His heart jumped for joy when, still following, he saw the man turn down towards the shore by a track a good quarter of a mile to the right of the spot where Dan'l lay. He was satisfied now; and creeping back to Dan'l, he dropped his full length in the bracken and lay and laughed.

"But what's the gun for?" Dan'l demanded.

"You've told me often enough about the seals on this bit of coast. Well, to-night, my friend, we're going to have some fun with them."

"Doctor, doctor, think of the risk! Besides, I ben't strong enough for seal-hunting."

"There's no risk," the doctor promised him; "and all the hunting you'll be called upon to do is to sit still and smile. Have I been a good friend to you, or have I not?"

"The best friend in the world," Dan'l answered fervent-like.

"On the strength of that you'll have to trust me a little longer. I can't afford you more than a little while longer, for my practice is going to the dogs already. I've sent word home by Tummels that if anyone in St. Ives falls sick to-day he'll have to send over to Penzance."

The greater part of the afternoon Dan'l slept, and the doctor smoked his pipe and kept watch. At six o'clock they finished the loaf that had been packed up with William Sleep's clothes, emptied the doctor's flask, and fell to discoursing for the last time upon religion. They talked of it till the sun went down in their faces, and then, just before darkness came up over the sea, the doctor rose.

There was just light enough for them to pick their way down over the cliff, treading softly; and just light enough to show that the beach beneath them was empty. On the edge of the sand the doctor chose a convenient rock and called a halt behind it. Peering round, he had the mouth of the cave in full view till the darkness hid it.

"Now's the time!" said he. He took off his coat and lit the lantern under it, muffling the light. "Seals? Come along, man; I promise you the cave is just full of sport!"

He crept for the cave, and Dan'l at his heels, the sand deadening all sound of their footsteps. Close by the cave's mouth he crouched for a moment, felt the hammer of his gun, and, uncovering the lantern with a quick turn of the hand, passed it to Dan'l and marched boldly in.

The soft sand made a floor for the cave for maybe sixty feet within the entrance. It ended on the edge of a rock-pool a dozen yards across, and deep enough to reach above a man's knees. As the doctor and Dan'l reached the pool they heard a sudden splashing on the far side of it.

"Hold the lantern high!" sang out the doctor. Dan'l obeyed, and the light fell full not only on his face, but on the figure of a man that cowered down before it on the patch of shingle where the cave ended.

"Seals?" cried the doctor, lifting his gun. "What did I promise you?"

With a scream, the poor creature flung himself on his knees.

"Don't shoot! Oh, don't shoot!" His voice came across the pool to them in a squeal like a rabbit's.

"Eh? Hullo!" said the doctor, but without lowering his gun. "Mr. Deiphobus Geen, I believe?"

"Don't shoot! Oh, don't shoot me!"

"Be so good as to step across here," the doctor commanded.

"You won't hurt me? Dan'l, make him promise he won't hurt me!"

"Come!" the doctor commanded again, and Phoby Geen came to them through the pool with his knees knocking together. "Put out your hands, please. Thank you. Dan'l, search, and you'll find a piece of cord in my pocket. Take it, and tie up his wrists."

"I never meant you no harm," whined Phoby; but he submitted.

"And now,"—the doctor turned to Dan'l—"leave him to me, step outside and bring word as soon as you hear or glimpse a boat in the offing. At what time, Mr. Geen, are the carriers coming for the tubs out yonder? Answer me: and if I find after that you've answered me false, I'll blow your brains out."

"Two in the morning," answered Phoby.

"And Tummels will be here in an hour," sighed the doctor, relieved in his mind on the one point he had been forced to leave to chance. "Step along, Dan'l; and don't you strain yourself in your weak state by handling the tubs: Tummels can manage them single-handed. You see, Mr. Geen, plovers don't shed their feathers hereabouts in the summer months; and a feather floating on a tideway doesn't, as a rule, keep moored to one place. I took a swim this morning and cleared up those two points for myself. Step along, Dan'l, my friend; I seemed to hear Tummels outside, lowering sail."

Twelve hours later, Dan'l, with a pocketful of money, was shipped on the high seas aboard a barque bound out of Bristol for Georgia; and there, six months later, Amelia Sanders followed him out and married him. Not for years did they return to Porthleven and live on Aunt Bussow's money, no man molesting them. The Cove had given up business, and Government let bygones be bygones, behaving very handsome for once.



WHERE THE TREASURE IS.

I.

In Ardevora, a fishing-town on the Cornish coast not far from the Land's End, lived a merchant whom everybody called 'Elder' Penno, or 'The Elder'—not because he had any right, or laid any claim, to that title. His father and grandfather had worn it as office-bearers in a local religious sect known as the Advent Saints; and it had survived the extinction of that sect and passed on to William John Penno, an orthodox Wesleyan, as a family sobriquet.

He was sixty-three years old, a widower, and childless. His fellow-townsmen supposed him to be rich because he had so many irons in the fire and employed, in one way and another, a great deal of labour. He held a number of shares in coasting vessels, and passed as owner of half a dozen—all of them too heavily in debt to pay dividends. He managed (ostensibly as proprietor, but actually in dependence on the local bank) a shipbuilding-yard to which the fishermen came for their boats. He had an interest in the profit of most of these boats when they were launched, as also in a salt-store, a coal-store, a company for the curing of pilchards, and an agency for buying and packing of fish for the London market. He kept a retail shop and sold almost everything the town needed, from guernseys and hardware to tea, bacon, and tallow candles. He advanced money, at varying rates of interest, on anything from a ship to a frying-pan; and by this means had made himself accurately acquainted with his neighbours' varying degrees of poverty. But he was not rich, although generally reputed so: for Ardevora's population was not one out of which any man could make his fortune, and of poor folk who borrow or obtain goods on credit quite a large number do not seriously mean to pay— a fact often overlooked, and always by the borrowers themselves.

Still, and despite an occasional difficulty in keeping so many balls in the air at one time, Elder Penno was—as a widower, a childless man, and in comparison with his neighbours—well-to-do. Also he filled many small public offices—district councillor, harbour commissioner, member of the School Board, and the like. They had come to him—he could not quite tell how. He took pride in them and discharged them conscientiously. He knew that envious tongues accused him of using them to feather his nest, but he also knew that they accused him falsely. He was thick-skinned, and they might go to the devil. In person he was stout of habit, brusque of bearing, with a healthy, sanguine complexion, a double chin, shrewd grey eyes, and cropped hair which stood up straight as the bristles on a brush. He lived abstemiously, rose at six, went to bed at nine, and might be found, during most of the intervening hours, hard at work at his desk in the little office behind his shop. The office had a round window, and the window overlooked the quay, the small harbour (dry at low water), and the curve of a sandy bay beyond.

One morning Elder Penno looked up from his desk and saw, beyond the masts of the fishing-boats lying aslant as the tide had left them, a small figure—a speck, almost—on the sandy beach, about three furlongs away.

He was engaged at the moment in adding up a column of figures. Having entered the total, he looked up again, laid down his pen, frowned with annoyance, and picked up an old pair of field-glasses that stood ready to hand on the sill of his desk beside the ink-well. He glanced at the clock on his chimney-piece before throwing up the window-sash.

The hour was eleven—five minutes after eleven, to be exact; the month April; the day sunny, with a humming northerly wind; the tide drawing far out towards low-ebb, and the air so clear that the small figure standing on the edge of the waves could not be mistaken.

As he threw up the sash Elder Penno caught sight of Tom Hancock, the school attendance officer, lounging against a post on the quay below.

"You're the very man I want," said the Elder. "Isn't that Tregenza's grandchild over yonder?"

"Looks like her," said the A.O., withdrawing a short clay pipe from his mouth, and spitting.

"Then why isn't she at school at this hour?"

"'Tis a hopeless case, if you ask me." The A.O. announced this with a fine air of resignation. His pay was 2s. 6d. a week, and he never erred on the side of zeal.

"Better fit you was lookin' up such cases than idlin' here and wastin' baccy. That's if you ask me," retorted the Elder.

"I've a-talked to the maid, an' I've a-talked to her gran'father, till I'm tired," said Hancock, and spat again. "She'll be fourteen next May, an' then we can wash our hands of her."

"A nice look-out it'd be if the eddication of England was left in your hands," said the Elder truthfully, if obviously.

"You can't do nothin' with her." The A.O. was used to censure and wasted no resentment on it. "Nothin'. I give 'ee leave to try."

The Elder stood for a moment watching the small figure across the sands. Then, with a snort of outraged propriety, he closed the window, reached down his hat from its peg, marched out of his office—through the shop— and forth upon the sunny quay. A flight of stone stairs led down to the bed of the harbour, now deserted by the tide; and across this, picking his way among the boats and their moorings, he made for the beach where the sea broke and glittered on the firm sand in long curves of white.

A tonic northerly breeze was blowing, just strongly enough to lift the breakers in blue-green hollows against the sunshine and waft a delicate film of spray about the figure of the child moving forlornly on the edge of the foam. She was not playing or running races with the waves, but walking soberly and anon halting to scan the beach ahead. Her legs were bare to the knee, and she had hitched up her short skirt high about her like a cockle-gatherer's. In the roar and murmur of the surf she did not hear the Elder approaching, but faced around with a start as he called to her.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

For answer she held up a billet of wood, bleached and frayed with long tossing on the seas, worthless except for firewood, and almost worthless for that. The Elder frowned. "Look here," he said, "you ought to be in school at this moment instead of minchin[1] idle after a few bits o' stick, no good to anyone. A girl of your age, too! What's your name?"

"Please, sir, Liz," the child stammered, looking down.

"You're Sam Tregenza's grandchild, hey?"

"Please, sir."

"Then do you go home an' tell your grandfather, with my compliments, he ought to know better than to allow it. It's robbin' the ratepayers, that's what it is."

"Yes, sir," she murmured, glancing down dubiously at the piece of wood in her hand.

"You don't understand me," said the Elder. "The ratepayers spend money on a school here that the children of Ardevora mayn't grow up into little dunces. Now, if the children go to school as they ought, the Government up in London gives the ratepayers—me, for instance—some of their money back: so much money for each child. If a child minches, the money isn' paid. 'Tisn' the wood you pick up—that's neither here nor there—but the money you're takin' out of folks' pockets. Didn' you know that?"

"No, sir."

"Your grandfather knows it, anyway—not," went on the Elder with sudden anger in his voice, "that Sam Tregenza cares what folks he robs!" He pulled himself up, slightly ashamed of this outburst. The child, however, did not appear to resent it, but stood thoughtful, as if working out the logic of his argument.

"It's the money," he insisted. "As for the wood, why you might come to my yard and steal as much as you can carry, an' 'twouldn' amount to what you rob by playin' truant like this; no, nor half of it. That's one thing for you to consider; and here's another: There's a truant-school, up to Plymouth; a sort of place that's half a school and half a prison, where the magistrates send children that won't take warning. How would you like it, if a policeman came, one of these days, and took you off to that kind of punishment?"

He looked down on the child, and saw her under-lip working. She held back her tears bravely, but was shaking from head to foot.

"There now!" said the Elder, in what for him was a soothing voice. "There's no danger if you behave an' go to school like other children. You just attend to that, an' we'll say no more about it."

He turned back to his office. On the quay he paused to tell Tom Hancock that he reckoned the child would be more careful in future: he had given her something to think over.

II.

A week later, at nine o'clock, Elder Penno was retiring to rest in his bedroom, which overlooked his boat-building yard, when a clattering noise broke on the night without, and so startled him that he all but dropped his watch in the act of winding it.

The noise suggested an avalanche of falling boxes. The Elder blew out his candle, lit a bull's-eye lantern which he kept handy by his bed, and, throwing up the window, challenged loudly—"Who's there?"

For the moment the ray of the bull's-eye revealed no one. He turned it upon the corner of the yard where, as a rule, stood a pile of empty packing-cases from the shop, 'empties' waiting to be sorted out and returned, old butter-barrels condemned to be knocked to pieces for kindling-wood. Yes: the sound had come from there, for the pile had toppled over and lay in a long moraine across the entrance gate. "Must ha' been built up top-heavy," said the Elder to himself: and with that, running his lantern-ray along the yard wall, he caught sight of a small bare leg and a few inches of striped skirt for an instant before they slid into darkness across the coping. He recognised them.

"This beats Old Harry!" muttered the Elder. "Bringin' up the child to be a gaol-bird now—and on my premises! As if Sam Tregenza hadn' done me injury enough without that!"

For two years the Elder had been unable to think of Sam Tregenza or to hear his name mentioned, but a mixture of rage and indignation boiled up within him. To be sure, the old man was ruined, had fallen on evil days, subsisted now with the help of half a crown a week parish relief. But he had behaved disgracefully, and his fall was a signal vindication of God's justice. How else could one account for it? The man had been a wise fisherman, as knowledgable as any in Ardevora. He had been bred to the fishing, and had followed it all his life, but always—until his sixtieth year—as a paid hand, with no more than a paid hand's share of the earnings. For this his wife had been to blame—an unthrifty woman, always out at heel and in debt to the shop; but with her death he started on a new tack, began to hoard, and within five years owned a boat of his own—the Pass By lugger—bought with his own money, save for a borrowed seventy-five pounds. He worked her with his one son Seth, a widow-man of forty, and Seth's son, young Eli, aged fifteen, Liz's father and brother. The boat paid well from the first, and the Tregenzas—the three generations—took a monstrous pride in her.

It was Elder Penno who had advanced the borrowed seventy-five pounds, of course taking security in the boat and upon an undertaking that Tregenza kept her insured. But on the morrow of the black day when she foundered, drowning Seth and Eli, and leaving only the old man to be picked up by a chance drifter running for harbour, it was discovered that the Tregenzas had missed by two months the date of renewing her premium of insurance. The boat was gone, and with it the Elder's seventy-five pounds.

To think of recovering it upon Tregenza's sticks of furniture was idle. The Elder threatened it, but the whole lot would not have fetched twenty pounds, and there were other creditors for small amounts. The old man, too, was picked up half crazy. He had been clinging to a fish-box for five and twenty minutes in the icy-cold water; but whether his craziness came of physical exhaustion or the shock of losing boat, son, and grandchild all in a few minutes, no one could tell. He never set foot on board a boat again, but sank straight into pauperism and dotage.

The Elder, for his part, considered such an end no more than the due of one who had played him so inexcusable a trick over the insurance. From the first he had suspected this weakening of Tregenza's intellect to be something less than genuine—a calculated infirmity, to excite public compassion and escape the blame his dishonest negligence so thoroughly deserved.

As he closed the window that night and picked up his watch to resume the winding of it, the Elder felt satisfied that there were depths in Tregenza's craziness which needed sounding. He would pay him a visit to-morrow. He had not exchanged a word with him for two years. Indeed, the old scoundrel seldom or never showed his face in the street.

At eleven o'clock next morning he rapped at the door of Tregenza's hovel, which lay some way up the hill above the harbour, in a nexus of mean alleys and at the back of a tenement known as Ugnot's. His knock appeared to silence a hammering in the rear of the cottage. By and by the door opened—but a very little way—and through the chink old Tregenza peered out at him—gaunt, shaggy, grey of hair and of face, his beard and his very eyebrows powdered with sawdust.

"Kindly welcome," said Tregenza, blinking against the light.

"You won't say that when I've done wi' you," said the Elder to himself.

III.

"Won't you step inside?" asked Tregenza.

"Yes," said the Elder, "I will. I've a-got something serious to talk about."

The sight of Tregenza irritated him more than he had expected, and irritated him the worse because the old man appeared neither confused with shame nor contrite.

"I've a-got something serious to talk about," the Elder repeated in the kitchen; "though, as between you and me, any talk couldn't well be pleasant. No, I won't sit down—not in this house. 'Tis only a sense o' duty brings me to-day, though I daresay you've wondered often enough why I ha'n't been here before an' told you straight what I think o' you."

"No," said Tregenza simply, as the Elder paused for an answer. "I ha'n't wondered at all. I knowed 'ee better."

"What's that you're sayin'?"

"I knowed 'ee better. First along—" the old man spoke as if with a painful effort of memory—"first along, to be sure, I reckined you might ha' come an' spoke a word o' comfort; not that speakin' comfort could ha' done any good, an' so I excused 'ee."

"You excused me? Word of comfort! Word of comf—" The Elder gasped for a moment, his mouth opening and shutting without sound. "An' what about my seventy-five pounds?—all lost to me through your not keepin' up the insurance!"

"Ay," assented old Tregenza. "Ay, to be sure. Terrible careless, that was."

For a moment the Elder felt tempted to strike him. "Look here," he said, tapping his stick sharply on the floor; "as it happens, I didn' come here to lose my temper nor to talk about your conduct—leastways, not that part of it. 'Tis about your granddaughter. She've been stealin' my wood."

"Liz?"

"Yes; I caught her in my yard at nine o'clock last night. No mistakin' what she was after. There, in the dark—she was stealin' my wood."

"What sort o' wood?"

"Man alive! Does it matter what sort o' wood, when I tell you the child was thievin'. You encourage her to play truant, defyin' the law; an' now she's doin' what'll bring her to Bodmin Gaol, as sure as fate. A child scarce over thirteen—an' you're makin' a gaol-bird o' her! The Lord knows, Sam Tregenza, I think badly enough of you, but will you stand there an' tell me 'tis no odds to you that your grandchild's a thief?"

"Liz wouldn' steal your wood, nor nobody's-else's, unless some person had put her up to it," answered the old man, knitting his brows to which the sawdust still adhered. "Come to think, now, the maid told me the other day that you'd been speakin' to her, sayin' that minchin' from school was robbin' the public, an' she'd do honester to be stealin' it from you than pickin' it up along the foreshore durin' school-hours. You may depend that's what put it into her head. She's a very well-meanin' child."

The Elder shook like a ship in stays. The explanation was monstrous—yet it was obviously the true one. What could he say to it? What could any sane man say to it?

While he stood and cast about for words, his face growing redder and redder, a breeze of air from the hill behind the cottage blew open the upper flap of its back door—which Tregenza had left on the latch—and passing through the kitchen, slammed-to the door leading into the street. The noise of it made the Elder jump. The next moment he was gasping again, as his gaze travelled out to the back-court.

"Good Lord, what's that?"

"Eh?"—Tregenza followed his gaze—"You mean to tell me you ha'n't heard? Well, well. . . . You live too much alone, Elder; you take my word. That's the terrible thing about riches. They cut you off from your fellows. But only to think you never heard tell o' my boat!"

The old man led the way out into the yard; and there, indeed, amid an indescribable litter of timber—wreckwood in balks and boards, worthless lengths of deck-planking, knees, and transoms, stem-pieces and stern-posts, and other odds and ends of bygone craft, condemned spars, barrel-staves, packing-cases—a boat reposed on the stocks; but such a boat as might make a sane man doubt his eyesight. The Elder stared at her slowly, incapable of speech; stared and pulled out a bandanna handkerchief and slowly wiped the back of his neck. She measured, in fact, nineteen or twenty feet over-all, but to the eye she appeared considerably longer, having (as the Elder afterwards put it) as many lines in her as a patchwork quilt. Her ribs, rising above the unfinished top-strakes, claimed ancestry in a dozen vessels of varying sizes; and how the builder had contrived to fix them into one keelson passed all understanding or guess. For over their unequal curves he had nailed a sheath of packing-boards, eked out with patches of sheet-tin. Here and there the eye, roaming over the structure, came to rest on a piece of scarfing or dovetailing which must have cost hours of patient labour and contrivance, cheek-by-jowl with work which would have disgraced a boy of ten. The whole thing, stuck there and filling the small back-court, was a nightmare of crazy carpentry, a lunacy in the sun's eye.

"Why, bless your heart!" said Tregenza, laying a hand on the boat's transom with affectionate pride, "you must be the only man in Ardevora that don't know about her. Scores of folk comes here, Sunday afternoons, an' passes me compliments upon her." He passed a hand caressingly over her stern board. "There's a piece o' timber for you! Inch-an'-a-quarter teak, an' seasoned! That's where her name's to go—the Pass By. No; I couldn't fancy any other name."

The Elder was dumb. He understood now, and pitied the man, who nevertheless (he told himself) deserved his affliction.

"No, I couldn' fancy any other name," went on Tregenza in a musing tone. "If the Lord has a grievance agen me for settin' too much o' my heart on the old Pass By, He've a-took out o' me all the satisfaction He's likely to get. 'Tisn' like the man that built a new Jericho an' set up the foundations thereof 'pon his first-born an' the gates 'pon his youngest. The cases don't tally; for my son an' gran'son went down together in th' old boat, an' I got nobody left."

"There's your gran'daughter," the Elder suggested.

"Liz?" Tregenza shook his head. "I reckon she don't count."

"She'll count enough to get sent to gaol," said the Elder tartly, "if you encourage her to be a thief. And look here, Sam Tregenza, it seems to me you've very loose notions o' what punishment means, an' why 'tis sent. The Lord takes away the Pass By, an' your son an' gran'son along with her, an' why? (says you). Because (says you) your heart was too much set 'pon the boat. Now to my thinkin' you was a deal likelier punished because you'd forgot your duty to your neighbour an' neglected to pay up the insurance."

Tregenza shook his head again, slowly but positively. "'Tis curious to me," he said, "how you keep harkin' back to that bit o' money you lost. But 'tis the same, I've heard, with all you rich fellows. Money's the be-all and end-all with 'ee."

The Elder at this point fairly stamped with rage; but before he could muster up speech the street-door opened and the child Lizzie slipped into the kitchen. Slight noise though she made, her grandfather caught the sound of her footsteps. A look of greed crept into his face, as he made hurriedly for the back-doorway.

"Liz!" he called.

"Yes, gran'fer."

"Where've yer been?"

"Been to school."

"Brought any wood?"

"How could I bring any wood when—" Her voice died away as she caught sight of the Elder following her grandfather into the kitchen; and in a flash, glancing from her to Tregenza, the Elder read the truth—that the child was habitually beaten if she failed to bring home timber for the boat.

She stood silent, at bay, eyeing him desperately.

"Look here," said the Elder, and caught himself wondering at the sound of his own voice; "if 'tis wood you want, let her come and ask for it. I'm not sayin' but she can fetch away an armful now an' then—in reason, you know."

IV.

The longer Elder Penno thought it over, the more he confessed himself puzzled, not with Tregenza, but with his own conduct.

Tregenza was mad, and madness would account for anything.

But why should he, Elder Penno, be moved to take a sudden interest, unnecessary as it was inquisitive, in this mad old man, who had fooled him out of seventy-five pounds?

Yet so it was. The Elder came again, two days later, and once again before the end of the week. By the end of the second week the visit had become a daily one. What is more, day by day he found himself looking forward to it.

That Tregenza also looked forward to it might be read in the invariable eagerness of his welcome; and this was even harder to explain, because the Elder never failed to harp—seldom, indeed, relaxed harping—on old misdeeds and the lost insurance money. Nay, perhaps in scorn of his own weakness, he insisted on this more and more offensively; rehearsing each day, as he climbed the hill, speeches calculated to offend or hurt. But in the intervals he would betray—as he could not help feeling—some curiosity in the boat.

One noonday—a few minutes after the children had been dismissed from school—he walked out into the yard, in the unconfessed hope of finding Lizzie there: and there she was, engaged in filling her apron with wood.

"Listen to me," he said—for the two by this time had, without parley, grown into allies. "Your grandfather'll get along all right till he've finished buildin'. But what's to happen when the boat's ready to launch? Have you ever thought 'pon that?"

"Often an' often," said Lizzie.

"If 'twould even float—which I doubt—" said the Elder—"the dratted thing couldn' be got down to the water, without pullin' down seven feet o' wall an' the butt-end of Ugnot's pigsty."

"We must lengthen out the time," said the practical child. "Please God, he'll die afore it's finished."

"You mustn' talk irreligious," said her elderly friend. "Besides, there's nothin' amiss with him, settin' aside his foolishness. I've a-thought sometimes, now, o' buildin' a boat down here, an', when the time came, makin' believe to exchange. Boat-buildin' is slack just now, but I might trust to tradin' her off on someone—when he'd done with her—which in the natur' of things can't be long. I've a model o' the old Pass By hangin' up somewhere in the passage behind the shop. We might run her up in two months, fit to launch, an' finish her at leisure, call her the Pass By, and I daresay the Lord'll send along a purchaser in good time."

Lizzie shook her head. She would have liked to call Mr. Penno the best man in the world; but luckily—for it would have been an untruth—she found herself unequal to it.

V.

Their apprehensions were vain. The whole town had entered into the fun of Tregenza's boat, and she was no sooner felt to be within measureable distance of completion than committees—composed at first of the younger fishermen (but, by and by, the elders joined shamefacedly), held informal meetings, and devised a royal launch for her. What though she could not, as Mr. Penno had foreseen, be extricated from the yard but at the expense of seven feet of wall and the butt-end of Ugnot's pigsty? Half a dozen young masons undertook to pull the wall down and rebuild it twice as strong as before; and the landlord of Ugnot's, being interviewed, declared that he had been exercised in mind for thirty years over the propinquity of the pigsty and the dwelling-house, and would readily accept thirty shillings compensation for all damage likely to be done.

Report of these preparations at length reached Elder Penno's ears, and surprised him considerably. He sent for the ringleaders and remonstrated with them.

"I've no cause to be friends with Tregenza, the Lord knows," he said. "Still, the man's ailin' and weak in his mind. Such a shock as you're makin' ready to give 'en, as like as not may land the fellow in his grave."

"Land 'en in his grave?" they answered. "Why the old fool knows the whole programme! He've a-sent down to the Ship Inn to buy a bottle o' wine for the christenin' an' looks forward to enjoyin' hisself amazin'."

The Elder went straight to Tregenza, and found this to be no more than the truth.

"And here have I been lyin' awake thinkin' how to spare your feelin's!" he protested.

"'Tis a very funny thing," answered Tregenza, "that you, who in the way o' money make it your business to know every man's affairs in Ardevora, should be the last to get wind of a little innercent merrymakin'. That's your riches, again."

After this one must allow that it was handsome of the Elder to summon the committee again and point out to them the uncertainty of the Pass By's floating when they got her down to the water. Had they considered this? They had not. So he offered them five hundredweight of lead to ballast and trim her; more, if it should be needed; and suggested their laying down moorings for her, well on the outer side of the harbour, where from his garden the old man would have a good sight of her. He would, if the committee approved, provide the moorings gratis.

On the day of the launch Ardevora dressed itself in all its bunting. A crowd of three hundred assembled in and around Tregenza's backyard and lined the adjacent walls to witness the ceremony and hear the speeches; but Elder Penno was neither a speech-maker nor a spectator. He could not, for nervousness, leave the quay, where he stood ready beside a cauldron of bubbling tar and a pile of lead pegs, to pay the ship over before she took the water, and trim her as soon as ever she floated. But when, amid cheers and to the strains of the Temperance Brass Band, she lay moored at length upon a fairly even keel, with the red ensign drooping from a staff over her stern, he climbed the hill to find Tregenza contemplating her with pride through the gap in his ruined wall.

"I missed 'ee at the christ'nin'," said the old man. "But it went off very well. Lev' us go into the house an' touch pipe."

"It surprises me," said the Elder, "to find you so cheerful as you be. An occupation like this goin' out o' your life—I reckoned you might feel it, a'most like the loss of a limb."

"A man o' my age ought to wean hisself from things earthly," said the old man; "an' besides, I've a-got you."

"Hey?"

"Henceforth I've a-got you, an' all to yourself."

"Seems a funny thing," mused the Elder; "an' you at this moment owin' me no less than seventy-five pound!"

Sam Tregenza settled himself down in his chair and nodded as he lit pipe. "Nothin' like friendship, after all," he said. "Now you're talkin' comfortable!"

[1] Playing truant.



A JEST OF AMBIALET.

He who has not seen Ambialet, in the Albigeois, has missed a wonder of the world. The village rests in a saddle of crystalline rock between two rushing streams, which are yet one and the same river; for the Tarn (as it is called), pouring down from the Cevennes, is met and turned by this harder ridge, and glances along one flank of Ambialet, to sweep around a wooded promontory and double back on the other. So complete is the loop that, while it measures a good two miles in circuit, across the neck of it, where the houses cluster, you might fling a pebble over their roofs from stream to stream.

High on the crupper of this saddle is perched a ruined castle, with a church below it, and a cross and a graveyard on the cliff's edge; high on the pommel you climb to another cross, beside a dilapidated house of religion, the Priory of Notre Dame de l'Oder.

From the town—for Ambialet was once a town, and a flourishing one—you mount to the Priory by a Via Crucis, zigzagging by clusters of purple marjoram and golden St. John's wort. Above these come broom and heather and bracken, dwarf oaks and junipers, box-trees and stunted chestnut-trees; and, yet above, on the summit, short turf and thyme, which the wind keeps close-trimmed about the base of the cross.

The Priory, hard by, houses a number of lads whom Pere Philibert does his best to train for the religious life; but its church has been closed by order of the Government, and tall mulleins sprout between the broad steps leading to the porch. Pere Philibert will tell you of a time when these steps were worn by thousands of devout feet, and of the cause which brought them.

A little below the summit you passed a railed box-tree, with an image of the Virgin against it. Here a palmer, travelling homeward from the Holy Land, planted his staff, which took root and threw out leaves and flourished; and in time the plant, called oder in the Languedoc, earned so much veneration that Our Lady of Ambialet changed her title and became Our Lady of the Oder.

This should be Ambialet's chief pride. But the monks of the Priory boast rather of Ambialet's natural marvel—the river looped round their demesne.

"There is nothing like it, not in the whole of France!"

Pere Philibert said it with a wave of the hand. Brother Marc Antoine's pig, stretched at ease with her snout in the cool grass, grunted, as who should say Bien entendu!

We were three in the orchard below the Priory; or four, counting the pig— who is a sow, by the way, and by name Zephirine. Brother Marc Antoine looks after her; a gleeful old fellow of eighty, with a twinkling eye, a scandalously dirty soutane, and a fund of anecdote not always sedate. The Priory excuses him on the ground that his intellectuals are not strong—he has spent most of his life in Africa, and there taken a couple of sunstrokes. Zephirine follows him about like a dog. The pair are mighty hunters of truffles, in the season.

"—Not in the whole of France!" repeated Pere Philibert with conviction, nodding from the dappled shade of the orchard-boughs towards the river, where it ran sparkling far below, by grey willows and a margin of mica-strewn sand; not 'apples of gold in a network of silver,' but a landscape all silver seen through a frame of green foliage starred with golden fruit.

The orchard-gate clicked behind us. Brother Marc Antoine, reclining beside the sow with his back against an apple-tree bole, slewed himself round for a look. Pere Philibert and I, turning together, saw a man and a woman approaching, with hangdog looks, and a priest between them—the Cure of Ambialet—who seemed to be exhorting them by turns to keep up their courage.

"Pouf!" said the Curd, letting out a big sigh as he came to a standstill and mopped his brow. "Had ever poor man such trouble with his flock?— and the thermometer at twenty-eight, too! Advance, my children—you first, Maman Vacher; and Heaven grant the good father here may compose your differences!"

Here the Cure—himself a peasant—flung out both hands as if resigning the case. Pere Philibert, finger on chin, eyed the two disputants with an air of grave abstraction, waiting for one or the other to begin. Brother Marc Antoine leaned back against the apple-tree, and took snuff. His eyes twinkled. Clearly he expected good sport, and I gathered that this was not the first of Ambialet's social difficulties to be brought up to the Priory for solution.

But for the moment both disputants hung back. The woman—an old crone, with a face like a carved nutcracker—dropped an obeisance and stood with her eyes fixed on the ground. The man shifted his weight from foot to foot while he glanced furtively from one to the other of us. I recognised him for Ambialet's only baker, a black-avised fellow on the youthful side of forty. Clearly, the grave dignity of Pere Philibert abashed them. "Mais allez, donc! Allez!" cried the Curd, much as one starts a team of horses.

Pere Philibert turned slowly on his heel, and, waving a hand once more toward the river, continued his discourse as though it had not been interrupted.

"One might say almost the whole world cannot show its like! To be sure, the historian Herodotus tells us that, when Babylon stood in danger of the Medes, Queen Nitocris applied herself to dig new channels for the Euphrates to make it run crookedly. And in one place she made it wind so that travellers down the river came thrice to the same village on three successive days."

"Te-te!" interrupted Brother Marc Antoine, with a chuckle. "Wake up, Zephirine—wake up, old lady, and listen to this." Zephirine, smitten affectionately on the ham, answered only with a short squeal like a bagpipe, and buried her snout deeper in the grass.

"I like that," the old man went on. "To think of travelling down a river three days' journey, and putting up each night at the same auberge! Vieux drole d'Herodote! But does he really pitch that yarn, my father?"

"The village, if I remember, was called Arderica, and doubtless its inhabitants were proud of it. Yet we of Ambialet have a better right to be proud, since the wonder that encircles us is not of man's making but a miracle of God: although,"—and here Pere Philibert swung about and fixed his eyes on the baker—"our local pride in Ambialet and its history, and its institutions and its immemorial customs, are of no moment to M. Champollion, who comes, I think, from Rodez or thereabouts."

In an instant the old woman had seized on this cue.

"Te! Listen, then, to what the good father calls you!" she shrilled, advancing on the baker and snapping finger and thumb under his nose; "an interloper, a scoundrel from the Rouergue, where all are scoundrels! You with your yeast from Germany! It is such fellows as you that gave the Prussians our provinces, and now you must settle here, turning our stomachs upside down—honest stomachs of Ambialet."

"Bah!" exclaimed Champollion defiantly. "You!—a sage femme—qui ne fonctionne pas, d'ailleurs!"

So the storm broke, and so for ten good minutes it raged. In the hurly-burly, from the clash and din of winged words, I disengaged something of the true quarrel. Champollion (it seemed) had bought a business and settled down as baker in Ambialet. Now, his predecessor had always bought yeast from the Widow Vacher, next door, who prepared it by an ancient family recipe; but this new-comer had introduced some new yeast of commerce—levure viennoise—and so deprived her of her small earnings. In revenge—so he asserted, and she did not deny it—she had bribed a travelling artist from Paris to decorate the bakery sign with certain scurrilities, and the whole village had conned next morning a list of the virtues of the Champollion yeast and of the things—mostly unmentionable—it was warranted a faire sauter. There were further charges and counter-charges—as that the widow's Cochin-China cock had been found with its neck wrung; and that she, as sage femme, and the only one in Ambialet, had denied her services to Madame Champollion at a time when humanity should override all private squabbles. Brother Marc Antoine rubbed his hands and repeatedly smote Zephirine on the flank.

"The pity of it—the treat you are missing!"—but Zephirine snored on, contemptuous.

After this had lasted, as I say, some ten minutes, Pere Philibert held up a hand.

"I was about to tell you," said he, "something of this Ambialet of which you two are citizens. It is a true tale; and if you can pierce to the instruction it holds for you both, you will go away determined to end this scandal of our town and live in amity. Shall I proceed?"

Champollion twirled his cap uneasily. The widow fell back a pace, panting from her onslaught. Neither broke the sudden peace that had fallen on the orchard.

"Very well! You must know, then, to begin with, that this Ambialet—which you occupy with your petty broils—was once an important burg with its charters and liberties, its consul and council of prud'hommes and its own court of justice. It had its guilds, too—of midwives for instance, Maman Vacher, who were bound to obey any reasonable summons—"

"You, there, just listen to that!" put in the baker.

"And of bakers, M. Champollion, who sold bread at a price regulated by law, with a committee of five prohomes to see that they sold by just weight."

"Eh? Eh? And I warrant the law allowed no yeast from Germany!"—This from the widow.

"Beyond doubt, my daughter, it would have countenanced no such invention; for the town held its charter from the Viscounts of Beziers and Albi, and might consume only such corn and wine as were grown in the Viscounty."

"Parbleu!"—the baker shrugged his shoulders—"in the matter of wine we should fare well nowadays under such a rule!"

"In these times Ambialet grew its own wine, and by the tun. Had you but used your eyes on the way hither they might have counted old vine-stocks by the score; they lie this way and that amid the heather on either side of the calvary. Many of the inhabitants yet alive can remember the phylloxera destroying them."

"Which came, moreover, from the Rouergue!" snapped Maman Vacher.

"Be silent, my daughter. Yes! these were thriving times for Ambialet before ever the heresy infected the Albigeois, and when every year brought the Great Pilgrimage and the Retreat. For three days before the Retreat, while yet the inns were filling, the whole town made merry under a president called the King of Youth—rex juventutis—who appointed his own officers, levied his own fines, and was for three days a greater man even than the Viscount of Beziers, from whom he derived his power by charter: 'E volem e auctreiam quo lo Rei del Joven d'Ambilet puesco far sas fastas, tener ses senescals e sos jutges e sos sirvens . . .' h'm, h'm." Pere Philibert cast about to continue the quotation, but suddenly recollected that to his hearers its old French must be as good as Greek.

"—Well, as I was saying, this King of Youth held his merrymaking once in every year, at the time of the Great Pilgrimage. And on a certain year there came to Ambialet among the pilgrims one Tibbald, a merchant of Cahors, and a man (as you shall see) of unrighteous mind, in that he snatched at privy gain under cover of his soul's benefit. This man, having arrived at Ambialet in the dusk, had no sooner sought out an inn than he inquired, 'Who regulated this feast?' The innkeeper directed him to the place, where he found the King of Youth setting up a maypole by torchlight; whom he plucked by the sleeve and drew aside for a secret talk.

"Now the fines and forfeits exacted by the King of Youth during his festival were always paid in wine—a pail of wine apiece from the newest married couple in the Viscounty, a pail of wine from anyone proved to have cut or plucked so much as a leaf from the great elm-tree in the place, a pail for damaging the Maypole, or stumbling in the dance, or hindering any of the processions. 'We have granted this favour to our youth,' says the charter, 'because, having been witness of their merrymaking, we have taken great pleasure and satisfaction therein.' You may guess, then, that in one way and another the King and his seneschals accumulated good store of wine by the end of the festival, when they shared it among the populace in a great carouse; nor were they held too strictly to account for the justice of particular fines by which the whole commonalty profited.

"This Tibbald, then, having drawn the King aside, began cautiously and anfractuously and per ambages to unfold his plan. He had brought with him (said he) on muleback twelve half-hogsheads of right excellent wine which he had picked up as a bargain in the Rhone Valley. The same he had smuggled into Ambialet after dusk, covering his mules' panniers with cloths and skins of Damas and Alexandria, and it now lay stored in the stables at the back of his inn. This excellent wine (which in truth was an infamous tisane of the last pressings, and had never been nearer the Rhone than Caylus) he proposed to barter secretly for that collected during the feast, and to pay the King of Youth, moreover, a bribe of one livre in money on every hogshead exchanged. The populace (he promised) would be too well drunken to discover the trick; or, if they detected any difference in the wine would commend it as better and stronger than ordinary.

"The King of Youth, perceiving that he had to deal with a knave, pretended to agree, but stipulated that he must first taste the wine; whereupon the merchant gave him to taste some true Rhone wine which he carried in a leather bottle at his belt. 'If the cask answer to the sample,' said the King, 'Ambialet is well off.' 'By a good bargain,' said Tibbald. 'Nay, by a godsend,' said the King; and, stepping back into the torchlight, he called to his officers to arrest the knave and hold him bound, while the seneschals went off to search the inn stables.

"The seneschals returned by and by, trundling the casks before them; and, a Court of Youth being then and there empanelled, the wretched merchant was condemned to be whipped three times around the Maypole, to have his goods confiscated, and to be driven out of the town cum ludibrio.

"Now, the knave was clever. Though terrified by the sentence, he kept his wits. The talk had been a private one without witnesses, and he began to shout and swear that the King of Youth had either heard amiss or was maliciously giving false evidence. He had proposed no bargain, nor hinted at one; he had come on a pilgrimage for his soul's sake, bringing the wine as a propitiatory offering to Our Lady of the Oder for the use of her people. Here was one man's oath against another's. Moreover, and even if his sentence were legal (which he denied), it could be revised and quashed by the Viscount of Beziers, as feudal lord of Ambialet, and to him he appealed. Nevertheless they whipped him; and the casks they broached, and having tasted the stuff, let it spill about the marketplace.

"But when the whipping was done, the King of Youth stood up and said: 'I have been considering, and I find that this fellow has some right on his side. No one overheard our talk, and he sets his oath against mine. Let him go, therefore, under guard, to the Viscount and lodge his complaint. For my part, I have my hands full just now, and after until the feast, and shall wait until my lord summon me. But I trust his judgment, knowing him to be a very Solomon.' Then, turning to the culprit, 'You know my lord's chateau, of course? My guards will take you there.' 'The devil a furlong know I of this accursed spot,' answered Tibbald viciously, 'seeing that I arrived here a good hour after dark, and by a road as heathenish as yourselves.'

"'You shall travel by boat, then,' said the King, 'since the road mislikes you. The chateau lies some two miles hence by water.' This, you see, was no more than the truth, albeit the chateau stood close at the back of him while he spoke, on the rock just overhead, but Tibbald could not see it for the darkness.

"So—the townsfolk smoking the King's jest—two stout servitors led the merchant down to the landing by the upper ferry, and there, having hoisted him aboard a boat, thrust off into the stream. The current soon swept them past the town; and for a while, as the boat spun downward and the dark woods slipped past him, and he felt the night-wind cold on his brow, Master Tibbald sat in a mortal fright. But by and by, his anger rising on top of his fear, he began to curse and threaten and promise what vengeance would fall on Ambialet when the Viscount had heard his story, to all of which the boatmen answered only that the Viscount was known to be a just lord, and would doubtless repay all as they deserved.

"And so the boat sped downstream past the woods, and was brought to shore at last under a cliff, with dim houses above it, and here and there a light shining. And this, of course, was Ambialet again; but the King of Youth had given orders to clear the streets, close the inns, and extinguish all flambeaux; so that as the guards marched Tibbald on the cliffway to the chateau, never a suspicion had he that this sleeping town was the same he had left in uproar.

"Now, the Viscount, who meanwhile had been posted in the affair, sat in the great hall of the chateau, with a cup of wine beside him and, at his elbow, a flagon. He was a great lord, who dearly loved a jest; and, having given Master Tibbald audience, he listened to all his complaint, keeping a grave face.

"'In truth,' said he, 'you have suffered scurvy treatment; yet what affects me is the waste of this wine which you intended for Our Lady of the Oder. As lord of Ambialet I am behoven to protect her offerings.'

"'But the stripes, monseigneur!' urged Tibbald. 'The stripes were given me in her name. Listen, therefore, I pray you, to my suggestion: Let the burg pay me fair compensation for my wine. So she will miss her offering; her people will bleed in their purses; and I, being quits with both, will leave Ambialet the way I came.'

"'You call that being quits, Master Tibbald?' said the Viscount, musing. 'Truly, you are not vindictive!'

"'A merchant, my lord, has a merchant's way of looking at such affairs,' answered Tibbald.

"'So truly I perceive,' said the Viscount, 'and, in faith, it sounds reasonable enough. But touching this compensation—my people are poor in coin. Shall it be wine for wine, then, or do you insist upon money?' And here he poured out a cupful from the flagon at his elbow and offered it to the merchant, who drank and pulled a wry mouth, as well he might, for it had been saved from the spillings of his own tisane.

"'The Viscount eyed him curiously. 'What! Master Tibbald? Is our native wine so sour as all that?' He drained his own cup, which held a very different liquor.

"'Oh, monseigneur,' began Tibbald, 'you will pardon my saying it, but such stuff ill becomes the palate of one of your lordship's quality. If, setting our little dispute aside for a moment, your lordship would entrust an honest merchant with the supply of your lordship's cellar—' Here he unslung the bottle at his belt, and took leave to replenish the Viscount's cup. 'Will your lordship degustate, for example, this drop of the same divine liquor spilt to-night by your lordship's vassals?'

"'Why, this is nectar!' cried the Viscount, having tasted. 'And do you tell me that those ignorant louts poured six hogsheads of it to waste?'

"'The gutters ran with it, monseigneur! Rhone wine, that even at four livres the hogshead could not be sold at a profit.'

"'Pardieu!' The Viscount knitted his brow. 'I am an enemy to waste, Master Tibbald, and against such destroyers of God's good gifts my justice does not sleep. Retire you now; my servants will lead you to a chamber where you may take some brief repose; and before daybreak we will set forth together to my Council-house a few miles down the river, where the councillors will be met early, having to answer some demands of the Holy See upon our river-tolls conveyed to us through my lord of Leseure. There I will see your business expedited, the money paid, and receipt made out.'

"Tibbald thanked the Viscount and repaired to his room, whence, an hour or two later, the chamberlain summoned him with news that my lord was ready and desired his company. The night was dark yet, and down through Ambialet he was led to the self-same ferry-stage from which he had first put forth, my lord taking heed to approach it by another stairway. At the foot lay moored the Viscount's state barge, into which they stepped and cast off downstream.

"So once more Master Tibbald voyaged around the great loop of the river, and, arriving yet once again at Ambialet—which he deemed by this time to be some leagues behind him—was met at the lower stage by a company of halberdiers, who escorted him, with his protector, to the great lighted Hall, wherein sat a dozen grave men around a great oaken table, all deep in business.

"They rose together and made obeisance as the Viscount walked to his throne at the head of the table; and said he, seating himself—

"'Messieurs, I regret to break in upon your consultations, but an outrage has been committed in my town of Ambialet, demanding full and instant punishment. This merchant came with six hogsheads of excellent Rhone wine, which the citizens, after afflicting him with stripes, spilt at large upon the market-place. What fine shall we decree?'

"Then said the eldest prud'homme:—'The answer, saving your lordship's grace, is simple. By our laws the payment must equal the market price of the wine. As for the stripes—'

"'We need not consider them,' the Viscount interposed. 'Master Tibbald here will be satisfied with the fine, and engages—that being paid—to leave Ambialet by the way he came. Now, the wine, you say'—here he turned to Tibbald—'was worth four livres the hogshead?'

"But here our merchant, perceiving his case to go so fairly, allowed the devil of avarice to tempt him.

"'I said four livres to you, monseigneur, but the honest market price I could not set at less than five and a half.'

"'Six times five and a half makes thirty-three. Very good, then, Master Tibbald: if you will pay the Council that sum, its secretary shall make you out a note of quittance.'

"'But, my lord,' stammered poor Tibbald; 'my lord, I do not understand!'

"'It is very simple,' said the Viscount. 'Our law requires that any man bringing alien wine into the Viscounty shall suffer its confiscation, and pay a fine equal to its market price.'

"The merchant flung himself upon his knees.

"'My lord, my lord!' he pleaded, 'I am a poor man. I have not the money. I brought nothing save this wine to Ambialet.'

"'The day is breaking,' said the Viscount. 'Take him to the window.'

"So to the window they led him.—And I leave you, my children, to guess if he rubbed his eyes as they looked out upon the market-place of Ambialet, and upon his own mules standing ready-caparisoned before the door of the Council-house, and, beyond them, upon the tall Maypole, and the King of Youth, with his officers, fitting their ribbons upon it in the morning sunlight.

"'But here is witchcraft!' cried he, spreading out both hands and groping with them, like a man in a fit. 'Two good leagues at the least have I travelled downstream from Ambialet—'

"His speech failed.

"'And still art face to face with thy wickedness,' the Viscount concluded for him. 'Pay us speedily, Master Tibbald, lest Our Lady work more miracles upon thee.'

"'My lord, I have not the money!' wept Master Tibbald.

"'Thou hast good silks and merchandise, and six good mules. We will commute thy fine for these, and even give one mule into the bargain, but upon conditions.'

"'Nothing I gainsay, so that Our Lady lift this spell from me.'

"'The agreement was to quit Ambialet in the way thou camest. Now, 'tis apparent thy coming here has been by two ways—by road and by water. Take thy choice of return—shall it be by water?'

"'What! From a town that lieth three leagues downstream from itself! Nay, monseigneur, let it be by road, that at least I may keep my few wits remaining!'

"'By road, then, it shall be, and on muleback. But the way thou camest was with a greedy face set towards Ambialet, and so will we send thee back.'

"As the Viscount promised so they did, my children; strapping Master Tibbald with his face to the mule's rump, and with a merry crowd speeding him from the frontier."

Brother Marc Antoine lay back against his apple-tree, laughing. Maman Vacher and the baker, seeing that the tale was done, continued to regard Pere Philibert each with a foolish grin.

Pere Philibert took snuff slowly.

"My children," said he, tapping his box, "in this tale (which, by the way, is historical) there surely lurks a lesson for you both. You, Pierre Champollion, may read in it that he who, with an eye to his private profit, only runs counter to ancient custom in such a town as our Ambialet, may chance to knock his head upon stones. And you, Maman Vacher—What was the price of that chanticleer of yours?"

"Indeed, reverend father, I could not have asked less than six francs. A prize-winner, if you remember."

"You valued it at twelve in your threats and outcries, and that after you had stewed his carcass down for a soup! . . . Tut, tut, my children! You have your lesson—take it and go in amity."



* * * * *



Transcriber's note:

In "A Jest of Ambialet" "either side the calvary" was changed to "either side OF the calvary."

THE END