we're near the sea.  My father's on the sea somewhere
+looking for us, and grandfather lights the lamp every night to tell
+him where we are.  One night he'll see it and bring his ship in and
+take us all off together."
+
+"Who told you all this?"
+
+"Nobody.  People won't tell me nothing (nofing).  I has to make it
+out in my head."
+
+At times, when his small limbs grew weary (though he never
+acknowledged this) he would stretch himself on the short turf of the
+headland and lie staring up at the white gulls.  No one ever came
+near enough to surprise the look which then crept over the child's
+face.  But Taffy, passing him at a distance, remembered another small
+boy, and shivered to remember and compare--
+
+     "A boy's will is the wind's will,
+      And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts."
+
+--But how when the boy is a cripple?
+
+One afternoon he was stooping to inspect an obstinate piece of boring
+when the man at his elbow said:
+
+"Hullo! edn' that young Joey Pezzack in diffities up there?  Blest if
+the cheeld won't break his neck wan of these days!"
+
+Taffy caught up a coil of rope, sprang into a boat, and pushed across
+to land.  "Don't move!" he shouted.  At the foot of the cliff he
+picked up Joey's crutch and ran at full speed up the path worn by the
+workmen.  This led him round to the verge ten feet above the ledge
+where the child clung white and silent.  He looped the rope in a
+running noose and lowered it.
+
+"Slip this under your arms.  Can you manage, or shall I come down?
+I'll come if you're hurt."
+
+"I've twisted my foot.  It's all right, now you're come," said the
+little man bravely; and slid the rope round himself in the most
+business-like way.
+
+"The grass was slipper--" he began, as soon as his feet touched firm
+earth: and with that he broke down and fell to sobbing in Taffy's
+arms.
+
+Taffy carried him--a featherweight--to the cottage where Lizzie stood
+by her table washing up.  She saw them at the gate and came running
+out.
+
+"It's all right.  He slipped--out on the cliff.  Nothing more than a
+scratch or two, and perhaps a sprained ankle."
+
+He watched while she set Joey in a chair and began to pull off his
+stockings.  He had never seen the child's foot naked.  She turned
+suddenly, caught him looking, and pulled the stocking back over the
+deformity.
+
+"Have you heard?" she asked.
+
+"What?"
+
+"_She_ has a boy!  Ah!" she laughed harshly, "I thought that would
+hurt you.  Well, you _have_ been a silly!"
+
+"I don't think I understand."
+
+"You don't think you understand!" she mimicked.  "And you're not fond
+of her, eh?  Never were fond of her, eh?  You silly--to let him take
+her, and never tell!"
+
+"Tell?"
+
+She faced him, hardening her gaze.  "Yes, tell--"  She nodded slowly;
+while Joey, unobserved by either, looked up with wide, round eyes.
+
+"Men don't fight like that."  The words were out before it struck him
+that one man had, almost certainly, fought like that.  Her face,
+however, told him nothing.  She could not know.  "_You_ have never
+told," he added.
+
+"Because--" she began, but could not tell him the whole truth.
+And yet what he said was true.  "Because you would not let me," she
+muttered.
+
+"In the churchyard, you mean--on her wedding day?"
+
+"Before that."
+
+"But before that I never guessed."
+
+"All the same I knew what you were.  You wouldn' have let me.
+It came to the same thing.  And if I had told--Oh, you make it hard
+for me!" she wailed.
+
+He stared at her, understanding this only--that somehow he could
+control her will.
+
+"I will never let you tell," he said gravely.
+
+"I hate her!"
+
+"You shall not tell."
+
+"Listen"--she drew close and touched his arm.  "He never cared for
+her; it's not his way to care.  She cares for him now, I dessay--not
+as she might have cared for _you_--but she's his wife, and some women
+are like that.  There's her pride, any way.  Suppose--suppose he came
+back to me?"
+
+"If I caught him--" Taffy began: but the poor child, who for two
+minutes had been twisting his face heroically, interrupted with a
+wail:
+
+"Oh, mother! my foot--it hurts so!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+FACE TO FACE.
+
+The first winter had interrupted all work upon the rock; but Taffy
+and his men had used the calm days of the following spring and summer
+to such purpose that before the end of July the foundations began to
+show above high-water neaps, and in September he was able to report
+that the building could be pushed forward in any ordinary weather.
+The workmen were carried to and from the mainland by a wire hawser
+and cradle, and the rising breastwork of masonry protected them from
+the beat of the sea.  Progress was slow, for each separate stone had
+to be dovetailed above, below, and on all sides with the blocks
+adjoining it, besides being cemented; and care to be taken that no
+salt mingled with the fresh water, or found its way into the joints
+of the building.  Taffy studied the barometer hour by hour, and kept
+a constant look-out to windward against sudden gales.
+
+On November 16th the men had finished their dinner, and sat smoking
+under the lee of the wall, when Taffy, with his pocket-aneroid in his
+hand, gave the order to snug down and man the cradle for shore.
+They stared.  The morning had been a halcyon one; and the northerly
+breeze, which had sprung up with the turn of the tide and was
+freshening, carried no cloud across the sky.  Two vessels,
+abrigantine and a three-masted schooner, were merrily reaching
+down-channel before it, the brigantine leading; at two miles'
+distance they could see distinctly the white foam running from her
+bluff bows, and her forward deck from bulwark to bulwark as she
+heeled to it.
+
+One or two grumbled.  Half a day's work meant half a day's pay to
+them.  It was all very well for the Cap'n, who drew his by the week.
+
+"Come, look alive!"  Taffy called sharply.  He pinned his faith to
+the barometer, and as he shut it in its case he glanced at the
+brigantine and saw that her crew were busy with the braces,
+flattening the forward canvas.  "See there, boys.  There'll be a gale
+from the west'ard before night."
+
+For a minute the brigantine seemed to have run into a calm.
+The schooner, half a mile behind her, came reaching along steadily.
+
+"That there two-master's got a fool for a skipper," grumbled a voice.
+But almost at the moment the wind took her right aback--or would have
+done so had the crew not been preparing for it.  Her stern swung
+slowly around into view, and within two minutes she was fetching away
+from them on the port tack, her sails hauled closer and closer as she
+went.  Already the schooner was preparing to follow suit.
+
+"Snug down, boys!  We must be out of this in half an hour."
+
+And sure enough, by the time Taffy gained the cliff by the old
+light-house, the sky had darkened, and a stiff breeze from the
+north-west, crossing the tide, was beginning to work up a nasty sea
+around the rock and lop it from time to time over the masonry and the
+platforms where half an hour before his men had been standing.
+The two vessels had disappeared in the weather; and as Taffy stared
+in their direction a spit of rain--the first--took him viciously in
+the face.
+
+He turned his back to it and hurried homeward.  As he passed the
+light-house door old Pezzack called out to him:
+
+"Hi! wait a bit!  Would 'ee mind seein' Joey home?  I dunno what his
+mother sent him over here for, not I.  He'll get hisself leakin'."
+
+Joey came hobbling out, and put his right hand in Taffy's with the
+fist doubled.
+
+"What's that in your hand?"
+
+Joey looked up shyly.  "You won't tell?"
+
+"Not if it's a secret."
+
+The child opened his palm and disclosed a bright half-crown piece.
+
+"Where on earth did you get that?"
+
+"The soldier gave it to me."
+
+"The soldier? nonsense!  What tale are you making up?"
+
+"Well, he had a red coat, so he _must_ be a soldier.  He gave it to
+me, and told me to be a good boy and run off and play."
+
+Taffy came to a halt.  "Is he here--up at the cottages?"
+
+"How funnily you say that! No, he's just rode away.  I watched him
+from the light-house windows.  He can't be gone far yet."
+
+"Look here, Joey--can you run?"
+
+"Yes, if you hold my hand; only you mustn't go too fast.  Oh, you're
+hurting!"
+
+Taffy took the child in his arms, and with the wind at his back went
+up the hill with long stride.  "There he is!" cried Joey as they
+gained the ridge; and he pointed; and Taffy, looking along the ridge,
+saw a speck of scarlet moving against the lead-coloured moors--half a
+mile away perhaps, or a little more.  He sat the child down, for the
+cottages were close by.  "Run home, sonny.  I'm going to have a look
+at the soldier, too."
+
+The first bad squall broke on the headland just as Taffy started to
+run.  It was as if a bag of water had burst right overhead, and
+within a quarter of a minute he was drenched to the skin.
+So fiercely it went howling inland along the ridge that he half
+expected to see the horse urged into a gallop before it.  But the
+rider, now standing high for a moment against the sky-line, went
+plodding on.  For a while horse and man disappeared over the rise;
+but Taffy guessed that on hitting the cross-path beyond it they would
+strike away to the left and descend toward Langona Creek; and he
+began to slant his course to the left in anticipation.  The tide, he
+knew, would be running in strong; and with this wind behind it he
+hoped--and caught himself praying--that it would be high enough to
+cover the wooden foot-bridge and make the ford impassable; and if so,
+the horseman would be delayed and forced to head back and fetch a
+circuit farther up the valley.
+
+By this time the squalls were coming fast on each other's heels, and
+the strength of them flung him forward at each stride.  He had lost
+his hat, and the rain poured down his back and squished in his boots.
+But all he felt was the hate in his heart.  It had gathered there
+little by little for three years and a half, pent up, fed by his
+silent thoughts as a reservoir by small mountain streams; and with so
+tranquil a surface that at times--poor youth!--he had honestly
+believed it reflected God's calm, had been proud of his magnanimity,
+and said "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass
+against us."  Now as he ran he prayed to the same God to delay the
+traitor at the ford.
+
+Dusk was falling when George, yet unaware of pursuit, turned down the
+sunken lane which ended beside the ford.  And by the shore, when the
+small waves lapped against his mare's fore-feet, he heard Taffy's
+shout for the first time and turned in his saddle.  Even so it was a
+second or two before he recognised the figure which came plunging
+down the low cliff on his left, avoiding a fall only by wild clutches
+at the swaying elder boughs.
+
+"Hello!" he shouted cheerfully.  "Looks nasty, doesn't it?"
+
+Taffy came down the beach, near enough to see that the mare's legs
+were plastered with mud, and to look up into his enemy's face.
+
+"Get down," he panted.
+
+"Hey?"
+
+"Get down, I tell you.  Come off your horse and put up your fists!"
+
+"What the devil is the matter?  Hello! . . . Keep off, I tell you!
+Are you mad?"
+
+"Come off and fight."
+
+"By God, I'll break your head in if you don't let go. . . . You
+idiot!"--as the mare plunged and tore the stirrup-leather from
+Taffy's grip--"She'll brain you, if you fool round her heels like
+that!"
+
+"Come off, then."
+
+"Very well." George backed a little, swung himself out of the saddle
+and faced him on the beach.  "Now perhaps you'll explain."
+
+"You've come from the headland?"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"From Lizzie Pezzack's."
+
+"Well, and what then?"
+
+"Only this, that so sure as you've a wife at home, if you come to the
+headland again I'll kill you; and if you're a man, you'll put up your
+fists now."
+
+"Oh, that's it?  May I ask what you have to do with my wife, or with
+Lizzie Pezzack?"
+
+"Whose child is Lizzie's?"
+
+"Not yours, is it?"
+
+"You said so once; you told your wife so; liar that you were."
+
+"Very good, my gentleman.  You shall have what you want.  Woa, mare!"
+He led her up the beach and sought for a branch to tie his reins to.
+The mare hung back, terrified by the swishing of the whipped boughs
+and the roar of the gale overhead: her hoofs, as George dragged her
+forward, scuffled with the loose-lying stones on the beach.  After a
+minute he desisted and turned on Taffy again.
+
+"Look here; before we have this out there's one thing I'd like to
+know.  When you were at Oxford, was Honoria maintaining you there?"
+
+"If you must know--yes."
+
+"And when--when this happened, she stopped the supplies?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, then, I didn't know it.  She never told me."
+
+"She never told _me_."
+
+"You don't say--"
+
+"I do.  I never knew it until too late."
+
+"Well, now, I'm going to fight you.  I don't swallow being called a
+liar.  But I tell you this first, that I'm damned sorry.  I never
+guessed that it injured your prospects."
+
+At another time, in another mood, Taffy might have remembered that
+George was George, and heir to Sir Harry's nature.  As it was, the
+apology threw oil on the flame.
+
+"You cur!  Do you think it was _that?_  And _you_ are Honoria's
+husband!" He advanced with an ugly laugh.  "For the last time, put up
+your fists."
+
+They had been standing within two yards of each other; and even so,
+shouted at the pitch of their voices to make themselves heard above
+the gale.  As Taffy took a step forward George lifted his whip.
+His left hand held the bridle on which the reluctant mare was
+dragging, and the action was merely instinctive, to guard against
+sudden attack.
+
+But as he did so his face and uplifted arm were suddenly painted
+clear against the darkness.  The mare plunged more wildly than ever.
+Taffy dropped his hands and swung round.  Behind him, the black
+contour of the hill, the whole sky welled up a pale blue light which
+gathered brightness while he stared.  The very stones on the beach at
+his feet shone separate and distinct.
+
+"What is it?" George gasped.
+
+"A ship on the rocks!  Quick, man!  Will the mare reach to Innis?"
+
+"She'll have to." George wheeled her round.  She was fagged out with
+two long gallops after hounds that day, but for the moment sheer
+terror made her lively enough.
+
+"Ride, then! Call up the coast-guard.  By the flare she must be
+somewhere off the creek here.  Ride!"
+
+A clatter of hoofs answered him as the mare pounded up the lane.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+THE WRECK OF THE "SAMARITAN."
+
+Taffy stood for a moment listening.  He judged the wreck to be
+somewhere on the near side of the light-house, between it and the
+mouth of the creek; that was, if she had already struck.  If not, the
+gale and the set of the tide together would be sweeping her eastward,
+perhaps right across the mouth of the creek.  And if he could
+discover this his course would be to run back, intercept the
+coast-guard, and send him around by the upper bridge.
+
+He waited for a second signal to guide him--a flare or a rocket: but
+none came.  The beach lay in the lew of the weather, deep in the
+hills' hollow and trebly land-locked by the windings of the creek,
+but above him the sky kept its screaming as though the bare ridges of
+the headland were being shelled by artillery.
+
+He resolved to keep along the lower slopes and search his way down to
+the creek's mouth, when he would have sight of any signal shown along
+the coast for a mile or two to the east and north-east.  The night
+was now as black as a wolf's throat, but he knew every path and
+fence.  So he scrambled up the low cliff and began to run, following
+the line of stunted oaks and tamarisks which fenced it, and on the
+ridges--where the blown hail took him in the face--crouching and
+scuttling like a crab sideways, moving his legs only from the knees
+down.
+
+In this way he had covered half a mile and more when his right foot
+plunged in a rabbit hole and he was pitched headlong into the
+tamarisks below.  Their boughs bent under his weight, but they were
+tough, and he caught at them, and just saved himself from rolling
+over into the black water.  He picked himself up and began to rub his
+twisted ankle.  And at that instant, in a lull between two gusts, his
+ear caught the sound of splashing, yet a sound so unlike the lapping
+of the driven tide that he peered over and down between the tamarisk
+boughs.
+
+"Hullo there!"
+
+"Hullo!" a voice answered.  "Is that someone alive?  Here, mate--for
+Christ's sake!"
+
+"Hold on!  Whereabouts are you?"
+
+"Down in this here cruel water."  The words ended in a shuddering
+cough.
+
+"Right--hold on for a moment!"  Taffy's ankle pained him, but the
+wrench was not serious.  The cliff shelved easily.  He slid down,
+clutching at the tamarisk boughs which whipped his face.  "Where are
+you?  I can't see."
+
+"Here!"  The voice was not a dozen yards away.
+
+"Swimming?"
+
+"No--I've got a water-breaker--can't hold on much longer."
+
+"I believe you can touch bottom there."
+
+"Hey?  I can't hear."
+
+"Try to touch bottom.  It's firm sand hereabouts."
+
+"So I can."  The splashing and coughing came nearer, came close.
+Taffy stretched out a hand.  A hand, icy-cold, fumbled and gripped it
+in the darkness.
+
+"Christ!  Where's a place to lie down?"
+
+"Here, on this rock."  They peered at each other, but could not see.
+The man's teeth chattered close to Taffy's ear.
+
+"Warm my hands, mate--there's a good chap."  He lay on the rock and
+panted.  Taffy took his hands and began to rub them briskly.
+
+"Where's the ship?"
+
+"Where's the ship?"  He seemed to turn over the question in his mind,
+and then stretched himself with a sigh.  "How the hell should I
+know?"
+
+"What's her name?"  Taffy had to ask the question twice.
+
+"The _Samaritan_, of Newport, brigantine.  Coals she carried.
+Ha'n't you such a thing as a match?  It seems funny to me, talkin'
+here like this, and me not knowin' you from Adam."
+
+He panted between the words, and when he had finished lay back and
+panted again.
+
+"Hurt?" asked Taffy after a while.
+
+The man sat up and began to feel his limbs, quite as though they
+belonged to some other body.  "No, I reckon not."
+
+"Then we'd best be starting.  The tide's rising.  My house is just
+above here."
+
+He led the way along the slippery foreshore until he found what he
+sought, a foot-track slanting up the cliff.  Here he gave the sailor
+a hand and they mounted together.  On the grass slope above they met
+the gale and were forced to drop on their hands and knees and crawl,
+Taffy leading and shouting instructions, the sailor answering each
+with "Ay, ay, mate!" to show that he understood.
+
+But about half-way up these answers ceased, and Taffy, looking round
+and calling, found himself alone.  He groped his way back for twenty
+yards, and found the man stretched on his face and moaning.
+
+"I can't . . . I can't!  My poor brother!  I can't!"
+
+Taffy knelt beside him on the soaking turf.  "Your brother?  Had you
+a brother on board?"
+
+The man bowed his face again upon the turf.  Taffy, upright on both
+knees, heard him sobbing like a child in the roaring darkness.
+
+"Come," he coaxed, and putting out a hand, touched his wet hair.
+"Come."  They crept forward again, but still as he followed the
+sailor cried for his drowned brother, up the long slope to the ridge
+of the headland, where, with the light-house and warm cottage windows
+in view, all speech and hearing were drowned by stinging hail and the
+blown grit of the causeway.
+
+Humility opened the door to them.
+
+"Taffy!  Where have you been?"
+
+"There has been a wreck."
+
+"Yes, yes--the coast-guard is down by the light-house.  The men there
+saw her before she struck.  They kept signalling till it fell dark.
+They had sent off before that."
+
+She drew back, shrinking against the dresser as the lamplight fell on
+the stranger.  Taffy turned and stared too.  The man's face was
+running with blood; and looking at his own hands he saw that they
+also were scarlet.
+
+He helped the poor wretch to a chair.
+
+"Bandages: can you manage?"  She nodded, and stepped to a cupboard.
+The sailor began to wail again like an infant.
+
+"See--above the temple here: the cut isn't serious."  Taffy took down
+a lantern and lit it.  The candle shone red through the smears his
+fingers left on the horn panes.  "I must go and help, if you can
+manage."
+
+"I can manage," she answered quietly.
+
+He strode out, and closing the door behind him with an effort, faced
+the gale again.  Down in the lee of the light-house the lamps of the
+coast-guard carriage gleamed foggily through the rain.  The men were
+there discussing, George among them.  He had just galloped up.
+
+The Chief Officer went off to question the survivor, while the rest
+began their search.  They searched all that night; they burned flares
+and shouted; their torches dotted the cliffs.  After an hour the
+Chief Officer returned.  He could make nothing of the sailor, who had
+fallen silly from exhaustion or the blow on his head; but he divided
+his men into three parties, and they began to hunt more
+systematically.  Taffy was told off to help the westernmost gang and
+search the rocks below the light-house.  Once or twice he and his
+comrades paused in their work, hearing, as they thought, a cry for
+help.  But when they listened, it was only one of the other parties
+hailing.
+
+The gale began to abate soon after midnight, and before dawn had
+blown itself out.  Day came, filtered slowly through the wrack of it
+to the south-east; and soon they heard a whistle blown, and there on
+the cliff above them was George Vyell on horseback, in his red coat,
+with an arm thrown out and pointing eastward.  He turned and galloped
+off in that direction.
+
+They scrambled up and followed.  To their astonishment, after
+following the cliffs for a few hundred yards, he headed inland, down
+and across the very slope up which Taffy had crawled with the sailor.
+
+They lost sight of his red coat among the ridges.  Two or three--
+Taffy amongst them--ran along the upper ground for a better view.
+
+"Well, this beats all!" panted the foremost.
+
+Below them George came into view again, heading now at full gallop
+for a group of men gathered by the shore of the creek, a good
+half-mile from its mouth.  And beyond--midway across the sandy bed
+where the river wound--lay the hull of a vessel, high and dry; her
+deck, naked of wheelhouse and hatches, canted toward them as if to
+cover from the morning the long wounds ripped by her uprooted masts.
+
+The men beside him shouted and ran on, but Taffy stood still.  It was
+monstrous--a thing inconceivable--that the seas should have lifted a
+vessel of three hundred tons and carried her half a mile up that
+shallow creek.  Yet there she lay.  A horrible thought seized him.
+Could she have been there last night when he had drawn the sailor
+ashore?  And had he left four or five others to drown close by, in
+the darkness?  No, the tide at that hour had scarcely passed
+half-flood.  He thanked God for that.
+
+Well, there she lay, high and dry, with plenty to attend to her.
+It was time for him to discover the damage done to the light-house
+plant and machinery, perhaps to the building itself.  In half an hour
+the workmen would be arriving.
+
+He walked slowly back to the house, and found Humility preparing
+breakfast.
+
+"Where is he?"  Taffy asked, meaning the sailor.  "In bed?"
+
+"Didn't you meet him?  He went out five minutes ago--I couldn't keep
+him--to look for his brother, he said."
+
+Taffy drank a cupful of tea, took up a crust, and made for the door.
+
+"Go to bed, dear," his mother pleaded.  "You must be worn out."
+
+"I must see how the works have stood it."
+
+On the whole, they had stood it well.  The gale, indeed, had torn
+away the wire table and cage, and thus cut off for the time all
+access to the outer rock; for while the sea ran at its present height
+the scramble out along the ridge could not be attempted even at low
+water.  But from the cliff he could see the worst.  The waves had
+washed over the building, tearing off the temporary covers, and
+churning all within.  Planks, scaffolding--everything floatable-had
+gone, and strewed the rock with matchwood; and--a marvel to see-one
+of his two heaviest winches had been lifted from inside, hurled clean
+over the wall, and lay collapsed in the wreckage of its cast-iron
+frame.  But, so far as he could see, the dovetailed masonry stood
+intact.  A voice hailed him.
+
+"What a night!  What a night!"
+
+It was old Pezzack, aloft on the gallery of the light-house in his
+yellow oilers, already polishing the lantern panes.
+
+Taffy's workmen came straggling and gathered about him.
+They discussed the damage together but without addressing Taffy;
+until a little pock-marked fellow, the wag of the gang, nudged a mate
+slily and said aloud--
+
+"By God, Bill, we _can_ build a bit--you and me and the boss!"
+
+All the men laughed; and Taffy laughed too, blushing.  Yes; this had
+been in his mind.  He had measured his work against the sea in its
+fury, and the sea had not beaten him.
+
+A cry broke in upon their laughter.  It came from the base of the
+cliff to the right: a cry so insistent that they ran toward it in a
+body.
+
+Far below them, on the edge of a great boulder which rose from the
+broken water and seemed to overhang it, stood the rescued sailor.  He
+was pointing.
+
+Taffy was the first to reach him!
+
+"It's my brother!  It's my brother Sam!"
+
+Taffy flung himself full length on the rock and peered over.
+A tangle of ore-weed awash rose and fell about its base; and from
+under this, as the frothy waves drew back, he saw a man's ankle
+protruding, and a foot still wearing a shoe.
+
+"It's my brother!" wailed the sailor again.  "I can swear to the shoe
+of en!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+SALVAGE.
+
+One of the masons lowered himself into the pool, and thrusting an arm
+beneath the ore-weed, began to grope.
+
+"He's pinned here.  The rock's right on top of him."
+
+Taffy examined the rock.  It weighed fifteen tons if an ounce; but
+there were fresh and deep scratches upon it.  He pointed these out to
+the men, who looked and felt them with their hands and stared at the
+subsiding waves, trying to bring their minds to the measure of the
+spent gale.
+
+"Here, I must get out of this!" said the man in the pool, as a small
+wave dashed in and sent its spray over his bowed shoulders.
+
+"You ban't going to leave en?" wailed the sailor.  "You ban't going
+to leave my brother Sam?"
+
+He was a small, fussy man, with red whiskers; and even his sorrow
+gave him little dignity.  The men were tender with him.
+
+"Nothing to be done till the tide goes back."
+
+"But you won't leave en?  Say you won't leave en!  He've a wife and
+three children.  He was a saved man, sir, a very religious man; not
+like me, sir.  He was highly respected in the neighbourhood of
+St. Austell.  I shouldn't wonder if the newspapers had a word
+about en . . ."  The tears were running down his face.
+
+"We must wait for the tide," said Taffy gently, and tried to lead him
+away, but he would not go.  So they left him to watch and wait while
+they returned to their work.
+
+Before noon they recovered and fixed the broken wire cable.  The iron
+cradle had disappeared, but to rig up a sling and carry out an
+endless line was no difficult job, and when this was done Taffy
+crossed over to the island rock and began to inspect damages.
+His working gear had suffered heavily, two of his windlasses were
+disabled, scaffolding, platforms, hods, and loose planks had
+vanished; a few small tools only remained, mixed together in a mash
+of puddled lime.  But the masonry stood unhurt, all except a few feet
+of the upper course on the seaward side, where the gale, giving the
+cement no time to set, had shaken the dove-tailed stones in their
+sockets--a matter easily repaired.
+
+Shortly before three a shout recalled them to the mainland.  The tide
+was drawing towards low water, and three of the men set to work at
+once to open a channel and drain off the pool about the base of the
+big rock.  While this was doing, half a dozen splashed in with iron
+bars and pickaxes; the rest rigged two stout ropes with tackles, and
+hauled.  The stone did not budge.  For more than an hour they prised
+and levered and strained.  And all the while the sailor ran to and
+fro, snatching up now a pick and now a crowbar, now lending a hand to
+haul, and again breaking off to lament aloud.
+
+The tide turned, the winter dark came down, and at half-past four
+Taffy gave the word to desist.  They had to hold back the sailor, or
+he would have jumped in and drowned beside his brother.
+
+Taffy slept little that night, though he needed sleep.  The salving
+of this body had become almost a personal dispute between the sea and
+him.  The gale had shattered two of his windlasses; but two remained,
+and by one o'clock next day he had both slung over to the mainland
+and fixed beside the rock.  The news spreading inland fetched two or
+three score onlookers before ebb of tide--miners for the most part,
+whose help could be counted on.  The men of the coast-guard had left
+the wreck, to bear a hand if needed.  George had come too.
+And happening to glance upwards while he directed his men, Taffy saw
+a carriage with two horses drawn up on the grassy edge of the cliff:
+a groom at the horses' heads and in the carriage a figure seated,
+silhouetted there high against the clear blue heaven.  Well he
+recognised, even at that distance, the poise of her head, though for
+almost four years he had never set eyes on her,--nor had wished to.
+
+He knew that her eyes were on him now.  He felt like a general on the
+eve of an engagement.  By the almanac the tide would not turn until
+4.35.  At four, perhaps, they could begin; but even at four the
+winter twilight would be on them, and he had taken care to provide
+torches and distribute them among the crowd.  His own men were making
+the most of the daylight left, drilling holes for dear life in the
+upper surface of the boulder, and fixing the Lewis-wedges and rings.
+They looked to him for every order, and he gave it in a clear,
+ringing voice which he knew must carry to the cliff top.  He did not
+look at George.
+
+He felt sure in his own mind that the wedges and rings would hold;
+but to make doubly sure he gave orders to loop an extra chain under
+the jutting base of the boulder.  The mason who fixed it, standing
+waist-high in water as the tide ebbed, called for a rope and hitched
+it round the ankle of the dead man.  The dead man's brother jumped
+down beside him and grasped the slack of it.
+
+At a signal from Taffy the crowd began to light their torches.
+He looked at his watch, at the tide, and gave the word to man the
+windlasses.  Then with a glance towards the cliff he started the
+working chant--"_Ayee-ho, Ayee-ho!_"  The two gangs--twenty men to
+each windlass--took it up with one voice, and to the deep intoned
+chant the chains tautened, shuddered for a moment, and began to lift.
+
+"_Ayee-ho!_"
+
+Silently, irresistibly, the chain drew the rock from its bed.
+To Taffy it seemed an endless time, to the crowd but a few moments
+before the brute mass swung clear.  A few thrust their torches down
+towards the pit where the sailor knelt.  Taffy did not look, but gave
+the word to pass down the coffin which had been brought in readiness.
+A clergyman--his father's successor, but a stranger to him--climbed
+down after it: and he stood in the quiet crowd watching the
+light-house above and the lamps which the groom had lit in Honoria's
+carriage, and listening to the bated voices of the few at their
+dreadful task below.
+
+It was five o'clock and past before the word came up to lower the
+tackle and draw the coffin up.  The Vicar clambered out to wait it,
+and when it came, borrowed a lantern and headed the bearers.
+The crowd fell in behind.
+
+"I am the resurrection and the life. . . ."
+
+They began to shuffle forwards and up the difficult track; but
+presently came to a halt with one accord, the Vicar ceasing in the
+middle of a sentence.
+
+Out of the night, over the hidden sea, came the sound of men's voices
+lifted, thrilling the darkness thrice: the sound of three British
+cheers.
+
+Whose were the voices?  They never knew.  A few had noticed as
+twilight fell a brig in the offing, standing inshore as she tacked
+down channel.  She, no doubt, as they worked in their circle of
+torchlight, had sailed in close before going about, her crews
+gathered forward, her master perhaps watching through his night-glass
+had guessed the act, saluted it, and passed on her way unknown to her
+own destiny.
+
+They strained their eyes.  A man beside Taffy declared he could see
+something--the faint glow of a binnacle lamp as she stood away.
+Taffy could see nothing.  The voice ahead began to speak again.
+The Vicar, pausing now and again to make sure of his path, was
+reading from a page which he held close to his lantern.
+
+     "Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold
+      the land that is very far off.
+
+     "Thou shalt not see a fierce people, a people of a deeper speech
+      than thou canst perceive; of a stammering tongue that thou
+      canst not understand.
+
+     "But there the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad
+      rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars,
+      neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.
+
+     "For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord
+      is our king; he will save us.
+
+     "Thy tacklings are loosed; they could not well strengthen their
+      mast, they could not spread the sail; then is the prey of a
+      great spoil divided; the lame take the prey."
+
+Here the Vicar turned back a page, and his voice rang higher:
+
+     "Behold a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall
+      rule in judgment.
+
+     "And a man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a
+      covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as
+      the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
+
+     "And the eyes of them that see shall not be dim, and the ears of
+      them that hear shall hearken."
+
+Now Taffy walked behind, thinking his own thoughts; for the cheers of
+those invisible sailors had done more than thrill his heart.
+A finger, as it were, had come out of the night and touched his
+brain, unsealing the wells and letting in light upon things undreamt
+of.  Through the bright confusion of this sudden vision the Vicar's
+sentences sounded and fell on his ears unheeded.  And yet while they
+faded that happened which froze and bit each separate word into his
+memory, to lose distinctness only when death should interfere, stop
+the active brain, and wipe the slate.
+
+For while the procession halted and broke up its formation for a
+moment on the brow of the cliff, a woman came running into the
+torchlight.
+
+"Is my Joey there?  Where's he _to_, anybody? Hev anyone seen my
+Joey?"
+
+It was Lizzie Pezzack, panting and bareheaded, with a scared face.
+
+"He's lame--you'd know en.  Have 'ee got en there?  He's wandered
+off!"
+
+"Hush up, woman," said a bearer.  "Don't keep such a pore!"
+
+"The cheeld's right enough somewheres," said another.  "'Tis a man's
+body we've got.  Stand out of the way, for shame!"
+
+But Lizzie, who as a rule shrank away from men and kept herself
+hidden, pressed nearer, turning her tragical face upon each in turn.
+Her eyes met George's, but she appealed to him as to the others.
+
+"He's wandered off.  Oh, say you've seen en, somebody!"
+
+Catching sight of Taffy, she ran and gripped him by the arm.
+
+"_You'll_ help!  It's my Joey.  Help me find en!"
+
+He turned half about, and almost before he knew what he sought his
+eyes met George's.  George stepped quietly to his side.
+
+"Let me get my mare," said George, and walked away toward the
+light-house railing where he had tethered her.
+
+"We'll find the child.  Our work's done here, Mr. Saul!"
+Taffy turned to the Chief Officer.  "Spare us a man or two and some
+flares."
+
+"I'll come myself," said the Chief Officer.  "Go you back, my dear,
+and we'll fetch home your cheeld as right as ninepence.
+Hi, Rawlings, take a couple of men and scatter along the cliffs there
+to the right.  Lame, you say?  He can't have gone far."
+
+Taffy, with the Chief Officer and a couple of volunteers, moved off
+to the left, and in less than a minute George caught them up, on
+horseback.
+
+"I say," he asked, walking his mare close alongside of Taffy, "you
+don't think this serious, eh?"
+
+"I don't know.  Joey wasn't in the crowd, or I should have noticed
+him.  He's daring beyond his strength."  He pulled a whistle from his
+pocket, blew it twice, and listened.  This had been his signal when
+firing a charge; he had often blown it to warn the child to creep
+away into shelter.
+
+There was no answer.
+
+"Mr. Vyell had best trot along the upper slope," the Chief Officer
+suggested, "while we search down by the creek."
+
+"Wait a moment," Taffy answered.  "Let's try the wreck first."
+
+"But the tide's running.  He'd never go there."
+
+"He's a queer child.  I know him better than you."
+
+They ran downhill toward the creek, calling as they went, but getting
+no answer.
+
+"But the wreck!" exclaimed the Chief Officer.  "It's out of reason!"
+
+"Hi!  What was that?"
+
+"Oh, my good Lord," groaned one of the volunteers, "it's the crake,
+master!  It's Langona crake calling the drowned!"
+
+"Hush, you fool!  Listen--I thought as much!  Light a flare.
+Mr. Saul--he's out there calling!"
+
+The first match spluttered and went out.  They drew close around the
+Chief Officer while he struck the second to keep off the wind, and in
+those few moments the child's wail reached them distinctly across the
+darkness.
+
+The flame leaped up and shone, and they drew back a pace, shading
+their eyes from it and peering into the steel-blue landscape which
+sprang on them out of the night.  They had halted a few yards only
+from the cliff, and the flare cast the shadow of its breast-high
+fence of tamarisks forward and almost half-way across the creek, and
+there on the sands, a little beyond the edge of this shadow, stood
+the child.
+
+They could even see his white face.  He stood on an island of sand
+around which the tide swirled in silence, cutting him off from the
+shore, cutting him off from the wreck behind.
+
+He did not cry any more, but stood with his crutch planted by the
+edge of the widening stream, and looked toward them.
+
+And Taffy looked at George.
+
+"I know," said George quietly, and gathered up his reins.
+"Stand aside, please."
+
+As they drew aside, not understanding, he called to his mare.
+One living creature, at any rate, could still trust all to George
+Vyell.  She hurtled past them and rose at the tamarisk-hedge blindly.
+Followed silence--a long silence; then a thud on the beach below and
+a scuffle of stones; silence again, and then the cracking of twigs as
+Taffy plunged after, through the tamarisks, and slithered down the
+cliff.
+
+The light died down as his feet touched the flat slippery stones;
+died down, and was renewed again and showed up horse and rider scarce
+twenty yards ahead, labouring forward, the mare sinking fetlock deep
+at every plunge.
+
+At his fourth stride Taffy's feet, too, began to sink, but at every
+stride he gained something.  The riding may be superb, but thirteen
+stone is thirteen stone.  Taffy weighed less than eleven.
+
+He caught up with George on the very edge of the water.  "Make her
+swim it!" he panted.  "Her feet mustn't touch here." George grunted.
+A moment later all three were in the water, the tide swirling them
+sideways, sweeping Taffy against the mare.  His right hand touched
+her flank at every stroke.
+
+The tide swept them upwards--upwards for fifteen yards at least,
+though the channel measured less than eight feet.  The child, who had
+been standing opposite the point where they took the water, hobbled
+wildly along shore.  The light on the cliff behind sank and rose
+again.
+
+"The crutch," Taffy gasped.  The child obeyed, laying it flat on the
+brink and pushing it toward them.  Taffy gripped it with his left
+hand, and with his right found the mare's bridle.  George was bending
+forward.
+
+"No--not that way!  You can't get back!  The wreck, man!--it's
+firmer--"
+
+But George reached out his hand and dragged the child towards him and
+on to his saddle-bow.  "Mine," he said quietly, and twitched the
+rein.  The brave mare snorted, jerked the bridle from Taffy's hand,
+and headed back for the shore she had left.
+
+Rider, horse, and child seemed to fall away from him into the night.
+He scrambled out, and snatching the crutch ran along the brink,
+staring at their black shadows.  By-and-by the shadows came to a
+standstill.  He heard the mare panting, the creaking of
+saddle-leather came across the nine or ten feet of dark water.
+
+"It's no go," said George's voice; then to the mare, "Sally, my dear,
+it's no go."  A moment later he asked more sharply:
+
+"How far can you reach?"
+
+Taffy stepped in until the waves ran by his knees.  The sand held his
+feet, but beyond this he could not stand against the current.
+He reached forward holding the crutch at arm's length.
+
+"Can you catch hold?"
+
+"All right."  Both knew that swimming would be useless now; they were
+too near the upper apex of the sand-bank.
+
+"The child first.  Here, Joey, my son! reach out and catch hold for
+your life."
+
+Taffy felt the child's grip on the crutch-head, and drawing it
+steadily toward him hauled the poor child through.  The light from
+the cliff sank and rose behind his scared face.
+
+"Got him?"
+
+"Yes." The sand was closing around Taffy's legs, but he managed to
+shift his footing a little.
+
+"Quick, then; the bank's breaking up."
+
+George was sinking, knee-deep and deeper.  But his outstretched
+fingers managed to reach and hook themselves around the crutch-head.
+
+"Steady, now . . . must work you loose first. Get hold of the shaft
+if you can: the head isn't firm.  Work your legs . . . that's it."
+
+George wrenched his left foot loose and planted it against the mare's
+flank.  Hitherto she had trusted her master.  The thrust of his heel
+drove home her sentence, and with scream after scream--the sand
+holding her past hope--she plunged and fought for her life.  Still as
+she screamed, George, silent and panting, thrust against her, thrust
+savagely against the quivering body, once his pride for beauty and
+fleetness.
+
+"Pull!" he gasped, freeing his other foot with a wrench which left
+its heavy riding-boot deep in the sucking mud; and catching a new
+grip on the crutch-head, flung himself forward.
+
+Taffy felt the sudden weight and pulled--and while he pulled felt in
+a moment no grip, no weight at all.  Between two hateful screams a
+face slid by him, out of reach, silent, with parted lips; and as it
+slipped away he fell back staggering, grasping the useless, headless
+crutch.
+
+The mare went on screaming.  He turned his back on her, and catching
+Joey by the hand dragged him away across the melting island.  At the
+sixth step the child, hauled off his crippled foot, swung blundering
+across his legs.  He paused, lifted him in his arms and plunged
+forward again.
+
+The flares on the cliff were growing in number.  They cast long
+shadows before him.  On the far side of the island the tide flowed
+swift and steady--a stream about fourteen yards wide--cutting him
+from the farther sand-bank on which, not fifty yards above, lay the
+wreck.  He whispered to Joey, and plunged into it straight, turning
+as the water swept him off his legs, and giving his back to it, his
+hands slipped under the child's armpits, his feet thrusting against
+the tide in slow, rhythmical strokes.
+
+The child after the first gasp lay still, his head obediently thrown
+back on Taffy's breast.  The mare had ceased to scream.  The water
+rippled in the ears as each leg-thrust drove them little by little
+across the current.
+
+If George had but listened!  It was so easy, after all.  The
+sand-bank still slid past them, but less rapidly.  They were close to
+it now, and had only to lie still and be drifted against the leaning
+stanchions of the wreck.  Taffy flung an arm about one and checked
+his way quietly, as a man brings a boat alongside a quay.  He hoisted
+Joey first upon the stanchion, then up the tilted deck to the gap of
+the main hatchway.  Within this, with their feet on the steps and
+their chests leaning on the side panel of the companion, they rested
+and took breath.
+
+"Cold, sonny?"
+
+The child burst into tears.
+
+Taffy dragged off his own coat and wrapped him in it.  The small body
+crept close, sobbing, against his side.
+
+Across, on the shore, voices were calling, blue eyes moving.  A pair
+of yellow lights came towards these, travelling swiftly upon the
+hillside.  Taffy guessed what they were.
+
+The yellow lights moved more slowly.  They joined the blue ones, and
+halted.  Taffy listened.  But the voices were still now; he heard
+nothing but the hiss of the black water, across which those two lamps
+sought and questioned him like eyes.
+
+"God help her!"
+
+He bowed his face on his arms.  A little while, and the sands would
+be covered, the boats would put off; a little while. . . . Crouching
+from those eyes he prayed God to lengthen it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+HONORIA.
+
+She was sitting there rigid, cold as a statue, when the rescuers
+brought them ashore and helped them up the slope.  A small crowd
+surrounded the carriage.  In the rays of their moving lanterns her
+face altered nothing to all their furtive glances of sympathy
+opposing the same white mask.  Some one said, "There's only two,
+then!"  Another, with a nudge and a nod at the carriage, told him to
+hold his peace.  She heard.  Her lips hardened.
+
+Lizzie Pezzack had rushed down to the shore to meet the boat.
+She was bringing her child along with a fond, wild babble of tender
+names and sobs and cries of thankfulness.  In pauses, choked and
+overcome, she caught him to her, felt his limbs, pressed his wet face
+against her neck and bosom.  Taffy, supported by strong arms and
+hurried in her wake, had a hideous sense of being paraded in her
+triumph.  The men around him who had raised a faint cheer sank their
+voices as they neared the carriage; but the woman went forward,
+jubilant and ruthless, flaunting her joy as it were a flag blown in
+her eyes and blindfolding them to the grief she insulted.
+
+"Stay!"
+
+It was Honoria's voice, cold, incisive, not to be disobeyed.  He had
+prayed in vain.  The procession halted; Lizzie checked her babble and
+stood staring, with an arm about Joey's neck.
+
+"Let me see the child."
+
+Lizzie stared, broke into a silly, triumphant laugh, and thrust the
+child forward against the carriage step.  The poor waif, drenched,
+dazed, tottering without his crutch, caught at the plated handle for
+support.  Honoria gazed down on him with eyes which took slow and
+pitiless account of the deformed little body, the shrunken, puny
+limbs.
+
+"Thank you.  So--this--is what my husband died for.  Drive on,
+please."
+
+Her eyes, as she lifted them to give the order, rested for a moment
+on Taffy--with how much scorn he cared not, could he have leapt and
+intercepted Lizzie's retort.
+
+"And why not?  A son's a son--curse you!--though he was your man!"
+
+It seemed she did not hear; or hearing, did not understand.  Her eyes
+hardened their fire on Taffy, and he, lapped in their scorn, thanked
+God she had not understood.
+
+"Drive on, please."
+
+The coachman lowered his whip.  The horses moved forward at a slow
+walk; the carriage rolled silently away into the darkness.  She had
+not understood.  Taffy glanced at the faces about him.
+
+"Ah, poor lady!" said someone.  But no one had understood.
+
+
+They found George's body next morning on the sands a little below the
+foot-bridge.  He lay there in the morning sunshine as though asleep,
+with an arm flung above his head and on his face the easy smile for
+which men and women had liked him throughout his careless life.
+
+The inquest was held next day, in the library at Carwithiel.
+Sir Harry insisted on being present, and sat beside the coroner.
+During Taffy's examination his lips were pursed up as though
+whistling a silent tune.  Once or twice he nodded his head.
+
+Taffy gave his evidence discreetly.  The child had been lost; had
+been found in a perilous position.  He and deceased had gone together
+to the rescue.  On reaching the child, deceased--against advice--had
+attempted to return across the sands and had fallen into
+difficulties.  In these his first thought had been for the child,
+whom he had passed to witness to drag out of danger.  When it came to
+deceased's turn the crutch, on which all depended, had parted in two,
+and he had been swept away by the tide.
+
+At the conclusion of the story Sir Harry took snuff and nodded twice.
+Taffy wondered how much he knew.  The jury, under the coroner's
+direction, brought in a verdict of "death by misadventure," and added
+a word or two in praise of the dead man's gallantry.  The coroner
+complimented Taffy warmly and promised to refer the case to the Royal
+Humane Society for public recognition.  The jury nodded, and one or
+two said "Hear, hear!"  Taffy hoped fervently he would do nothing of
+the sort.
+
+The funeral took place on the fourth day, at nine o'clock in the
+morning.  Such--in the day I write of--was the custom of the country.
+Friends who lived at a distance rose and shaved by candle-light, and
+daybreak found them horsed and well on their way to the house of
+mourning, their errand announced by the long black streamers tied
+about their hats.  The sad business over and done with, these guests
+returned to the house, where until noon a mighty breakfast lasted and
+all were welcome.  Their black habiliments and lowered voices alone
+marked the difference between it and a hunting-breakfast.
+
+And indeed this morning Squire Willyams, who had taken over the
+hounds after Squire Moyle's death, had given secret orders to his
+huntsmen; and the pack was waiting at Three-barrow Turnpike, a couple
+of miles inland from Carwithiel.  At half-past ten the mourners
+drained their glasses, shook the crumbs off their riding-breeches,
+and took leave; and after halting outside Carwithiel gates to unpin
+and pocket their hat-bands, headed for the meet with one accord.
+
+A few minutes before noon Squire Willyams, seated on his grey by the
+edge of Three-barrow Brake, and listening to every sound within the
+covert, happened to glance an eye across the valley, and let out a
+low whistle.
+
+"Well!" said one of a near group of horsemen catching sight of the
+rider pricking toward them down the farther slope, "I knew en for
+unbeliever; but this beats all!"
+
+"And his awnly son not three hours under the mould!  Brought up in
+France as a youngster he was, and this I s'pose is what comes of
+reading Voltaire.  My lord for manners, and no more heart than a
+wormed nut--that's Sir Harry, and always was."
+
+Squire Willyams slewed himself round in his saddle.  He spoke quietly
+at fifteen yards' distance, but each word reached the group of
+horsemen as clear as a bell.
+
+"Rablin," he said, "as a damned fool oblige me during the next few
+minutes by keeping your mouth shut."
+
+With this he resumed his old attitude and his business of watching
+the covert side; removing his eyes for a moment to nod as Sir Harry
+rode up and passed on to join the group behind him.
+
+He had scarcely done so when deep in the undergrowth of blackthorn a
+hound challenged.
+
+"Spendigo for a fiver!--and well found, by the tune of it," cried Sir
+Harry.  "See that patch of grey wall, Rablin--there, in a line beyond
+the Master's elbow?  I lay you an even guinea that's where my
+gentleman comes over."
+
+But honest reprobation mottled the face of Mr. Rablin, squireen; and
+as an honest man he spoke out.  Let it go to his credit, because as a
+rule he was a snob and inclined to cringe.
+
+"I did not expect"--he cleared his throat--"to see you out to-day,
+Sir Harry."
+
+Sir Harry winced, and turned on them all a grey, woeful face.
+
+"That's it," he said.  "I can't bide home.  I can't bide home."
+
+
+Honoria bided home with her child and mourned for the dead.
+As a clever woman--far cleverer than her husband--she had seen his
+faults while he lived; yet had liked him enough to forgive without
+difficulty.  But now these faults faded, and by degrees memory reared
+an altar to him as a man little short of divine.  At the worst he had
+been amiable.  A kinder husband never lived.  She reproached herself
+bitterly with the half-heartedness of her response to his love; to
+his love while it dwelt beside her, unvarying in cheerful kindness.
+For (it was the truth, alas! and a worm that gnawed continually)
+passionate love she had never rendered him.  She had been content;
+but how poor a thing was contentment!  She had never divined his
+worth, had never given her worship.  And all the while he had been a
+hero, and in the end had died as a hero.  Ah, for one chance to
+redeem the wrong! for one moment to bow herself at his feet and
+acknowledge her blindness!  Her prayer was ancient as widowhood, and
+Heaven, folding away the irreparable time, returned its first and
+last and only solace--a dream for the groping arms; waking and
+darkness, and an empty pillow for her tears.
+
+From the first her child had been dear to her; dearer (so her memory
+accused her now) than his father; more demonstratively beloved, at
+any rate.  But in those miserable months she grew to love him with a
+double strength.  He bore George's name, and was (as Sir Harry
+proclaimed) a very miniature of George; repeated his shapeliness of
+limb, his firm shoulders, his long lean thighs--the thighs of a born
+horseman; learned to walk, and lo! within a week walked with his
+father's gait; had smiles for the whole of his small world, and for
+his mother a memory in each.
+
+And yet--this was the strange part of it; a mystery she could not
+explain because she dared not even acknowledge it--though she loved
+him for being like his father, she regarded the likeness with a
+growing dread; nay, caught herself correcting him stealthily when he
+developed some trivial trait which she, and she alone, recognised as
+part of his father's legacy.  It was what in the old days she would
+have called "contradictions," but there it was, and she could not
+help it; the nearer George in her memory approached to faultlessness,
+the more obstinately her instinct fought against her child's
+imitation of him; and yet, because the child was obstinately
+George's, she loved him with a double love.
+
+There came a day when he told her a childish falsehood.  She did not
+whip him, but stood him in front of her and began to reason with him
+and explain the wickedness of an untruth.  By-and-by she broke off in
+the midst of a sentence, appalled by the shrillness of her own voice.
+From argument she had passed to furious scolding.  And the little
+fellow quailed before her, his contrition beaten down under the storm
+of words that whistled about his ears without meaning, his small
+faculties disabled before this spectacle of wrath.  Her fingers were
+closing and unclosing.  They wanted a riding-switch; they wanted to
+grip this small body they had served and fondled, and to cut out--
+what?  The lie?  Honoria hated a lie.  But while she paused and
+shook, a light flashed, and her eyes were open and saw--that it was
+not the lie.
+
+She turned and ran, ran upstairs to her own room, flung herself on
+her knees beside the bed, dragged a locket from her bosom and fell to
+kissing George's portrait, passionately crying it for pardon.
+She was wicked, base; while he lived she had misprised him; and this
+was her abiding punishment, that not even repentance could purge her
+heart of dishonouring thoughts, that her love for him now could never
+be stainless though washed with daily tears.  "'_He that is unjust,
+let him be unjust still_.'  _Must_ that be true, Father of all
+mercies?  I misjudged him, and it is too late for atonement.  But I
+repent and am afflicted.  Though the dead know nothing--though it can
+never reach or avail him--give me back the power to be just!"
+
+Late that afternoon Honoria passed an hour piously in turning over
+the dead man's wardrobe, shaking out and brushing the treasured
+garments and folding them, against moth and dust, in fresh tissue
+paper.  It was a morbid task, perhaps, but it kept George's image
+constantly before her, and this was what her remorseful mood
+demanded.  Her nerves were unstrung and her limbs languid after the
+recent tempest.  By-and-by she locked the doors of the wardrobe, and
+passing into her own bedroom, flung herself on a couch with a bundle
+of papers--old bills, soiled and folded memoranda, sporting
+paragraphs cut from the newspapers--scraps found in his pockets
+months ago and religiously tied by her with a silken ribbon.
+They were mementoes of a sort, and George had written few letters
+while wooing--not half a dozen first and last.
+
+Two or three receipted bills lay together in the middle of the
+packet--one a saddler's, a second a nurseryman's for pot-plants (kept
+for the sake of its queer spelling), a third the reckoning for an
+hotel luncheon.  She was running over them carelessly when the date
+at the head of this last one caught her eye.  "August 3rd "--it fixed
+her attention because it happened to be the day before her birthday.
+
+August 3rd--such and such a year--the August before his death; and
+the hotel a well-known one in Plymouth--the hotel, in fact, at which
+he had usually put up. . . . Without a prompting of suspicion she
+turned back and ran her eye over the bill.  A steak, a pint of
+claret, vegetables, cheese, and attendance--never was a more innocent
+bill.
+
+Suddenly her attention stiffened on the date.  George was in Plymouth
+the day before her birthday.  But no; as it happened, George had been
+in Truro on that day.  She remembered, because he had brought her a
+diamond pendant, having written beforehand to the Truro jeweller to
+get a dozen down from London to choose from.  Yes, she remembered it
+clearly, and how he had described his day in Truro.  And the next
+morning--her birthday morning--he had produced the pendant, wrapped
+in silver paper.  He had thrown away the case; it was ugly, and he
+would get her another. . . .
+
+But the bill?  She had stayed once or twice at this hotel with
+George, and recognised the handwriting.  The bookkeeper, in
+compliment perhaps to a customer of standing, had written "George
+Vyell, Esq." in full on the bill-head, a formality omitted as a rule
+in luncheon-reckonings.  And if this scrap of paper told the truth--
+why, _then George had lied!_
+
+But why?  Ah, if he had done this thing nothing else mattered,
+neither the how nor the why!  If George had lied? . . . And the
+pendant--had that been bought in Plymouth and not (as he had
+asserted) in Truro?  He had thrown away the case.  Jewellers print
+their names inside such cases.  The pendant was a handsome one.
+Perhaps his cheque-book would tell.
+
+She arose, stepped half-way to the door, but came back and flung
+herself again upon the couch.  No; she could not . . . this was the
+second time to-day . . . she could not face the torture again.
+
+Yet . . . if George _had_ lied!
+
+She sat up; sat up with both hands pressed to her ears to shut out a
+sudden voice clamouring through them--
+
+"_And why not?  A son's a son--curse you!--though he was your man!_"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+A L'OUTRANCE.
+
+Lizzie Pezzack had put Joey to bed and was smoothing his coverlet
+when she heard someone knocking.  She passed out into the front room
+and opened to the visitor.
+
+On the doorstep stood a lady in deep black--Honoria.  Beyond the
+garden wall the lamps of her carriage blazed in the late twilight.
+The turf had muffled the sound of wheels, but now the jingle of
+shaken bits came loud through the open door.
+
+"Ah!" said Lizzie, drawing her breath back through her teeth.
+
+"I must speak to you, please.  May I come in?  I have a
+question . . ."
+
+Lizzie turned her back, struck a match, and lit a candle.
+"What question?" she asked with her back turned, her eyes on the
+flame as it sank, warming the tallow, and grew bright again.
+
+"It's . . . it's a question," Honoria began weakly; then shut the
+door behind her and advanced into the room.  "Turn round and look at
+me.  Ah, you hate me, I know!"
+
+"Yes," Lizzie assented slowly, "I hate you."
+
+"But you must answer me.  You see, it isn't for me alone
+ . . . it's not a question of our hating, in a way . . .
+it concerns others. . . ."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"But it's cowardly of me to put it so, because it concerns me too.
+You don't know--"
+
+"Maybe I do."
+
+"But if you did--"  Honoria broke off and then plunged forward
+desperately.  "That child of yours--his father--alone here--by
+ourselves. . . . Think before you refuse!"
+
+Lizzie set down the candle and eyed her.
+
+"And _you_," she answered at length, dragging out each word--
+"_you_ can come here and ask me that question?"
+
+For a moment silence fell between them, and each could hear the
+other's breathing.  Then Honoria drew herself up and faced her
+honestly, casting out both hands.
+
+"Yes; I _had_ to."
+
+"_You!_ a lady!"
+
+"Ah, but be honest with me!  Lady or not, what has that to do with
+it?  We are two women--that's where it all started, and we're kept to
+that."
+
+Lizzie bent her brows.  "Yes, you are right," she admitted.
+
+"And," Honoria pursued eagerly, "if I come here to sue you for the
+truth--it is you who force me."
+
+"I?"
+
+"By what you said that night, when George--when my husband--was
+drowned; when you cursed me.  'A son's a son,' you said, 'though he
+was your man.'"
+
+"Did I say that?" Lizzie seemed to muse over the words.  "You have
+suffered?" she asked.
+
+"Yes, I have suffered."
+
+"Ah, if I thought so! ...  But you have not.  You are a hypocrite,
+Mrs. Vyell; and you are trying to cheat me now.  You come here not to
+end _that_ suffering, but to force a word from me that'll put joy and
+hope into you; that you'll go home hugging to your heart.  Oh, I know
+you!"
+
+"You do not."
+
+"I do; because I know myself.  From a child I've been dirt to your
+pride, an item to your money.  For years I've lived a shamed woman.
+But one thing I bought with it--one little thing.  Think the price
+high for it--I dessay it is; but I bought and paid for it--and often
+when I turn it over in my mind I don't count the price too dear."
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+"You may, if you try.  What I bought was the power over you, my proud
+lady.  While I keep tight lips I have you at the end of a chain.
+You come here to-night to break it; one little word and you'll be
+free and glad.  But no, and no, and no!  You may guess till you're
+tired--you may be sure in your heart; but it's all no good without
+that little word you'll never get from me."
+
+"You _shall_ speak!"
+
+Lizzie shrugged her shoulders and picked up the candle.
+
+"Simme," she said, "you'd best go back to your carriage and horses.
+My li'l boy's in the next room, tryin' to sleep; and 'tisn' fit he
+heard much of this."
+
+She passed resolutely into the bedroom, leaving her visitor to
+darkness.  But Honoria, desperate now, pushed after her, scarcely
+knowing what she did or meant to do.
+
+"You _shall_ speak!"
+
+The house-door opened and light footsteps came running through the
+outer room.  It was little George, and he pulled at her skirts.
+
+"Mummy, the horses are taking cold!"
+
+But Honoria still advanced.  "You _shall_ speak!"
+
+Joey, catching sight of her from the bed, screamed and hid his face.
+To him she was a thing of horror.  From the night when, thrust
+beneath her eyes, he had cowered by her carriage-step, she had
+haunted his worst dreams.  And now, black-robed and terrible of face,
+she had come to lay hands on him and carry him straight to hell.
+
+"Mother!  Take her away! take her away!"
+
+His screams rang through the room.  "Hush, dear!" cried Lizzie,
+running to him; and laid a hand on his shoulder.
+
+But the child, far too terrified to know whose hand it was, flung
+himself from her with a wilder scream than any; flung himself all but
+free of the bed-clothes.  As Lizzie caught and tried to hold him the
+thin night-shirt ripped in her fingers, laying bare the small back
+from shoulder to buttock.
+
+They were woman to woman now; cast back into savagery and blindly
+groping for its primitive weapons.  Honoria crossed the floor not
+knowing what she meant to do, or might do.  Lizzie sprang to defence
+against she knew not what.  But when her enemy advanced, towering,
+with a healthy boy dragging at her skirts, she did the one thing she
+could--turned with a swift cry back upon her own crippled child and
+caught at the bed-clothes to cover and hide his naked deformity.
+
+While she crouched and shielded him, silence fell on the room.
+She had half expected Honoria to strike her; but no blow came, nor
+any sound.  By-and-by she looked up.  Honoria had come to a
+standstill, with rigid eyes.  They were fastened on the bed.
+Then Lizzie understood.
+
+She had covered the child's legs from sight; but not his back--nor
+the brown mole on it--the large brown mole, ringed like Saturn, set
+obliquely between the shoulder-blades.
+
+She rose from the bed slowly.  Honoria turned on little George with a
+gesture as if to fling off his velvet jacket.  But Lizzie stamped her
+foot.
+
+"No," she commanded hoarsely; "let be.  Mine is a cripple."
+
+"So it is true. . . ." Honoria desisted; but her eyes were wide and
+still fixed on the bed.
+
+"Yes, it is true.  You have all the luck.  Mine is a cripple."
+
+Still Honoria stared.  Lizzie gulped down something in her throat;
+but her voice, when she found it again, was still hoarse and
+strained.
+
+"And now--go!  You have learnt what you came for.  You have won,
+because you stop at nothing.  But go, before I try to kill you for
+the joy in your heart!"
+
+"Joy?"  Honoria put out a hand toward the bed's foot, to steady
+herself.  It was her turn to be weak.
+
+"Yes--joy."  Lizzie stepped between her and the door, pointed a
+finger at her, and held it pointing.  "In your heart you are glad
+already.  Wait, and in a moment I shall see it in your eyes--glad,
+glad!  Yes, your man was worthless, and you are glad.  But oh!
+You bitter fool!"
+
+"Let me go, please."
+
+"Listen a bit; no hurry now.  Plenty of time to be glad 'twas only
+your husband, not the man of your heart.  Look at me, and answer--
+I don't count for much now, do I?  Not much to hate in me, now you
+know the name of my child's father, and that 'tisn' Taffy Raymond!"
+
+"Let me go."  But seeing that Lizzie would not, she stopped and
+kissed her boy.  "Run out to the carriage, dear, and say I'll be
+coming in a minute or two."  Little George clung to her wistfully,
+but her tone meant obedience.  Lizzie stepped aside to let him pass
+out.
+
+"Now," said Honoria, "the next room is best, I think.  Lead me there,
+and I will listen."
+
+"You may go if you like."
+
+"No; I will listen.  Between us two there is--there is--"
+
+"_That_." Lizzie nodded towards the child huddling low in the bed.
+
+"That, and much more.  We cannot stop at the point you've reached.
+Besides, I have a question to ask."
+
+Lizzie passed before her into the front room, lit two candles and
+drew down the blind.
+
+"Ask it," she said.
+
+"How did you know that I believed the other--Mr. Raymond--to be--"
+She came to a halt.
+
+"I guessed."
+
+"What?  From the beginning?"
+
+"No; it was after a long while.  And then, all of a sudden, something
+seemed to make me clever."
+
+"Did you know that, believing it, I had done him a great wrong--
+injured his life beyond repair?"
+
+"I knew something had happened: that he'd given up being a gentleman
+and taken to builder's work.  I thought maybe you were at the bottom
+of it.  Who was it told you lies about en?"
+
+"Must I answer that?"
+
+"No; no need.  George Vyell was a nice fellow; but he was a liar.
+Couldn't help it, I b'lieve.  But a dirty trick like that--well,
+well!"
+
+Honoria stared at her, confounded.  "You never loved my husband?"
+
+And Lizzie laughed--actually laughed; she was so weary.  "No more
+than you did, my dear.  Perhaps a little less.  Eh, what two fools we
+are here, fending off the truth!  Fools from the start--and now,
+simme, playing foolish to the end; ay, when all's said and naked
+atween us.  Lev' us quit talkin' of George Vyell.  We knawed George
+Vyell, you and me too; and here we be, left to rear children by en.
+But the man we hated over wasn' George Vyell."
+
+"Yet if--as you say--you loved him--the other one--why, when you saw
+his life ruined and guessed the lie that ruined it--when a word could
+have righted him--if you loved him--"
+
+"Why didn't I speak?  Ladies are most dull, somehow; or else you
+don't try to see.  Or else--Wasn't he near me, passing my door ivery
+day?  Oh, I'm ignorant and selfish.  But hadn't I got him near?
+And wouldn't that word have lost him, sent him God knows where--to
+_you_ perhaps?  You--you'd had your chance, and squandered it like a
+fool.  I never had no chance.  I courted en, but he wouldn' look at
+me.  He'd have come to your whistle--once.  Nothing to hinder but
+your money.  And from what I can see and guess, you piled up that
+money in his face like a hedge.  Oh, I could pity you, now!--for now
+you'll never have en."
+
+"God pity us both!" said Honoria, going; but she turned at the door.
+"And after our marriage you took no more thought of my--of George?"
+The question was an afterthought; she never thought to see it stab as
+it did.  But Lizzie caught at the table edge, held to it swaying over
+a gulf of hysterics, and answered between a sob and a passing bitter
+laugh.
+
+"At the last--just to try en.  No harm done, as it happened.
+You needn' mind.  He was worthless anyway."
+
+Honoria stepped back, took her by the elbow as she swayed, and seated
+her in a chair; and so stood regarding her as a doctor might a
+patient.  After a while she said--
+
+"I think you will do me injustice, but you must believe as you like.
+I am not glad.  I am very far from glad or happy.  I doubt if I shall
+ever be happy again.  But I do not hate you as I did."
+
+She went out, closing the door softly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+THE SHIP OF STARS.
+
+Taffy guessed nothing of these passions in conflict, these weak
+agonies.  He went about his daily work, a man grown, thinking his own
+thoughts; and these thoughts were of many things; but they held no
+room for the problem which meant everything in life to Honoria and
+Lizzie--yes, and to Humility, though it haunted her in less
+disturbing shape.  Humility pondered it quietly with a mind withdrawn
+while her hands moved before her on the lace pillow; and pondering
+it, she resigned the solution to time.  But it filled her thoughts
+constantly, none the less.
+
+One noon Taffy returned from the light-house for his dinner to find a
+registered postal packet lying on the table.  He glanced up and met
+his mother's gaze; but let the thing lie while he ate his meal, and
+having done, picked it up and carried it away with him unopened.
+
+On the cliff-side, in a solitary place, he broke the seal.
+He guessed well enough what the packet contained: the silver medal
+procured for him by the too officious coroner.  And the coroner,
+finding him obstinate against a public presentation, had forwarded
+the medal with an effusive letter.  Taffy frowned over its opening
+sentences, and without reading farther crumpled the paper into a
+tight ball.  He turned to examine the medal, holding it between
+finger and thumb; or rather, his eyes examined it while his brain ran
+back along the tangled procession of hopes and blunders, wrongs and
+trials and lessons hardly learnt, of which this mocking piece of
+silver symbolised the end and the reward.  In that minute he saw
+Honoria and George, himself and Lizzie Pezzack as figures travelling
+on a road that stretched back to childhood; saw behind them the
+anxious eyes of his parents, Sir Harry's debonair smile, the sinister
+face of old Squire Moyle, malevolent yet terribly afraid; saw that
+the moving figures could not control their steps, that the watching
+faces were impotent to warn; saw finally beside the road other ways
+branching to left and right, and down these undestined and neglected
+avenues the ghosts of ambitions unattempted, lives not lived, all
+that might have been.
+
+Well, here was the end of it, this ironical piece of silver. . . .
+With sudden anger he flung it from him; sent it spinning far out over
+the waters.  And the sea, his old sworn enemy, took the votive
+offering.  He watched it drop--drop; saw the tiny splash as it
+disappeared.
+
+And with that he shut a door and turned a key.  He had other thoughts
+to occupy him--great thoughts.  The light-house was all but built.
+The Chief Engineer had paid a surprise visit, praised his work, and
+talked about another sea light soon to be raised on the North Welsh
+Coast; used words that indeed hinted, not obscurely, at promotion.
+And Taffy's blood tingled at the prospect.  But, out of working
+hours, his thoughts were not of light-houses.  He bought maps and
+charts.  On Sundays he took far walks along the coast, starting at
+daybreak, returning as a rule long after dark, mired and footsore,
+and at supper too weary to talk with his mother, whose eyes watched
+him always.
+
+
+It was a still autumn evening when Honoria came riding to visit
+Humility; the close of a golden day.  Its gold lingered yet along the
+west and fell on the whitewashed doorway where Humility sat with her
+lace-work.  Behind, in the east, purple and dewy, climbed the domed
+shadow of the world.  And over all lay that hush which the earth only
+knows when it rests in the few weeks after harvest.  Out here, on
+barren cliffs above the sea, folks troubled little about harvest.
+But even out here they felt and knew the hush.
+
+In sight of the whitewashed cottages Honoria slipped down from her
+saddle, removed Aide-de-camp's bridle, and turned him loose to
+browse.  With the bridle on her arm she walked forward alone.
+She came noiselessly on the turf, and with the click of the gate her
+shadow fell at Humility's feet.  Humility looked up and saw her
+standing against the sunset, in her dark habit.  Even in that instant
+she saw also that Honoria's face, though shaded, was more beautiful
+than of old.  "More dangerous" she told herself; and rose, knowing
+that the problem was to be solved at last.
+
+"Good-evening!" she said, rising.  "Oh yes--you must come inside,
+please; but you will have to forgive our untidiness."
+
+Honoria followed, wondering as of old at the beautiful manners which
+dignified Humility's simplest words.
+
+"I heard that you were to go."
+
+"Yes; we have been packing for a week past.  To North Wales it is--
+a forsaken spot, no better than this.  But I suppose that's the sort
+of spot where light-houses are useful."
+
+The sun slanted in upon the packed trunks and dismantled walls; but
+it blazed also upon brass window-catches, fender-knobs,
+door-handles--all polished and flashing like mirrors.
+
+"I am come," said Honoria, "now at the last--to ask your pardon."
+
+"At the last?"  Humility seemed to muse, staring down at one of the
+trunks; then went on as if speaking to herself.  "Yes, yes, it has
+been a long time."
+
+"A long injury--a long mistake; you must believe it was an honest
+mistake."
+
+"Yes," said Humility gravely.  "I never doubted you had been misled.
+God forbid I should ask or seek to know how."
+
+Honoria bowed her head.
+
+"And," Humility pursued, "we had put ourselves in the wrong by
+accepting help.  One sees now it is always best to be independent;
+though at the time it seemed a fine prospect for him.  The worst was
+our not telling him.  That was terribly unfair.  As for the rest--
+well, after all, to know yourself guiltless is the great thing, is it
+not?  What others think doesn't matter in comparison with that.
+And then of course he knew that I, his mother, never believed the
+falsehood--no, not for a moment."
+
+"But it spoiled his life?"
+
+Now Humility had spoken, and still stood, with her eyes resting on
+the trunk.  Beneath its lid, she knew, and on top of Taffy's books
+and other treasures, lay a parcel wrapped in tissue paper--a dog
+collar with the inscription "_Honoria from Taffy_."  So, by lifting
+the lid of her thoughts a little--a very little--more, she might have
+given Honoria a glimpse of something which her actual answer,
+truthful as it was, concealed.
+
+"No.  I wouldn't say that.  If it had spoilt his life--well, you have
+a child of your own and can understand.  As it is, it has
+strengthened him, I think.  He will make his mark--in a different
+way.  Just now he is only a foreman among masons; but he has a career
+opening.  Yes, I can forgive you at last."
+
+And, being Humility, she had spoken the truth.  But being a woman,
+even in the act of pardon she could not forego a small thrust, and in
+giving must withhold something.
+
+And Honoria, being a woman, divined that something was withheld.
+
+"And Taffy--your son--do you think that _he_--?"
+
+"He never speaks, if he thinks of it.  He will be here presently.
+You know--do you not? they are to light the great lantern on the new
+lighthouse to-night for the first time.  The men have moved in, and
+he is down with them making preparations.  You have seen the notices
+of the Trinity Board?  They have been posted for months.  Taffy is as
+eager over it as a boy; but he promised to be back before sunset to
+drink tea with me in honour of the event; and afterwards I was to
+walk down to the cliff with him to see."
+
+"Would you mind if I stayed?"
+
+Humility considered before answering.  "I had rather you stayed.
+He's like a boy over this business; but he's a man, after all."
+
+After this they fell into quite trivial talk, while Humility prepared
+the tea things.
+
+"Your mother--Mrs. Venning--how does she face the journey?"
+
+"You must see her," said Humility, smiling, and led her into the room
+where the old lady reclined in bed, with a flush on each waxen cheek.
+She had heard their voices.
+
+"Bless you"--she was quite cheerful--"I'm ready to go as far as
+they'll carry me!  All I ask is that in the next place they'll give
+me a window where I can see the boy's lamp when he's built it."
+
+Humility brought in the table and tea-things, and set them out by the
+invalid's bed.  She went out into the kitchen to look to the kettle.
+In that pause Honoria found it difficult to meet Mrs. Venning's eyes;
+but the old lady was wise enough to leave grudges to others.  It was
+enough, in the time left to her, to accept what happened and leave
+the responsibility to Providence.
+
+Honoria, replying but scarcely listening to her talk, heard a
+footfall at the outer door--Taffy's footfall; then the click of a
+latch and Humility's voice saying, "There's a visitor inside; come to
+take tea with you."
+
+"A visitor?" He was standing in the doorway.  "_You?_"  He blushed in
+his surprise.
+
+Honoria rose.  "If I may," she said, and wondered if she might hold
+out a hand.
+
+But he held out his, quite frankly, and laughed.  "Why, of course.
+They will be lighting up in half an hour.  We must make haste."
+
+Once or twice during tea he stole a glance from Honoria to his
+mother; and each time fondly believed that it passed undetected.  His
+talk was all about the light-house and the preparations there, and he
+rattled on in the highest spirits.  Two of the women knew, and the
+third guessed, that this chatter was with him unwonted.
+
+At length he too seemed to be struck by this.  "But what nonsense I'm
+talking!" he protested, breaking off midway in a sentence and
+blushing again.  "I can't help it, though.  I'm feeling just as big
+as the light-house to-night, with my head wound up and turning round
+like the lantern!"
+
+"And your wit occulting," suggested Honoria, in her old light manner.
+"What is it?--three flashes to the minute?"
+
+He laughed and hurried them from the tea-table.  Mrs. Venning bade
+them a merry good-bye as they took leave of her.
+
+"Come along, mother."
+
+But Humility had changed her mind.  "No," said she.  "I'll wait in
+the doorway.  I can just see the lantern from the garden gate, you
+know.  You two can wait by the old light-house, and call to me when
+the time comes."
+
+She watched them from the doorway as they took the path toward the
+cliff, toward the last ray of sunset fading across the dusk of the
+sea.  The evening was warm, and she sat bareheaded with her lace-work
+on her knee; but presently she put it down.
+
+"I must be taking to spectacles soon," she said to herself.  "My eyes
+are not what they used to be."
+
+
+Taffy and Honoria reached the old light-house and halted by its
+white-painted railing.  Below them the new pillar stood up in full
+view, young and defiant.  A full tide lapped its base, feeling this
+comely and untried adversary as a wrestler shakes hands before
+engaging.  And from its base the column, after a gentle inward
+curve--enough to give it a look of lissomeness and elastic strength--
+sprang upright straight and firm to the lantern, ringed with a
+gallery and capped with a cupola of copper not yet greened by the
+weather; in outline as simple as a flower, in structure to the
+understanding eye almost as subtly organised, adapted and pieced into
+growth.
+
+"So that is your ambition now?" said Honoria, after gazing long.
+She added, "I do not wonder."
+
+"It does not stop there, I'm afraid."  There was a pause, as though
+her words had thrown him into a brown study.
+
+"Look!" she cried.  "There is someone in the lantern--with a light in
+his hand.  He is lighting up!"
+
+Taffy ran back a pace or two toward the cottage and shouted, waving
+his hand.  In a moment Humility appeared at the gate and waved in
+answer, while the strong light flashed seaward.  They listened; but
+if she called, the waves at their feet drowned her voice.
+
+They turned and gazed at the light, counting, timing the flashes; two
+short flashes with but five seconds between, then darkness for twenty
+seconds, and after it a long steady stare.
+
+Abruptly he asked, "Would you care to cross over and see the
+lantern?"
+
+"What, in the cradle?"
+
+"I can work it easily.  It's not dangerous in the least; a bit
+daunting, perhaps."
+
+"But I'm not easily frightened, you know.  Yes, I should like it
+greatly."
+
+They descended the cliff to the cable.  The iron cradle stood ready
+as Taffy had left it when he came ashore.  She stepped in lightly,
+scarcely touching for a second the hand he put out to guide her.
+
+"Better sit low," he advised; and she obeyed, disposing her skirts on
+the floor caked with dry mud from the workmen's boots.  He followed
+her, and launched the cradle over the deep twilight.
+
+A faint breeze--there had been none perceptible on the ridge--played
+off the face of the cliffs.  The forward swing of the cradle, too,
+raised a slight draught of air.  Honoria plucked off her hat and veil
+and let it fan her temples.
+
+Half-way across, she said, "Isn't it like this--in mid-air over
+running water--that the witches take their oaths?"
+
+Taffy ceased pulling on the rope.  "The witches?  Yes, I remember
+something of the sort."
+
+"And a word spoken so is an oath and lasts for ever.  Very well;
+answer me what I came to ask you to-night."
+
+"What is that?"  But he knew.
+
+"That when--you know--when I tell you I was deceived . . . you will
+forgive."  Her voice was scarcely audible.
+
+"I forgive."
+
+"Ah, but freely?  It is only a word I want; but it has to last me
+like an oath."
+
+"I forgive you freely.  It was all a mistake."
+
+"And you have found other ambitions!  And they satisfy you?"
+
+He laughed and pulled at the rope again.  "They ought to," he
+answered gaily, "they're big enough.  Come and see."
+
+The seaward end of the cable was attached to a doorway thirty feet
+above the base of the lighthouse.  One of the under-keepers met them
+here with a lantern.  He stared when he caught sight of the second
+figure in the cradle, but touched his cap to the mistress of
+Carwithiel.
+
+"Here's Mrs. Vyell, Trevarthen, come to do honour to our opening
+night."
+
+"Proudly welcome, ma'am," said Trevarthen.  "You'll excuse the litter
+we're in.  This here's our cellar, but you'll find things more
+ship-shape upstairs.  Mind your head, ma'am, with the archway--better
+let me lead the way perhaps."
+
+The archway was indeed low, and they were forced to crouch and almost
+crawl up the first short flight of steps.  But after this Honoria,
+following Trevarthen's lantern round and up the spiral way, found the
+roof heightening above her, and soon emerged into a gloomy chamber
+fitted with cupboards and water-tanks--the provision room.  From this
+a ladder led straight up through a man-hole in the ceiling to the
+light-room store, set round with shining oil-tanks and stocked with
+paint-pots, brushes, cans, signalling flags, coils of rope, bags of
+cotton waste, tool-chests. . . . A second ladder brought them to the
+kitchen, and a third to the sleeping-room; and here the light of the
+lantern streamed down on their heads through the open man-hole above
+them.  They heard, too, the roar of the ventilator, and the
+_ting-ting_, regular and sharp, of the small bell reporting that the
+machinery revolved.
+
+Above, in the blaze of the great lenses, old Pezzack and the second
+under-keeper welcomed them.  The pair had been watching and
+discussing the light with true professional pride; and Taffy drew up
+at the head of the ladder and stared at it, and nodded his slow
+approbation.  The glare forced Honoria back against the glass wall,
+and she caught at its lattice for support.
+
+But she pulled herself together, ashamed of her weakness, and glad
+that Taffy had not perceived it.
+
+"This satisfies you?" she whispered.
+
+He faced round on her with a slow smile.  "No," he said,
+"this light-house is useless."
+
+"Useless?"
+
+"You remember the wreck--that wreck--the _Samaritan?_  She came
+ashore beneath here; right beneath our feet; by no fault or
+carelessness.  A light-house on a coast like this--a coast without a
+harbour--is a joke set in a death-trap, to make game of dying men."
+
+
+"But since the coast has no harbour--"
+
+"I would build one.  Look at this," he pulled a pencil and paper from
+his pocket and rapidly sketched the outlines of the Bristol Channel.
+"What is that?  A bag.  Suppose a vessel taken in the mouth of it; a
+bag with death along the narrowing sides and death waiting at the
+end--no deep-water harbour--no chance anywhere.  And the tides!
+You know the rhyme--"
+
+     "From Padstow Point to Lundy Light
+      Is a watery grave by day or night."
+
+"Yes, there's Lundy"--he jotted down the position of the island--
+"Hit off the lee of Lundy, if you can, and drop hook, and pray God it
+holds!"
+
+"But this harbour?  What would it cost?"
+
+"I dare say a million of money; perhaps more.  But I work it out at
+less--at Porthquin, for instance, or Lundy itself, or even at St.
+Ives."
+
+"A million!" she laughed.  "Now I see the boy I used to know--the boy
+of dreams."
+
+He turned on her gravely.  She was exceedingly beautiful, standing
+there in her black habit, bareheaded in the glare of the lenses,
+standing with head thrown back, with eyes challenging the past, and a
+faint glow on either cheek.  But he had no eyes for her beauty.
+
+He opened his lips to speak.  Yes, he could overwhelm her with
+statistics and figures, all worked out; of shipping and disasters to
+shipping; of wealth and senseless waste of wealth.  He could bury her
+beneath evidence taken by Royal Commission and Parliamentary
+Committee, commissioners' reports, testimony of shipowners and
+captains; calculated tables of tides, sets of currents, prevailing
+winds; results of surveys hydrographical; all the mass of facts he
+had been accumulating and brooding over for eighteen long months.
+But the weight of it closed his lips, and when he opened them again
+it was to say, "Yes, that is my dream."
+
+At once he turned his talk upon the light revolving in their faces;
+began to explain the lenses and their working in short, direct
+sentences.  She heard his voice, but without following.
+
+Pezzack and the under-keeper had drawn apart to the opposite side of
+the cage and were talking together.  The lantern hid them, but she
+caught the murmur of their voices now and again.  She was conscious
+of having let something slip--slip away from her for ever.  If she
+could but recall him, and hold him to his dream!  But this man,
+talking in short sentences, each one so sharp and clear, was not the
+Taffy she had known or could ever know.
+
+In the blaze of the lenses suddenly she saw the truth.  He and she
+had changed places.  She who had used to be so practical--_she_ was
+the dreamer now; had come thither following a dream, walking in a
+dream.  He, the dreaming boy, had become the practical man, firm,
+clear-sighted, direct of purpose; with a dream yet in his heart, but
+a dream of great action, a dream he hid from her, certainly a dream
+in which she had neither part nor lot.  And yet she had made him what
+he was; not willingly, not by kindness, but by injustice.  What she
+had given he had taken; and was a stranger to her.
+
+Muffled wings and white breasts began to beat against the glass.
+A low-lying haze--a passing stratum of sea-fog--had wrapped the
+light-house for a while, and these were the wings and breasts of
+sea-birds attracted by the light.  To her they were the ghosts of
+dead thoughts--stifled thoughts--thoughts which had never come to
+birth--trying to force their way into the ring of light encompassing
+and enwrapping her; trying desperately, but foiled by the transparent
+screen.
+
+Still she heard his voice, level and masterful, sure of his subject.
+In the middle of one of his sentences a sharp thud sounded on the
+pane behind her, as sudden as the crack of a pebble and only a little
+duller.
+
+"Ah, what is that?" she cried, and touched his arm.
+
+He thrust open one of the windows, stepped out upon the gallery, and
+returned in less than a minute with a small dead bird in his hand.
+
+"A swallow," he said.  "They have been preparing to fly for days.
+Summer is done, with our work here."
+
+She shivered.  "Let us go back," she said.
+
+They descended the ladders.  Trevarthen met them in the kitchen and
+went before them with his lantern.  In a minute they were in the
+cradle again and swinging toward the cliff.  The wisp of sea-fog had
+drifted past the light-house to leeward, and all was clear again.
+High over the cupola Cassiopeia leaned toward the pole, her breast
+flashing its eternal badge--the star-pointed W.  Low in the north--as
+the country tale went--tied to follow her emotions, externally
+separate, eternally true to the fixed star of her gaze, the Waggoner
+tilted his wheels and drove them close and along and above the misty
+sea.
+
+Taffy, pulling on the rope, looked down upon Honoria's upturned face
+and saw the glimmer of starlight in her eyes; but neither guessed her
+thoughts nor tried to.
+
+It was only when they stood together on the cliff-side that she broke
+the silence.  "Look," she said, and pointed upward.  "Does that
+remind you of anything?"
+
+He searched his memory.  "No," he confessed: "that is, if you mean
+Cassiopeia up yonder."
+
+"Think!--the Ship of Stars."
+
+"The Ship of Stars?--Yes, I remember now.  There was a young sailor--
+with a ship of stars tattooed on his chest.  He was drowned on this
+very coast."
+
+"Was that a part of the story you were to tell me?"
+
+"What story?  I don't understand."
+
+"Don't you remember that day--the morning when we began lessons
+together?  You explained the alphabet to me, and when we came to W--
+you said it was a ship--a ship of stars.  There was a story about it,
+you said, and promised to tell me some day."
+
+He laughed.  "What queer things you remember!"
+
+"But what was the story?"
+
+"I wonder! If I ever knew, I've forgotten.  I dare say I had
+something in my head.  Now I think of it, I was always making up some
+foolish tale or other, in those days."
+
+Yes; he had forgotten.  "I have often tried to make up a story about
+that ship," she said gravely, "out of odds and ends of the stories
+you used to tell.  I don't think I ever had the gift to invent
+anything on my own account.  But at last, after a long while--"
+
+"The story took shape? Tell it to me, please."
+
+She hesitated, and broke into a bitter little laugh.  "No," said she,
+"you never told me yours."  Again it came to her with a pang that he
+and she had changed places.  He had taken her forthrightness and left
+her, in exchange, his dreams.  They were hers now, the gaily coloured
+childish fancies, and she must take her way among them alone.
+Dreams only! but just as a while back he had started to confess his
+dream and had broken down before her, so now in turn she knew that
+her tongue was held.
+
+Humility rose as they entered the kitchen together.  A glance as
+Honoria held out her hand for good-bye told her all she needed to
+know.
+
+"And you are leaving in a day or two?" Honoria asked.
+
+"Thursday next is the day fixed."
+
+"You are very brave."
+
+Again the two women's eyes met, and this time the younger understood.
+_Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge;
+thy people shall he my people, and thy God my God_--that which the
+Moabitess said for a woman's sake women are saying for men's sakes by
+thousands every day.
+
+Still holding her hand, Humility drew Honoria close.  "God deal
+kindly with you, my dear," she whispered, and kissed her.
+
+At the gate Honoria blew a whistle, and after a few seconds
+Aide-de-camp came obediently out of the darkness to be bridled.
+This done, Taffy lent his hand and swung her into the saddle.
+
+"Good-night and good-bye!"
+
+Taffy was the first to turn back from the gate.  The beat of
+Aide-de-camp's hoofs reminded him of something--some music he had
+once heard; he could not remember where.
+
+Humility lingered a moment longer, and followed to prepare her son's
+supper.
+
+But Honoria, fleeing along the ridge, hugged one fierce thought in
+her defeat.  The warm wind sang by her ears, the rhythm of
+Aide-de-camp's canter thudded upon her brain; but her heart cried
+back on them and louder than either--
+
+"He is mine, mine, mine!  He is mine, and always will be.  He is lost
+to me, but I possess him.  For what he is I have made him, and at my
+cost he is strong."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHIP OF STARS***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 16000.txt or 16000.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/6/0/0/16000
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+http://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
diff --git a/old/16000.zip b/old/16000.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1aa4b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/16000.zip