"A Jew? But a Jew had no business in England in those days. I wonder how and why he came." My visitor took the old volume and ran his finger down the leaf, then up, then turned back a page. "Perhaps this may explain it," said he. "Ite deliued Mr. Beuill to make puision for the companie of a fforeste barke yt came ashoare iiis ivd." He broke off, with a finger on the entry, and rose. "Pray forgive me, sir; I had taken your chair."

"Don't mention it," said I. "Indeed I was about to suggest that you draw it to the fire while Frances brings in some supper."

To be short, although he protested he must push on to the inn at Porthlooe, I persuaded him to stay the night; not so much, I confess, from desire of his company, as in the hope that if I took him to see the frescoes next morning he might help me to elucidate their history.

I remember now that during supper and afterwards my guest allowed me more than my share of the conversation. He made an admirable listener, quick, courteous, adaptable, yet with something in reserve (you may call it a facile tolerance, if you will) which ended by irritating me. Young men should be eager, fervid, sublimis cupidusque, as I was before my beard grew stiff. But this young man had the air of a spectator at a play, composing himself to be amused. There was too much wisdom in him and too little emotion. We did not, of course, touch upon any religious question—indeed, of his own opinions on any subject he disclosed extraordinarily little: and yet as I reached my bedroom that night I told myself that here, behind a mask of good manners, was one of those perniciously modern young men who have run through all beliefs by the age of twenty, and settled down to a polite but weary atheism.

I fancy that under the shadow of this suspicion my own manner may have been cold to him next morning. Almost immediately after breakfast we set out for the church. The day was sunny and warm; the atmosphere brilliant after the night's rain. The hedges exhaled a scent of spring. And, as we entered the churchyard, I saw the girl Julia Constantine seated in her favourite angle between the porch and the south wall, threading a chain of daisies.

"What an amazingly handsome girl!" my guest exclaimed.

"Why, yes," said I, "she has her good looks, poor soul!"

"Why 'poor soul'?"

"She is an imbecile, or nearly so," said I, fitting the key in the lock.

We entered the church. And here let me say that, although I furnished you at the time of their discovery with a description of the frescoes and the ruder drawings which overlay them, you can scarcely imagine the grotesque and astonishing coup d'oeil presented by the two series. To begin with the frescoes, or original series. One, as you know, represented the Crucifixion. The head of the Saviour bore a large crown of gilded thorns, and from the wound in His left side flowed a continuous stream of red gouts of blood, extraordinarily intense in colour (and intensity of colour is no common quality in fresco-painting). At the foot of the cross stood a Roman soldier, with two female figures in dark-coloured drapery a little to the right, and in the background a man clad in a loose dark upper coat, which reached a little below the knees.

The same man reappeared in the second picture, alone, but carrying a tall staff or hunting spear, and advancing up a road, at the top of which stood a circular building with an arched doorway and, within the doorway, the head of a lion. The jaws of this beast were open and depicted with the same intense red as the Saviour's blood.

Close beside this, but further to the east, was a large ship, under sail, which from her slanting position appeared to be mounting over a long swell of sea. This vessel had four masts; the two foremost furnished with yards and square sails, the others with lateen-shaped sails, after the Greek fashion; her sides were decorated with six gaily painted bands or streaks, each separately charged with devices—a golden saltire on a green ground, a white crescent on a blue, and so on; and each masthead bore a crown with a flag or streamer fluttering beneath.

Of the frescoes these alone were perfect, but fragments of others were scattered over the wall, and in particular I must mention a group of detached human limbs lying near the ship—a group rendered conspicuous by an isolated right hand and arm drawn on a larger scale than the rest. A gilded circlet adorned the arm, which was flexed at the elbow, the hand horizontally placed, the forefinger extended towards the west in the direction of the picture of the Crucifixion, and the thumb shut within the palm beneath the other three fingers.

So much for the frescoes. A thin coat of plaster had been laid over them to receive the second series, which consisted of the most disgusting and fantastic images, traced in black. One of these drawings represented Satan himself—an erect figure, with hairy paws clasped in a supplicating posture, thick black horns, and eyes which (for additional horror) the artist had painted red and edged with a circle of white. At his feet crawled the hindmost limb of a peculiarly loathsome monster with claws stuck in the soil. Close by a nun was figured, sitting in a pensive attitude, her cheek resting on the back of her hand, her elbow supported by a hideous dwarf, and at some distance a small house, or prison, with barred windows and a small doorway crossed with heavy bolts.

As I said, this upper series had been but partially scraped away, and as my guest and I stood at a little distance, I leave you to imagine, if you can, the incongruous tableau; the Prince of Darkness almost touching the mourners beside the cross; the sorrowful nun and grinning dwarf side by side with a ship in full sail, which again seemed to be forcing her way into a square and forbidding prison, etc.

Mr. Laquedem conned all this for some while in silence, holding his chin with finger and thumb.

"And it was here you discovered the plaque?" he asked at length.

I pointed to the exact spot.

"H'm!" he mused, "and that ship must be Greek or Levantine by its rig. Compare the crowns on her masts, too, with that on the plaque . . ." He stepped to the wall and peered into the frescoes. "Now this hand and arm—"

"They belong to me," said a voice immediately behind me, and turning, I saw that the poor girl had followed us into the church.

The young Jew had turned also. "What do you mean by that?" he asked sharply.

"She means nothing," I began, and made as if to tap my forehead significantly.

"Yes, I do mean something," she persisted. "They belong to me. I remember—"

"What do you remember?"

Her expression, which for a moment had been thoughtful, wavered and changed into a vague foolish smile. "I can't tell . . . something . . . it was sand, I think . . ."

"Who is she?" asked Mr. Laquedem.

"Her name is Julia Constantine. Her parents are dead; an aunt looks after her—a sister of her mother's."

He turned and appeared to be studying the frescoes. "Julia Constantine—an odd name," he muttered. "Do you know anything of her parentage?"

"Nothing except that her father was a labourer at Sheba, the manor-farm. The family has belonged to this parish for generations. I believe July is the last of them."

He faced round upon her again. "Sand, did you say? That's a strange thing to remember. How does sand come into your mind? Think, now."

She cast down her eyes; her fingers plucked at the daisy-chain. After a while she shook her head. "I can't think," she answered, glancing up timidly and pitifully.

"Surely we are wasting time," I suggested. To tell the truth I disapproved of his worrying the poor girl.

He took the daisy-chain from her, looking at me the while with something between a "by-your-leave" and a challenge. A smile played about the corners of his mouth.

"Let us waste a little more." He held up the chain before her and began to sway it gently to and fro. "Look at it, please, and stretch out your arm; look steadily. Now your name is Julia Constantine, and you say that the arm on the wall belongs to you. Why?"

"Because . . . if you please, sir, because of the mark."

"What mark?"

"The mark on my arm."

This answer seemed to discompose as well as to surprise him. He snatched at her wrist and rolled back her sleeve, somewhat roughly, as I thought. "Look here, sir!" he exclaimed, pointing to a thin red line encircling the flesh of the girl's upper arm, and from that to the arm and armlet in the fresco.

"She has been copying it," said I, "with a string or ribbon, which no doubt she tied too tightly."

"You are mistaken, sir; this is a birthmark. You have had it always?" he asked the girl.

She nodded. Her eyes were fixed on his face with the gaze of one at the same time startled and confiding; and for the moment he too seemed to be startled. But his smile came back as he picked up the daisy-chain and began once more to sway it to and fro before her.

"And when that arm belonged to you, there was sand around you—eh! Tell us, how did the sand come there?"

She was silent, staring at the pendulum-swing of the chain. "Tell us," he repeated in a low coaxing tone.

And in a tone just as low she began, "There was sand . . . red sand . . . it was below me . . . and something above . . . something like a great tent." She faltered, paused and went on, "There were thousands of people. . . ." She stopped.

"Yes, yes—there were thousands of people on the sand—"

"No, they were not on the sand. There were only two on the sand . . . the rest were around . . . under the tent . . . my arm was out . . . just like this. . . ."

The young man put a hand to his forehead. "Good Lord!" I heard him say, "the amphitheatre!"

"Come, sir," I interrupted, "I think we have had enough of this jugglery."

But the girl's voice went on steadily as if repeating a lesson:—

"And then you came—"

"I!" His voice rang sharply, and I saw a horror dawn in his eyes, and grow. "I!"

"And then you came," she repeated, and broke off, her mind suddenly at fault. Automatically he began to sway the daisy-chain afresh. "We were on board a ship . . . a funny ship . . . with a great high stern. . . ."

"Is this the same story?" he asked, lowering his voice almost to a whisper; and I could hear his breath going and coming.

"I don't know . . . one minute I see clear, and then it all gets mixed up again . . . we were up there, stretched on deck, near the tiller . . . another ship was chasing us . . . the men began to row, with long sweeps. . . ."

"But the sand," he insisted, "is the sand there?"

"The sand? . . . Yes, I see the sand again . . . we are standing upon it . . . we and the crew . . . the sea is close behind us . . . some men have hold of me . . . they are trying to pull me away from you. . . . Ah!—"

And I declare to you that with a sob the poor girl dropped on her knees, there in the aisle, and clasped the young man about the ankles, bowing her forehead upon the insteps of his high boots. As for him, I cannot hope to describe his face to you. There was something more in it than wonder—something more than dismay, even—at the success of his unhallowed experiment. It was as though, having prepared himself light-heartedly to witness a play, he was seized and terrified to find himself the principal actor. I never saw ghastlier fear on human cheeks.

"For God's sake, sir," I cried, stamping my foot, "relax your cursed spells! Relax them and leave us! This is a house of prayer."

He put a hand under the girl's chin, and, raising her face, made a pass or two, still with the daisy-chain in his hand. She looked about her, shivered and stood erect. "Where am I?" she asked. "Did I fall? What are you doing with my chain?" She had relapsed into her habitual childishness of look and speech.

I hurried them from the church, resolutely locked the door, and marched up the path without deigning a glance at the young man. But I had not gone fifty yards when he came running after.

"I entreat you, sir, to pardon me. I should have stopped the experiment before. But I was startled—thrown off my balance. I am telling you the truth, sir!"

"Very likely," said I. "The like has happened to other rash meddlers before you."

"I declare to you I had no thought—" he began. But I interrupted him:

"'No thought,' indeed! I bring you here to resolve me, if you can, a curious puzzle in archaeology, and you fall to playing devil's pranks upon a half-witted child. 'No thought!'—I believe you, sir."

"And yet," he muttered, "it is an amazing business: the sand—the velarium—the outstretched arm and hand—pollice compresso—the exact gesture of the gladiatorial shows—"

"Are you telling me, pray, of gladiatorial shows under the Eastern Empire?" I demanded scornfully.

"Certainly not: and that," he mused, "only makes it the more amazing."

"Now, look here," said I, halting in the middle of the road, "I'll hear no more of it. Here is my gate, and there lies the highroad, on to Porthlooe or back to Plymouth, as you please. I wish you good morning, sir; and if it be any consolation to you, you have spoiled my digestion for a week."

I am bound to say the young man took his dismissal with grace. He halted then and there and raised his hat; stood for a moment pondering; and, turning on his heel, walked quickly off towards Porthlooe.

It must have been a week before I learnt casually that he had obtained employment there as secretary to a small company owning the Lord Nelson and the Hand-in-hand privateers. His success, as you know, was rapid; and naturally in a gossiping parish I heard about it—a little here, a little there—in all a great deal. He had bought the Providence schooner; he had acted as freighter for Minards' men in their last run with the Morning Star; he had slipped over to Cork and brought home a Porthlooe prize illegally detained there; he was in London, fighting a salvage case in the Admiralty Court; . . . Within twelve months he was accountant of every trading company in Porthlooe, and agent for receiving the moneys due to the Guernsey merchants. In 1809, as you know, he opened his bank and issued notes of his own. And a year later he acquired two of the best farms in the parish, Tresawl and Killifreeth, and held the fee simple of the harbour and quays.

During the first two years of his prosperity I saw little of the man. We passed each other from time to time in the street of Porthlooe, and he accosted me with a politeness to which, though distrusting him, I felt bound to respond. But he never offered conversation, and our next interview was wholly of my seeking.

One evening towards the close of his second year at Porthlooe, and about the date of his purchase of the Providence schooner, I happened to be walking homewards from a visit to a sick parishioner, when at Cove Bottom, by the miller's footbridge, I passed two figures—a man and a woman standing there and conversing in the dusk. I could not help recognising them; and halfway up the hill I came to a sudden resolution and turned back.

"Mr. Laquedem," said I, approaching them, "I put it to you, as a man of education and decent feeling, is this quite honourable?"

"I believe, sir," he answered courteously enough, "I can convince you that it is. But clearly this is neither the time nor the place."

"You must excuse me," I went on, "but I have known Julia since she was a child."

To this he made an extraordinary answer. "No longer?" he asked; and added, with a change of tone, "Had you not forbidden me the vicarage, sir, I might have something to say to you."

"If it concern the girl's spiritual welfare—or yours—I shall be happy to hear it."

"In that case," said he, "I will do myself the pleasure of calling upon you—shall we say to-morrow evening?"

He was as good as his word. At nine o'clock next evening—about the hour of his former visit—Frances ushered him into my parlour. The similarity of circumstance may have suggested to me to draw the comparison; at any rate I observed then for the first time that rapid ageing of his features which afterwards became a matter of common remark. The face was no longer that of the young man who had entered my parlour two years before; already some streaks of grey showed in his black locks, and he seemed even to move wearily.

"I fear you are unwell," said I, offering a chair.

"I have reason to believe," he answered, "that I am dying." And then, as I uttered some expression of dismay and concern, he cut me short. "Oh, there will be no hurry about it! I mean, perhaps, no more than that all men carry about with them the seeds of their mortality—so why not I? But I came to talk of Julia Constantine, not of myself."

"You may guess, Mr. Laquedem, that as her vicar, and having known her and her affliction all her life, I take something of a fatherly interest in the girl."

"And having known her so long, do you not begin to observe some change in her, of late?"

"Why, to be sure," said I, "she seems brighter."

He nodded. "I have done that; or rather, love has done it."

"Be careful, sir!" I cried. "Be careful of what you are going to tell me! If you have intended or wrought any harm to that girl, I tell you solemnly—"

But he held up a hand. "Ah, sir, be charitable! I tell you solemnly our love is not of that kind. We who have loved, and lost, and sought each other, and loved again through centuries, have outlearned that rougher passion. When she was a princess of Rome and I a Christian Jew led forth to the lions—"

I stood up, grasping the back of my chair and staring. At last I knew. This young man was stark mad.

He read my conviction at once. "I think, sir," he went on, changing his tone, "the learned antiquary to whom, as you told me, you were sending your tracing of the plaque, has by this time replied with some information about it."

Relieved at this change of subject, I answered quietly (while considering how best to get him out of the house), "My friend tells me that a similar design is found in Landulph Church, on the tomb of Theodore Paleologus, who died in 1636."

"Precisely; of Theodore Paleologus, descendant of the Constantines."

I began to grasp his insane meaning. "The race, so far as we know, is extinct," said I.

"The race of the Constantines," said he slowly and composedly, "is never extinct; and while it lasts, the soul of Julia Constantine will come to birth again and know the soul of the Jew, until—"

I waited.

"—Until their love lifts the curse, and the Jew can die."

"This is mere madness," said I, my tongue blurting it out at length.

"I expected you to say no less. Now look you, sir—in a few minutes I leave you, I walk home and spend an hour or two before bedtime in adding figures, balancing accounts; to-morrow I rise and go about my daily business cheerfully, methodically, always successfully. I am the long-headed man, making money because I know how to make it, respected by all, with no trace of madness in me. You, if you meet me to-morrow, shall recognise none. Just now you are forced to believe me mad. Believe it then; but listen while I tell you this:—When Rome was, I was; when Constantinople was, I was. I was that Jew rescued from the lions. It was I who sailed from the Bosphorus in that ship, with Julia beside me; I from whom the Moorish pirates tore her, on the beach beside Tetuan; I who, centuries after, drew those obscene figures on the wall of your church—the devil, the nun, and the barred convent—when Julia, another Julia but the same soul, was denied to me and forced into a nunnery. For the frescoes, too, tell my history. I was that figure in the dark habit, standing a little back from the cross. Tell me, sir, did you never hear of Joseph Kartophilus, Pilate's porter?"

I saw that I must humour him. "I have heard his legend," said I;[1] "and have understood that in time he became a Christian."

He smiled wearily. "He has travelled through many creeds; but he has never travelled beyond Love. And if that love can be purified of all passion such as you suspect, he has not travelled beyond forgiveness. Many times I have known her who shall save me in the end; and now in the end I have found her and shall be able, at length, to die; have found her, and with her all my dead loves, in the body of a girl whom you call half-witted—and shall be able, at length, to die."

And with this he bent over the table, and, resting his face on his arms, sobbed aloud. I let him sob there for a while, and then touched his shoulder gently.

He raised his head. "Ah," said he, in a voice which answered the gentleness of my touch, "you remind me!" And with that he deliberately slipped his coat off his left arm and, rolling up the shirt sleeve, bared the arm almost to the shoulder. "I want you close," he added with half a smile; for I have to confess that during the process I had backed a couple of paces towards the door. He took up a candle, and held it while I bent and examined the thin red line which ran like a circlet around the flesh of the upper arm just below the apex of the deltoid muscle. When I looked up I met his eyes challenging mine across the flame.

"Mr. Laquedem," I said, "my conviction is that you are possessed and are being misled by a grievous hallucination. At the same time I am not fool enough to deny that the union of flesh and spirit, so passing mysterious in everyday life (when we pause to think of it), may easily hold mysteries deeper yet. The Church Catholic, whose servant I am, has never to my knowledge denied this; yet has providentially made a rule of St. Paul's advice to the Colossians against intruding into those things which she hath not seen. In the matter of this extraordinary belief of yours I can give you no such comfort as one honest man should offer to another: for I do not share it. But in the more practical matter of your conduct towards July Constantine, it may help you to know that I have accepted your word and propose henceforward to trust you as a gentleman."

"I thank you, sir," he said, as he slipped on his coat. "May I have your hand on that?"

"With pleasure," I answered, and, having shaken hands, conducted him to the door.

From that day the affection between Joseph Laquedem and July Constantine, and their frequent companionship, were open and avowed. Scandal there was, to be sure; but as it blazed up like straw, so it died down. Even the women feared to sharpen their tongues openly on Laquedem, who by this time held the purse of the district, and to offend whom might mean an empty skivet on Saturday night. July, to be sure, was more tempting game; and one day her lover found her in the centre of a knot of women fringed by a dozen children with open mouths and ears. He stepped forward. "Ladies," said he, "the difficulty which vexes you cannot, I feel sure, be altogether good for your small sons and daughters. Let me put an end to it." He bent forward and reverently took July's hand. "My dear, it appears that the depth of my respect for you will not be credited by these ladies unless I offer you marriage. And as I am proud of it, so forgive me if I put it beyond their doubt. Will you marry me?" July, blushing scarlet, covered her face with her hands, but shook her head. There was no mistaking the gesture: all the women saw it. "Condole with me, ladies!" said Laquedem, lifting his hat and including them in an ironical bow; and placing July's arm in his, escorted her away.

I need not follow the history of their intimacy, of which I saw, indeed, no more than my neighbours. On two points all accounts of it agree: the rapid ageing of the man during this period and the improvement in the poor girl's intellect. Some profess to have remarked an equally vehement heightening of her beauty; but, as my recollection serves me, she had always been a handsome maid; and I set down the transfiguration—if such it was—entirely to the dawn and growth of her reason. To this I can add a curious scrap of evidence. I was walking along the cliff track, one afternoon, between Porthlooe and Lanihale church-town, when, a few yards ahead, I heard a man's voice declaiming in monotone some sentences which I could not catch; and rounding the corner, came upon Laquedem and July. She was seated on a rock; and he, on a patch of turf at her feet, held open a small volume which he laid face downwards as he rose to greet me. I glanced at the back of the book and saw it was a volume of Euripides. I made no comment, however, on this small discovery; and whether he had indeed taught the girl some Greek, or whether she merely listened for the sake of hearing his voice, I am unable to say.

Let me come then to the last scene, of which I was one among many spectators.

On the morning of August 15th, 1810, and just about daybreak, I was awakened by the sound of horses' hoofs coming down the road beyond the vicarage gate. My ear told me at once that they were many riders and moving at a trot; and a minute later the jingle of metal gave me an inkling of the truth. I hurried to the window and pulled up the blind. Day was breaking on a grey drizzle of fog which drove up from seaward, and through this drizzle I caught sight of the last five or six scarlet plumes of a troop of dragoons jogging down the hill past my bank of laurels.

Now our parish had stood for some weeks in apprehension of a visit from these gentry. The riding-officer, Mr. Luke, had threatened us with them more than once. I knew, moreover, that a run of goods was contemplated: and without questions of mine—it did not become a parish priest in those days to know too much—it had reached my ears that Laquedem was himself in Roscoff bargaining for the freight. But we had all learnt confidence in him by this time—his increasing bodily weakness never seemed to affect his cleverness and resource—and no doubt occurred to me that he would contrive to checkmate this new move of the riding-officer's. Nevertheless, and partly I dare say out of curiosity, to have a good look at the soldiers, I slipped on my clothes and hurried downstairs and across the garden.

My hand was on the gate when I heard footsteps, and July Constantine came running down the hill, her red cloak flapping and her hair powdered with mist.

"Hullo!" said I, "nothing wrong, I hope?" She turned a white, distraught face to me in the dawn.

"Yes, yes! All is wrong! I saw the soldiers coming—I heard them a mile away, and sent up the rocket from the church-tower. But the lugger stood in—they must have seen!—she stood in, and is right under Sheba Point now—and he—"

I whistled. "This is serious. Let us run out towards the point; we— you, I mean—may be in time to warn them yet."

So we set off running together. The morning breeze had a cold edge on it, but already the sun had begun to wrestle with the bank of sea-fog. While we hurried along the cliffs the shoreward fringe of it was ripped and rolled back like a tent-cloth, and through the rent I saw a broad patch of the cove below; the sands (for the tide was at low ebb) shining like silver; the dragoons with their greatcoats thrown back from their scarlet breasts and their accoutrements flashing against the level rays. Seaward, the lugger loomed through the weather; but there was a crowd of men and black boats—half a score of them—by the water's edge, and it was clear to me at once that a forced run had been at least attempted.

I had pulled up, panting, on the verge of the cliff, when July caught me by the arm.

"The sand!"

She pointed; and well I remember the gesture—the very gesture of the hand in the fresco—the forefinger extended, the thumb shut within the palm. "The sand . . . he told me . . ."

Her eyes were wide and fixed. She spoke, not excitedly at all, but rather as one musing, much as she had answered Laquedem on the morning when he waved the daisy-chain before her.

I heard an order shouted, high up the beach, and the dragoons came charging down across the sand. There was a scuffle close by the water's edge; then, as the soldiers broke through the mob of free-traders and wheeled their horses round, fetlock deep in the tide, I saw a figure break from the crowd and run, but presently check himself and walk composedly towards the cliff up which climbed the footpath leading to Porthlooe. And above the hubbub of oaths and shouting, I heard a voice crying distinctly, "Run, man! Tis after thee they are! Man, go faster!"

Even then, had he gained the cliff-track, he might have escaped; for up there no horseman could follow. But as a trooper came galloping in pursuit, he turned deliberately. There was no defiance in his attitude; of that I am sure. What followed must have been mere blundering ferocity. I saw a jet of smoke, heard the sharp crack of a firearm, and Joseph Laquedem flung up his arms and pitched forward at full length on the sand.

The report woke the girl as with the stab of a knife. Her cry—it pierces through my dreams at times—rang back with the echoes from the rocks, and before they ceased she was halfway down the cliffside, springing as surely as a goat, and, where she found no foothold, clutching the grass, the rooted samphires and sea pinks, and sliding. While my head swam with the sight of it, she was running across the sands, was kneeling beside the body, had risen, and was staggering under the weight of it down to the water's edge.

"Stop her!" shouted Luke, the riding-officer. "We must have the man! Dead or alive, we must have'n!"

She gained the nearest boat, the free-traders forming up around her, and hustling the dragoons. It was old Solomon Tweedy's boat, and he, prudent man, had taken advantage of the skirmish to ease her off, so that a push would set her afloat. He asserts that as July came up to him she never uttered a word, but the look on her face said "Push me off," and though he was at that moment meditating his own escape, he obeyed and pushed the boat off "like a mazed man." I may add that he spent three months in Bodmin Gaol for it.

She dropped with her burden against the stern sheets, but leapt up instantly and had the oars between the thole-pins almost as the boat floated. She pulled a dozen strokes, and hoisted the main-sail, pulled a hundred or so, sprang forward and ran up the jib. All this while the preventive men were straining to get off two boats in pursuit; but, as you may guess, the free-traders did nothing to help and a great deal to impede. And first the crews tumbled in too hurriedly, and had to climb out again (looking very foolish) and push afresh, and then one of the boats had mysteriously lost her plug and sank in half a fathom of water. July had gained a full hundred yards' offing before the pursuit began in earnest, and this meant a good deal. Once clear of the point the small cutter could defy their rowing and reach away to the eastward with the wind just behind her beam. The riding-officer saw this, and ordered his men to fire. They assert, and we must believe, that their object was merely to disable the boat by cutting up her canvas.

Their first desultory volley did no damage. I stood there, high on the cliff, and watched the boat, making a spy-glass of my hands. She had fetched in close under the point, and gone about on the port tack—the next would clear—when the first shot struck her, cutting a hole through her jib, and I expected the wind to rip the sail up immediately; yet it stood. The breeze being dead on-shore, the little boat heeled towards us, her mainsail hiding the steerswoman.

It was a minute later, perhaps, that I began to suspect that July was hit, for she allowed the jib to shake and seemed to be running right up into the wind. The stern swung round and I strained my eyes to catch a glimpse of her. At that moment a third volley rattled out, a bullet shore through the peak halliards, and the mainsail came down with a run. It was all over.

The preventive men cheered and pulled with a will. I saw them run alongside, clamber into the cutter, and lift the fallen sail.

And that was all. There was no one on board, alive or dead. Whilst the canvas hid her, in the swift two minutes between the boat's putting about and her running up into the wind, July Constantine must have lifted her lover's body overboard and followed it to the bottom of the sea, There is no other explanation; and of the bond that knit these two together there is, when I ask myself candidly, no explanation at all, unless I give more credence than I have any wish to give to the wild tale which Joseph Laquedem told me. I have told you the facts, my friend, and leave them to your judgment.

[1] The legend is that as Christ left the judgment hall on His way to Calvary, Kartophilus smote Him, saying, "Man, go quicker!" and was answered, "I indeed go quickly; but thou shalt tarry till I come again."



PRISONERS OF WAR

A REPORTED TALE OF ARDEVORA

You've heard tell, I dare say, about Landlord Cummins and Billy Bosistow, and the great jealousy there was between them. No? Well, I see you going about Ardevora, and making a study of us; and I know you can read, because I've seen you doing it down to the Institute. But sometimes, when I ask you a simple little question like that, you force me to wonder what you've been doing with yourself all these years. Why, it got into the Law Courts!

I know all about it, being related to them both after a fashion, as you might say. Landlord Cummins—he that used to keep the Welcome Home— married an aunt of mine on my mother's side, and that's part of the story. The boys used to call him "Calves-in-front," because of his legs being put on in an unusual manner, which made him walk slow all his days, and that's another part of the story. And Billy Bosistow, or Uncle Billy, was my father's father's' stepson. You needn't take any trouble to get that clear in your mind, because our family never owned him after he came home from the French war prisons and took up with his drinking habits; and that comes into the story, too.

As it happens, the occasion that took their quarrel into the Law Courts is one of the first things I can remember. It was in the year 'twenty-five. Landlord Cummins, by dint of marrying a woman with means (that was my aunt), and walking the paths of repute for eleven years with his funny-shaped calves, got himself elected Mayor of the Borough. You may suppose it was a proud day for him. In those times the borough used to pay the mayor a hundred pounds a year to keep up appearances, and my mother had persuaded my father to hire a window for Election Day opposite the Town Hall, so that she might have the satisfaction of seeing so near a relative in his robes of dignity.

Well, there in the window we were gathered on that July forenoon (for the mayors in those back-a-long days weren't chosen in November as they are now), and the sun—it was a bright day—slanting high down our side of the street, and my mother holding me tight as we leaned out, for I was just rising five, and extraordinary heavy in the head. And out upon the steps of the Town Hall stepped Landlord Cummins, Mayor, with the town crier and maces before him, and his robes hanging handsomely about his calves, and his beaver hat and all the rest of the paraphernalia, prepared to march to church.

While he stood there, bowing to a score of people, and looking as big as bull's beef, who should step out from the pavement under us but Uncle Billy Bosistow! He was a ragged old scarecrow, turned a bit grey and lean with iniquitous living, but not more than half-drunk; and he stepped into the middle of the roadway and cut a low reverence to his worship, flinging out his leg like a dancing-master. And says he, in a high cackle, very solemn but mocking:

"I salute thee, O Mayor! Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before thy God."

"Put that dam fool in the stocks!" cried his worship, very red in the gills, and speaking vicious. And Uncle Billy was collared and marched off between two constables, while the procession formed up to lead the new Mayor to church.

Well, that, as it happened, wasn't a lucky start-off for Mr. Cummins's year of office. For no sooner was Billy let out of the stocks than off he went to Lawyer Mennear, who was a young man then just set up in practice, and as keen for a job as a huer for pilchards; and between them they patched up an action for false imprisonment—damages claimed, one hundred pounds.

The case came on at Bodmin, and the Mayor was cast in damages, twenty-five pounds. He paid, of course, though with a very long face. But Billy's revenge didn't stop here. Instead of putting the money by, the old varmint laid it out in the best way he could to annoy his enemy. And the way he contrived it was this. Every free Saturday he'd put a sovereign in his pocket, and start the round of the public-houses— always beginning with Cummins's own house, the Welcome Home. Cummins, you see, couldn't refuse to serve him: the law wouldn't allow it. So he'd pull out a brand new sovereign and slap it on the counter and eye it. "Ah!" he'd say, "it was a dear friend gave me that there coin. His heart's in the right place, which is more'n can be said for his calves. Two-pennyworth of gin, please, your Worship." The Mayor's dignity wouldn't let him serve it, so, the first day, he called his wife down. Mrs. Cummins began by trying argument. "William," she said, "the Lord knows you wouldn't have this money if there was justice in England. But got it you have, and now be a sensible man and put it by for a rainy day." "Mrs. Mayor," answers Billy, slow and vicious, "if there was any chance of presentin' you with a silver cradle, I'd save it up and subscribe." After that there was nothing more to say. It hurt the poor soul terrible, and she went upstairs again and cried as she went. Billy sat on and soaked, and the Mayor, across the counter, sat and watched his condition, quiet-like, till the time came for refusing any more liquor and turning him out. When that happened the old sinner would gather up his change and make off for another public. And the end was that he'd be up before the Mayor on Monday morning, charged with drunkenness. No use to fine him; he wouldn't pay, but went to gaol instead. "Ten years was I in prison," he'd say, addressing the bench, "along with his Worship there. I don't know what 'twould appear to him who came back and got the Welcome Home; but I didn't, and ten days don't frighten me."

Landlord Cummins would listen to this, looking as unnatural as a blue china cat in a thunderstorm. He fairly hated these appearances of Billy, and they spoiled his term of office, I do believe. But all the same he turned out a very passable Mayor. The townsfolk respected him so highly, I've heard my mother say, that they made him Ex-Mayor the year following.

Now you'll be wanting to know what made these two men hate each other, for friends they had been, as two men ought to be who had been taken prisoners together and spent ten years in captivity to the French, and come home aboard the same ship like brothers. The bigger the love the bigger the hate, and no difficulty to guess there was a woman in the case. So there was; but the way she came between them was curious, for all that.

First of all, you must know, that up to the year 'three Abe Cummins and Bill Bosistow hadn't known what it is to quarrel or miss meeting each other every day. They went to school together, and then to the fishing, and afterwards they sailed together with the free-traders over to Mount's Bay, and good seamen the both, though not a bit alike in looks and ways. Abe, the elder by a year, was a bit slow and heavy on his pins; given to reading, too, though he seemed to take it up for peace and quietness more than for any show he made of his learning. Bill was smarter altogether and better looking; a bit boastful, after the manner of young chaps. He could read too, but never did much at it, though I've heard that on Saturday nights he was fond of ranting verses—stuff about drink and such like—out of a book of Robert Burns's poetry he'd borrowed off Abe.

You'd hardly have thought two young fellows so different in every way could have hit it off as they did. But these were like two figures in a puzzle-block; their very differences seemed to make them fit. There never was such a pair since David and Jonathan, and I believe 'twas partly this that kept them from running after girls. So far as I can see, the most of the lads begin at seventeen; but these two held off sweethearting right along until Christmas of the year 'three when they came home from Porthleven to spend a fortnight at Ardevora, and they both fell in love with Selina Johns.

Selina Johns wasn't but just husband-high; turned sixteen and her hair only put up a week before, she having begged her mother's leave to twist it in plaits for the Christmas courants. And Abe and Billy each knew the other's secret almost before he knew his own, for each, as you may say, kept his heart like a window and looked into his friend's window first.

And what they did was to have it out like good fellows, and agree to wait a couple of years, unless any third party should interfere. In two years' time, they agreed, Selina Johns would be wise enough to choose— and then let the best man win! No bad blood afterwards, and meanwhile no more talk than necessary—they shook hands upon that. That January, being tired of the free-trade, they shipped together on board a coaster for the Thames, and re-shipped for the voyage homeward on board the brig Hand and Glove, of London.

The Hand and Glove, Uriah Wilcox, master, was bound for Devonport with a cargo of copper and flour for the dockyard there, and came to anchor in the Downs on March 24th to join convoy under the Spider gun-brig. On the 25th (a Sunday) it blew hard from north to west, and she let go sheet anchor. Next day the weather moderated a bit, and, heaving up her sheet anchor, she rode to her best bower. On the Tuesday, the wind having fallen light, the master took off a new longboat from Deal. There was some hitch in delivering her, and she was scarcely brought alongside by five the next morning when the Commodore signalled to get under weigh.

By reason of this delay, the Hand and Glove was taken unawares, and started well astern of the fleet, which numbered over twenty sail of merchantmen; and, being a sluggard in anything short of half a gale, she made up precious little way in the light E.N.E. breeze.

Soon after seven that evening, Beachy Head bearing N.W. by W. four miles and a half, Abe Cummins on the look-out forward spied a lugger coming towards shore upon a wind. She crossed well ahead of the Hand and Glove, and close—as it looked—under the stem of an East Indiaman which was then busy reefing topsails before night. For a while Abe lost sight of her under the dark of the land; but by-and-by the wheelman took a glance over his shoulder, and there she was, creeping up close astern. His call fetched up Captain Wilcox, who ran aft and hailed, but got no reply. And so she came on, until, sheering close up under the Hand and Glove's port quarter, she was able to heave a grapnel on board and throw twenty well-armed Johnnies into the old brig. The Englishmen— seven in all, and taken unprepared—were soon driven below and shut down—four in the cabin, two in the steerage, and one in the forecastle, this last being Abe Cummins. After a while the sentry over the hatchway called for him to come up and show where the leading ropes were, which he did at the point of a cutlass. And precious soon the Johnnies had altered the brig's course and stood away for the coast of France, the lugger keeping her company all night.

Early next morning the two vessels were close off Dieppe Harbour; and there, when the tide suited, they were taken inside, and the prisoners put ashore at nightfall and lodged for three days in a filthy round tower, swarming with vermin. On April 1—Easter Sunday, I've heard it was—they were told to get ready for marching, and handed over, making twenty-five in all, with the crews of two other vessels, both brigs—the Lisbon Packet, bound from London to Falmouth with a general cargo, and the Margaret, letter of marque of London, bound from Zante, laden with currants—to a lieutenant and a guard of foot soldiers. Not a man of them knew where they were bound. They set out through a main pretty country, where the wheat stood nearabouts knee-high, but the roads were heavy after the spring rains. Each man had seven shillings in his pocket, given him at parting by the captain of his vessel—the three captains had been left behind at Dieppe—and on they trudged for just a fortnight on an allowance of 1 lb. of brown bread and twopence-halfpenny per man per day; the bread served out regular and the money, so to say, when they could get it. Mostly they came to a town for their night's halt, and as often as not the townsfolk drummed them to jail with what we call the "Rogue's March," but in France I believe it's "Honours of War," or something that sounds politer than 'tis. But there were times when they had to put up at a farm house by the road, and then the poor chaps slept on straw for a treat.

Well, on the last day of the fortnight they reached their journey's end—a great fortress on a rock standing right over the river, with a town lying around the foot of the rock, and a smaller town, reached by a bridge of boats, on the far side of the river. I can't call to mind the name of the river, but the towns were called Jivvy—Great and Little Jivvy. [1] The prison stood at the very top of the rock, on the edge of a cliff that dropped a clean 300 feet to the river: not at all a pretty place to get clear of, and none so cheerful to live in on a day's allowance of one pound of brown bread, half a pound of bullock's offal, three-halfpence in money (paid weekly, and the most of it deducted for prison repairs, if you please!), and now and then a noggin of peas for a treat. They found half a dozen ships' companies already there, and enjoying themselves on this diet; the crew of the Minerva frigate, run ashore off Cherbourg; the crew of the Hussar, wrecked outside Brest; and—so queerly things fall out in this world—among them a parcel of poor fellows from Ardevora, taken on board the privateer Recovery of this port.

To keep to my story, though—which is about Abe Cummins and Billy Bosistow. It was just in these unhappy conditions that the difference in the two men came out. Abe took his downfall very quiet from the first. He had managed to keep a book in his pocket—a book of voyages it was—and carry it with him all the way from Dieppe, and it really didn't seem to matter to him that he was shut up, so long as he could sit in a corner and read about other folks travelling. In the second year of their captivity an English clergyman, a Mr. Wolfe, came to Jivvy, and got leave from the Commandant to fit up part of the prison granary for a place of worship and preach to the prisoners. It had a good effect on the men in general, and Abe in particular turned very religious. Mr. Wolfe took a fancy to him, and lent him an old book on "Navigation"—Hamilton Moore's; and over that Abe would sit by the hour, with his room-mates drunk and fighting round him, and copy out tables and work out sums. All his money went in pen and ink instead of the liquor which the jailors smuggled in.

Billy Bosistow was a very different pair of shoes. Although no drinker by habit, he fretted and wore himself down at times to a lowness of spirits in which nothing seemed to serve him but drinking, and fierce drinking. On his better days he was everybody's favourite; but when the mood fell on him he grew teasy as a bear with a sore head, and fit to set his right hand quarrelling with his left. Then came the drinking fit, and he'd wake out of that like a man dazed, sitting in a corner and brooding for days together. What he brooded on, of course, was means of escape. At first, like every other prisoner in Jivvy, he had kept himself cheerful with hopes of exchange, but it seemed the folks home in Ardevora had given up trying for a release, or else letters never reached them. And yet they must have known something of the case their poor kinsmen were in, for in the second year the Commandant sent for Abe and Billy, and informed them that, by the kindness of a young English lady, a Miss Selina Johns, their allowance was increased by two sols a day. He showed them no letter, but the increase was paid regularly for eight months; after which a new Commandant came, and it ceased. They could never find out if the supply ceased, or into whose pocket it went if it came.

From that time Bosistow had two things to brood upon—escape and Selina. But confinement is the ruination of some natures, and as year after year went by and his wits broke themselves on a stone wall, he grew into a very different man from the handy lad the Johnnies had taken prisoner. One thing he never gave up, and that was his pluck; and he had plenty of use for it when, after seven years, his chance came.

His first contrivance was to change names with an old American in the depot. It so happened that the captain of a French privateer had applied to the prison for a crew of foreigners to man his ship, then lying at Morlaix. The trick, by oiling the jailor's palm, was managed easily enough, and away Bosistow was marched with twenty comrades of all nations. But at the first stage some recruiting officers stopped them, insisting that they were Irish and not Americans, and must be enlisted to serve with Bonaparty's army in Spain. The prisoners to a man refused to hear of it, and the end was they were marched back to prison in disgrace, and, to cap everything, had their English allowance stopped on pretence that they had been in the French service. Yet this brought him a second chance, for being now declared an Irishman he managed to get himself locked up with the Irish, who had their quarters on the handier side of the prison; and that same night broke out of window with two other fellows, got over the prison wall, and hid in the woods beyond. But on the second day a party of wood-rangers attacked them with guns and captured them; and back they went, and were condemned to six years in irons.

This, as it turned out, didn't amount to much; for, while they were waiting to be marched off to the galleys, their jailor came with news that a son was born to the Emperor, and they were pardoned in honour of it. But instead of putting them back in their old quarters, he fixed them up for a fortnight in a room by themselves, being fearful that such bad characters would contaminate the other prisoners. This room was an upstairs one in a building on the edge of the ramparts, and after a few nights they broke through the ceiling into an empty chamber, which had a window looking on the roof. With a rope made of their bedclothes they lowered themselves clean over the ramparts on to the edge of the precipice over the river; and along this they passed—having no daylight to make them giddy—and took their way northwards across the fields.

Well, it doesn't come into my tale to tell you what they went through. Bosistow wrote out an account of it years after, and you shall read it for yourself. At one place they had to cross a river, and Billy being, like the most of our fishermen, no swimmer, his mates stuck him on a hurdle and pushed him over while they swam behind. They steered by the Pole Star (for, you understand, they could only travel by night) and also by a fine comet which they guessed to be in the north-west quarter.

You see the difference between these two fellows, and how little Providence made of it. Back in Jivvy, Abe Cummins was staring at this same comet out of his prison windows, and doing his sums and thinking of Selina Johns. And here was Bosistow following it up for freedom—with the upshot that he made the coast and was taken like a lamb in the attempt to hire a passage, and marched in irons from one jail to another, and then clean back the whole length of France, pretty well to the Mediterranean Sea. And then he was shut up in a prison on the very top of the Alps [2] and twice as far from home as he had been in Jivvy. That's a moral against folks in a hurry if ever there was one.

Well, let alone that while he was here he received a free pardon from the Emperor, which his persecutors took no notice of, he broke out of prison again, and was caught and brought back half-starving. And 'twasn't till Christmas of the year 'thirteen that orders came to march him right away north again, with all the prisoners, to a place in the Netherlands; and no sooner arrived than away to go again three hundred and fifty miles west-sou'-west for Tours, on the Loire river. I've figured it out on the map, and even that is enough to make a man feel sore in his feet. But what made Bosistow glad at the time, and vicious after, was that on his way he fell in with a draft of prisoners, and, among them, with Abe Cummins, who, so to say, had reached the same place by walking a tenth part of the distance. And, what's more, though a man couldn't very well get sleek in Jivvy, Abe had kept his bones filled out somehow, and knew enough navigation by this time to set a course to the Channel Fleet. 'Deed, that's what he began talking about on the first day's journey he and Billy trudged together after their meeting. And he began it after a spell of silence by asking, quiet like, "Have you been happening to think much about Selina Johns this last year or two?"

"Most every day," answered Billy.

"So have I," said Abe, and seemed to be pondering to himself. "She'll be a woman growed by this time," he went on.

"Turnin' twenty-seven," Billy agreed.

"That's of it," said Abe. "I've been thinking about her, constant."

"Well, look'ee here," spoke up Billy, "our little agreement holds, don't it?—that is, if we ever get out of this here mess, and Selina hasn't gone and taken a husband. Play fair, leave it to the maid, and let the best man win; that's what we shook hands over. If that holds, seemin' to me the rest can wait."

"True, true," says Abe; but after a bit he asks rather sly-like: "And s'posin' you're the lucky one, how do'ee reckon you're going to maintain her?"

"Why, on seaman's wages, I suppose; or else at the shoe-mending. I learnt a little of that trade in Jivvy, as you d'know."

"Well," says Abe, "I was reckonin' to set up school and teach navigation. Back in Ardevora I can make between seventy and eighty pounds a year at that game easy."

Bosistow scratched his head. "You've been making the most of your time. Now I've been busy in my way, too, but seemin' to me the only trade I've learned is prison-breakin'. Not much to keep a wife on, as you say. Still, a bargain's a bargain."

"Oh, sutt'nly," says Abe; "that is if your conscience allows it."

"I reckon I'll risk that," answers Billy, and no more passed.

From Tours the prisoners tramped south-east again, to a town called Riou, in the middle of France, and reached it in a snowstorm on March 1. Here they were billeted for five weeks or so, and here, one night, they were waked up and told that Bonaparty had gone scat, and they must come forth and dance with the townspeople in honour of it. You may be sure they heeled and toed it that night, and no girl satisfied unless she had an Englishman for a partner. But the next day it all turned out to be lies, and off they were marched again. To be short, 'twasn't till the end of April that they came to the river opposite Bordeaux, and were taken in charge by English red-coats, who told them they were free men. On the 28th of that month Abe and Billy, with forty others, were put on board a sloop and dropped down the river to the Dartmouth frigate, from which they were drafted on to the Lord Wellington, and again on to the Suffolk transport. And on May 4 the Suffolk, with six other transports, having about fifteen hundred released prisoners on board, weighed anchor under convoy for Plymouth before a fine breeze, S.E. by S.

On Monday, May 9, at half-past two in the afternoon—the wind still steady in the same quarter, and blowing fresh—the Suffolk sighted land, making out St. Michael's Mount; and fetching up to Mousehole Island, the captain hailed a mackerel boat to come alongside and take ashore some officers with despatches.

Abe Cummins and Billy Bosistow were both on deck, you may be sure, watching the boat as the fishermen brought her alongside. Not a word had been said between them on the matter that lay closest to their minds, but while they waited Billy fetched a look at the boat and another at Abe. "The best man wins," he said to himself, and edged away towards the ladder.

The breeze, as I said, was a fresh one, with a sea in the bay that kept the Suffolk rolling like a porpoise. A heavier lurch than ordinary sent her main channels grinding down on the mackerel boat's gunwale, smashing her upper strakes and springing her mizzen mast as she recovered herself.

"Be dashed," said one of the officers, "if I trust myself in a boat that'll go down under us between this and land!"

The rest seemed to be of his mind, too. But Billy, being quick as well as eager, saw in a moment that the damaged strakes would be to windward on the reach into Mousehole, and well out of harm's way in the wind then blowing, and also that her mainsail alone would do the job easy. So just as she fell off and her crew ran aft to get the mizzen lug stowed he took a run past the officer and jumped aboard, with two fellows close on his heels—one a Penzance fellow whose name I've forgot, and the t'other a chap from Ludgvan, Harry Cornish by name. I reckon the sight of the old shores just made them mazed as sheep, and like sheep they followed his lead. The officers ran to stop any more from copying such foolishness; and if they hadn't, I believe the boat would have been swamped there and then. As 'twas, she re-hoisted her big lug and away-to-go for Mousehole, the three passengers sitting down to leeward with their sterns in and out of the water to help keep her damaged side above mischief.

So on Mousehole Quay these three stepped ashore, and the first man to shake hands with them was Capen Josiah Penny, of the Perseverance trading ketch, then lying snug in Mousehole Harbour. Being a hearty man he invited them down to his cabin to take a drop of rum. The Penzance fellow, having only a short way to trudge, said "No, thank'ee," and started for home with a small crowd after him. But Bosistow and Cornish agreed 'twould be more neighbourly to accept, and, to tell the truth, they didn't quite know how to behave with so many eyes upon them. Cornish had on a soldier's red jacket with white facings, and a pair of blue trousers out at the knees, while Bosistow's trousers were of white cloth, and he carried a japanned knapsack at the back of his red shirt: and with a white-painted straw hat apiece, you may guess they felt themselves looking like two figures of fun.

So down they went to the Perseverance's cabin, and Capen Penny mixed them a stiff glass of rum and called them fine fellows, and mixed them two more glasses while they talked; and when the time came to say "so long," Billy was quite sure he didn't care for appearances one snap of his fingers.

They linked arms on the quay, where they found a crowd waiting for them, and many with questions to ask about absent friends, so that from Mousehole to Penzance it was a regular procession. And then they had to go to the hotel and tell the whole story over again, and answer a thousand and one questions about Penzance boys imprisoned at Jivvy. And all this meant more rum, of course.

It was seven in the evening, and day closing in, before they took the road again. Billy had fallen into a boastful mood, and felt his heart so warm towards Cornish that nothing would do but they must tramp it together so far as Nancledrea, which was a goodish bit out of Cornish's road to Ludgvan. By the time they reached Nancledrea Billy was shedding tears and begging Cornish to come along to Ardevora. "I'll make a man of 'ee there," he promised: "I will sure 'nough!" But Cornish weighed the offer, and decided that his mother at Ludgvan would be going to bed before long. So coming to a house with red blinds and lights within they determined to have a drink before parting.

In the tap-room they found a dozen fellows or so drinking their beer and smoking solemn, and an upstanding woman in a black gown attending on them. "Hullo!" says one of the men looking up, "What's this? Geezy-dancers?" [3]

"I'll soon tell 'ee about Geezy-dancers," says Billy. "Here, Missus—a pot of ale all round, and let 'em drink to two Cornish boys home from festerin' in French war prisons, while they've a'been diggin' taties!"

There was no resisting a sociable offer like this, and in two two's, as you might say, Billy was boasting ahead for all he was worth, and the company with their mouths open—all but the landlady, who was opening her eyes instead, and wider and wider.

"There isn' none present that remembers me, I dare say. My name's Bosistow—Billy Bosistow—from Ardevora parish. And back there I'm going this very night, and why? you ask. I ben't one of your taty-diggin' slowheads—I ben't. I've broke out of prison three times, and now—" He nodded at the company, whose faces by this time he couldn't very well pick out of a heap—"do any of 'ee know a maid there called Selina Johns? Because if so I warn 'ee of her. 'Why?' says you. Because that's the maid I'm goin' to marry, and I'm off to Ardevora to do it straight. Another pot of beer, please, missus."

"You've had a plenty, sir, seemin' to me," answered up the landlady, while the company tittered.

"And is this the way"—Billy stood up very dignified—"is this the way to welcome home a man who bled for his country? Is this your gratitude to a man who's spent ten o' the best years of his life in slavery while you've been diggin' taties?" I can't tell you why potatoes ran so much in the poor fellow's head; but they did, and he seemed to see the hoeing of them almost in the light of a personal injury. He spat on the floor. "And as for you, madam, these here boots of mine have tramped thousands of miles, and I shake off their dust upon you," he says.

"I wish you'd confine yourself to that, with your dirty habits!" the landlady answered up again, but Billy marched out with great dignity which was only spoiled by his mistaking the shadow across the doorway for a raised step. He didn't forget to slam the door after him; but he did forget to take leave of Harry Cornish, who had walked so far out of his way in pure friendliness.

For the first mile or so, what with his anger and the fresh air, Billy had a to-do to keep his pins and fix his mind on the road. But by-and-by his brain cleared a bit, and when he reached the hill over Ardevora, and saw the lights of the town below him, his mood changed, and he sat down on the turf of the slope with tears in his eyes.

"There you be," said he, talking to the lights, "and here be I; and somewheres down amongst you is the dear maid I've come to marry. Not much welcome for me in Ardevora, I b'law, though I do love every stone of her streets. But there's one there that didn' forget me in my captivity, and won't despise me in these here rags. I wish I'd seen Abe's face when I jumped aboard the boat. Poor old Abe!—but all's fair in love and war, I reckon. He can't be here till to-morrow at earliest, so let's have a pipe o' baccy on it."

He lit up and sucked away at his pipe, still considering the lights in the valley. Somehow they put him in mind of Abe, and how in the old days he and Abe used to come on them shining just so on their way home on Saturday nights from Bessie's Cove. Poor old mate!—first of all he pictured Abe's chap-fallen face, and chuckled; then he began to wonder if Abe would call it fair play. But all was fair in love and war: he kept saying this over to himself, and then lit another pipe to think it out.

Well, he couldn't; and so, after a third pipe, he pulled an old French cloak out of his knapsack and wrapped himself in it and huddled himself to sleep there on the slope of the hillside.

When he woke up the sun was shining and the smoke coming up towards him from the chimneys, and all about him the larks a-singing just as they'd carried on every fine morning since he'd left Ardevora. And somehow, though he had dropped asleep in a puzzle of mind, he woke up with not a doubt to trouble him. He hunted out a crust from his knapsack and made his breakfast, and then he lit his pipe again and turned towards Penzance. He was going to play fair.

On he went in this frame of mind, feeling like a man almost too virtuous to go to church, until by-and-by he came in sight of Nancledrea and the inn he'd left in such a hurry over night. And who should be sitting in the porchway, and looking into the bottom of a pint pot, but Abe Cummins!

"Why, however on earth did you come here?" asked Billy.

"Cap'en landed us between four and five this morning," said Abe.

"Well," said Billy, "I'm right glad to meet you, anyway, for—tell 'ee the truth—you're the very man I was looking for."

"Really?" says Abe, like one interested.

"You and no other. I don't mind telling 'ee I've been through a fire of temptation. You know why I jumped into that boat: it vexed you a bit, I dare say. And strickly speakin', mind you"—Billy took his friend by the button-hole—"strickly speakin' I'd the right on my side. 'Let the best man win' was our agreement. But you needn' to fret yourself: I ben't the man to take an advantage of an old friend, fair though it be. Man, I ha'n't been to Ardevora—I turned back. So finish your beer and come'st along with me, and we'll walk down to Selina Johns together and ask her which of us she'll choose, fair and square."

Abe set down his mug and looked up, studying the signboard over the door.

"Well," says he, "'tis a real relief to my mind to know you've played so fair. For man and boy, Bill, I always thought it of you."

"Yes, indeed," says Billy, "man and boy, it always was my motto."

"But as consarnin' Selina Johns," Abe went on, "there ain't no such woman."

"You don't tell me she's dead!"

"No; 'tis her first husband that's dead. She's Selina Widlake now."

"How long have 'ee knowed that?"

"Maybe an hour, maybe only three-quarters. Her name's Selina Widlake, and she owns this here public. What's more, her name isn't going to be Selina Widlake, but Selina Cummins. We've fixed it up, and she's to leave Nancledrea and take the Welcome Home over to Ardevora."

Billy Bosistow took a turn across the road, and, coming back, stuck his hands in his pockets and stared up at the sign overhead.

"Well! And I, that was too honourable—" he began.

"So you was," agreed Abe, pulling out his pipe. "You can't think what a comfort that is to me. But, as it turns out, 'twouldn't have made no difference. For she see'd you last evenin', and she was tellin' me just now that prison hadn't improved you. In fact she didn't like either your looks or your behaviour."

I've heard that he was just in time to pop inside and bolt the door after him. And now you know why Billy Bosistow and Abe Cummins could never bear the sight of each other from that day. But there! you can't be first and last too, as the saying is.

[1] Givet in the Ardennes. The river, of course, is the Meuse.

[2] Probably Briancon in the Hautes Alpes.

[3] Performers in a Christmas Play.

A TOWN'S MEMORY

A PENDANT TO THE FOREGOING

The returned Emigrant was not one of those who sometimes creep back to Tregarrick and scan the folk wistfully and the names over the shops till they bethink themselves of stepping up the hill to take a look at the cemetery, and there find all they sought. This man stood under the archway of the Pack-horse Inn (by A. Walters), with his soft hat tilted over his nose, a cigar in his mouth, hands in his trouser pockets, and legs a-straddle, and smoked and eyed the passers-by with a twinkle of humour.

He knew them all again, or nearly all. He had quitted Tregarrick for the Cape at the age of fifteen, under the wing of a cousin from the Mining District, had made money out there, and meant to return to make more, and was home just now on a holiday, with gold in his pocket and the merest trace of silver in his hair. He watched the people passing, and it all seemed very queer to him and amusing.

They were one and all acting and behaving just as they had used to act and behave. Some were a trifle greyer, perhaps, and others stooped a bit; but they went about their business in the old fashion, and their occupations had not changed. It was just as if he had wound up a clockwork toy before leaving England, and had returned after many years to find it still working. Here came old Dymond, the postman, with the usual midday delivery, light as ever, and the well-remembered dot-and-go-one gait. The maids who came out to take the letters were different; in one of them the Emigrant recognised a little girl who had once sat facing him in the Wesleyan day-school; but the bells that fetched them out were those on which he had sounded runaway peals in former days, and with his eyes shut he could have sworn to old Dymond's double-knock. The cart that rattled its load of empty cans up the street belonged to Nicholas Retallack ("Old Nick"), the milkman, and that was Retallack beside it, returning from his morning round. The Emigrant took the cigar from his mouth and blew a lazy cloud. But for Retallack he might never have seen South Africa or known Johannesburg. Retallack had caught him surreptitiously milking the Alderney into a battered straw hat, and had threatened a summons. There had been a previous summons with a conviction, and the Mayor had hinted at the Reformatory, so the Emigrant had been packed off. And here he was, back again; and here was Retallack trudging around, the same as ever.

In the window across the road a saddler sat cutting out a strap, and reminding the Emigrant of a certain First of April when he had ventured in and inquired for half a pint of strap-oil. It might almost be the same strap, as it certainly was the same saddler.

Down at the street corner, by the clock, a couple of Town Councillors stood chatting. While the Emigrant looked there came round the corner a ruck of boys from school chivvying and shouting after an ungainly man, who turned twice and threatened them with a stick. The Town Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the ungainly man. It was Dicky Loony, the town butt. He had chivvied the imbecile a hundred times in just the same fashion, yelling "Black Cat!" after him as these young imps were yelling—though why "Black Cat" neither he nor the imps could have told. But Dicky had always resented it as he resented it now, wheeling round, shaking his stick, and sputtering maledictions. A stone or two flew harmlessly by. The Emigrant did not interfere.

As yet no one had recognised him. He had arrived the night before, and taken a room at the Pack-horse, nobody asking his name; had sat after supper in a corner of the smoking-room and listened to the gossip there, saying nothing.

"Who's he travellin' for?" somebody had asked of Abel Walters, the landlord. "He ain't a commercial. He han't got the trunks, only a kit-bag. By the soft hat he wears I should say a agent in advance. Likely we'll have a circus before long."

His father and mother were dead these ten years. He had sent home money to pay the funeral expenses and buy a substantial headstone. But he had not been up to the cemetery yet. He was not a sentimental man. Still, he had expected his return to make some little stir in Tregarrick, and now a shade of disappointment began to creep over his humour.

He flung away the end of his cigar and strolled up the sunny pavement to a sweetshop where he had once bought ha'porths of liquorice and cinnamon-rock. The legend, "E. Hosking, Maker of Cheesecakes to Queen Victoria," still decorated the window. He entered and demanded a pound of best "fairing," smiling at the magnificence of the order. Mrs. Hosking—her white mob—cap and apron clean as ever—offered him a macaroon for luck, and weighed out the sweets. Her hand shook more than of old.

"You don't remember me, Mrs. Hosking?"

"What is it you say? You must speak a little louder, please, I'm deaf."

"You don't remember me?"

"No, I don't," she said composedly. "I'm gone terrible blind this last year or two."

The Emigrant paid for his sweets and walked out. He had bought them with a purpose, and now bent his steps down Market Street. At the foot of the hill he paused before a row of white-washed cottages. A green fence ran along their front, and a pebbled path; and here he found a stout, matronly woman bent over a wash-tub.

"Does Mrs. Best live here?" he asked.

The woman withdrew about a dozen pins from her mouth and answered all in one breath:—

"She isn't called Best any longer; she married agen five year ago; second husbing, he died too; she doesn' live here any more."

With this she stuck the pins very deliberately, one by one, in the bosom of her print gown, and plunged her hands into the wash-tub again.

The Emigrant stood nonplussed for a moment and scratched the back of his head, tilting his soft hat still further forward on his nose.

"She used to be very fond of me when I was a boy," he said lamely.

"Yes?" The tone seemed to ask what business that could be of hers.

"She came as nurse to my mother when I was born. I suppose that made her take a fancy to me."

"Ah, no doubt," replied the woman vaguely, and added, while she soaped a long black stocking, "she did a lot o' that, one time and another." "She had a little girl of her own before I left Tregarrick," the Emigrant persisted, not because she appeared interested—she did not, at all—but with some vague hope of making himself appear a little less trivial. "Lizzie she called her. I suppose you don't know what has become of the old woman?"

"Well, considerin' that I'm her daughter Elizabeth"—she lengthened the name with an implied reproof—"I reckon I ought to know."

The Emigrant's hand sought and crushed the big packet of sweets well into his pocket. He flushed scarlet. At the same time he could hardly keep back a smile at his absurd mistake. To be here with lollipops for a woman of thirty and more!

"You haven't any little ones of your own?"

"No, I haven't. Why?"

"Oh, well; only a question. My name is Peter Jago—Pete, I used to be called."

"Yes?"

He took notice that she had said nothing of her mother's whereabouts; and concluded, rightly, that the old woman must be in the workhouse.

"Well, I'm sorry," he said. "I thought I might be able to do something for her."

The woman became attentive at last.

"Any small trifle you might think o' leavin' with me, sir, it should duly reach her. She've failed a lot, lately."

"Thank you; I'll think it over. Good-day."

He strolled back to the Pack-horse and ate his dinner. Abel Walters, coming in after with a pint of port to his order, found the Emigrant with a great packet of sugared almonds and angelica spread open beside his cheese.

"I suppose, sir," said Mr. Walters, eyeing the heap, "you've travelled a great deal in foreign parts."

Two days passed. The Emigrant visited the cemetery, inspected his parents' tombstone, and found about it a number of tombstones belonging to people whose faces he had not hitherto missed. But after his experiment upon Elizabeth Best he had not declared himself a second time. Indeed, his humour by this had turned sour, and his mind was made up that, if no one recognised him spontaneously, he would leave his native town as quietly as he had come—would go back without revealing himself to a soul. It would be unfair to say that he felt aggrieved; but he certainly dismissed a project, with which he had often played in South Africa, of erecting a public drinking-fountain on Mount Folly, as the citizens of Tregarrick call the slope in front of the County Assize Hall.

The third day was Sunday, and he went to church in the morning. The Vicar who preached was a stranger to him; but in the sidesman who came down the aisle afterwards with the offertory-plate he recognised one Billy Smithers, who had been a crony of his some twenty years ago; who had, in fact, helped him more than once to milk Retallack's Alderney. He felt in his pocket and dropped a sovereign into the plate. The sidesman halted and rubbed his chin.

"Han't you made a mistake?" he asked in a stage whisper.

The Emigrant waved his hand in rather a lordly manner, and William Smithers, sidesman, proceeded down the aisle, wondering, but not suspecting.

The Vicar recited the prayer for the whole state of Christ's Church militant here on earth, and the Emigrant joined the crowd trooping out by the western door.

But in the press just outside the door two hands suddenly seized his right hand and shook it violently. He turned and faced—Dicky Loony.

"Me know, eh? Pete—Mas'r Pete!" The idiot bent over his hand and mumbled it with his wry mouth, then shook it again, peering up in his face. "Eh? Pete—Pete. Yes. All right!"

The Emigrant looked down on this poor creature at whom he had flung scores of stones, but never a kind word. And the idiot ran on:—

"Dicky, eh?"—tapping his chest. "You know—Dicky. Pete—Pete, eh?"— and he made the gesture of one flinging a stone. "Often, ha, ha! So high." He spread his hand, palm downward, about five feet from the ground.

"Well I'm blest!" said the Emigrant softly. They stood now on the green together, a little apart from the crowd.

"So high, eh? Li'l boy, eh? Fling—me know!" He took the emigrant's hand again and shook it, smiling and looking him straight in the eyes with innocent gaiety. "These boys—no good; no good now. Pete, he fling so. Li'l boy—quite li'l boy. Me know, eh? Dicky know!"

"Well," repeated the Emigrant; "I'm blest, but this is funny!"



THE LADY OF THE RED ADMIRALS

"All day within the dreamy house The doors upon their hinges creak'd, The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked, Or from the crevice peer'd about, Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without."—MARIANA.

My eyes had been occupied with the grey chimneys below, among the Spanish chestnuts, at the very moment when I slipped on the northern face of Skirrid and twisted my ankle. This indeed explains the accident; and the accident explains why my interest in the house with the grey chimneys suddenly became a personal one. Five miles separated me from my inn in Aber town. But the white smoke of a goods train went crawling across the green and cultivated plain at my feet; and I knew, though I carried no map, that somewhere under the slope to my left must hide the country station of Llanfihangel. To reach it I must pass the house, and there, no doubt, would happen on someone to set me on the shortest way.

So I picked up my walking-stick and hobbled down the hillside, albeit with pain. Where the descent eased a little I found and followed a foot-track, which in time turned into a sunk road scored deep with old cart-ruts, and so brought me to a desolate farmstead, slowly dropping to ruin there in the perpetual shadow of the mountain. The slates that had fallen from the roof of byre and stable lay buried already under the growth of nettle and mallow and wild parsnip; and the yard-wall was down in a dozen places. I shuffled through one of these gaps, and almost at once found myself face to face with a park-fence of split oak—in yet worse repair, if that were possible. It stretched away right and left with promise of a noble circumference; but no hand had repaired it for at least twenty years. I counted no less than seven breaches through which a man of common size might step without squeezing; availed myself of the nearest; and having with difficulty dragged my disabled foot up the ha-ha slope beyond, took breath at the top and looked about me.

The edge of the ha-ha stood but fifty paces back from an avenue of the most magnificent Spanish chestnuts I have ever seen in my life. A few of them were withering from the top; and under these many dead boughs lay as they had fallen, in grass that obliterated almost all trace of the broad carriage-road. But nine out of ten stood hale and stout, and apparently good for centuries to come. Northward, the grey facade of the house glimmered and closed their green prospective, and towards it I now made my way.

But, I must own, this avenue daunted me, as a frame altogether too lordly for a mere limping pedestrian. And therefore I was relieved, as I drew near, to catch the sound of voices behind the shrubberies on my right hand. This determined me to take the house in flank, and I diverged and pushed my way between the laurels in search of the speakers.

"A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse! Lobelia, how many horses has your father in stable? Red, white, or grey?"

"One, Miss Wilhelmina; an' that's old Sentry-go, and father says he'll have to go to the knacker's before another winter."

"Then he shall carry me there on his back: with rings on my fingers and bells on my toes"—

She rode unto the knacker's yard, And tirled at the pin: Right glad were then the cat's-meat men To let that lady in!

—especially, Lobelia, when she alighted and sat upon the ground and began to tell them sad stories of the death of kings. But they cut off Sentry-go's head and nailed it over the gate. So he died, and she very imprudently married the master knacker, who had heard she was an heiress in her own right, and wanted to decorate his coat-of-arms with an escutcheon of pretence; and besides, his doctor had recommended a complete change "—

"Law, miss, how you do run on!"

The young lady who had given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two leaden statuettes (headless)—a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat, with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old tartan shawl, which she had pinned about her to imitate a horse-woman's habit. As she paced to and fro between the leaden statuettes—

pedes vestis defluxit ad imos Et vera incessu patuit dea,

—and I noted almost at once that two or three butterflies ("red admirals" they were) floated and circled about her in the sunlight. A child of commoner make, and perhaps a year older, dressed in a buff print frock and pink sunbonnet, looked up at her from the foot of the steps. The faces of both were averted, and I stood there for at least a minute on the verge of the laurels, unobserved, considering the picture they made, and the ruinous Jacobean house that formed its background.

Never was house more eloquent of desolation. Unpainted shutters, cracking in the heat, blocked one half of its windows. Weather-stains ran down the slates from the lantern on the main roof. The lantern over the stable had lost its vane, and the stable-clock its minute-hand. The very nails had dropped out of the gable wall, and the wistaria and Gloire de Dijons they should have supported trailed down in tangles, like curtains. Grass choked the rain-pipes, and moss dappled the gravel walk. In the border at my feet someone had attempted a clearance of the weeds; and here lay his hoe, matted with bindweed and ring-streaked with the silvery tracks of snails.

"Very well, Lobelia. We will be sensible house-maid and cook, and talk of business. We came out, I believe, to cut a cabbage-leaf to make an apple-pie"—