In another matter we worked round the intention of the Act more successfully. We have never been able to understand why the Liberal party in the House of Commons should object to Local Self-Government taking place in public-houses. The objection implies a distrust of the people. And it so happens that down here we always take a glass of grog before inaugurating an era; we should as soon think of praetermitting this as of launching a ship without cracking a bottle on her stem. So we asked the Chairman, and finding there was no law to prevent us, we ordered in half a dozen trays from the "King of Prussia," across the way. The Vicar, who is a particular man about his food and drink, pulled out a pocket Vesuvius and a bottle of methylated spirit, and boiled his kettle in the ante-room.

Well, there we were sitting in the Town Hall, as merry as grigs, each man with his pipe and glass, and ready for any amount of Self-Government. And the Chairman stood up and briefly explained the business of the meeting. He said the Parish Councils Act was the logical result of Magna Charta, and would have the effect of making us all citizens of our own parish; and that as the expense of this would come upon the rates, we should endeavour to use our hardly won enfranchisement with moderation. "We had met to choose eleven good men and true to administer the parish business for the coming year, or to nominate as many good men and true as we pleased. If more than eleven were nominated"—this was foolishness, for he could see there was hardly a man in the room that hadn't a nomination paper in his hand—"he would ask for a show of hands, and any candidate defeated upon this might demand a poll. He hoped we would vote in no spirit of sectarian or partisan bitterness, but as impartial citizens jealous only for the common weal; at the same time he was not in favour of letting down the Squire, Sir Felix Felix-Williams, too easily."

So we handed up our nomination papers, and while the Chairman and overseers were checking them off by the register, Old Pilot James got upon his legs.

He said that as long as he could remember—man and boy—he had always practised carols in that very Town Hall upon the first Tuesday in December. The Vicar—as soon as he had done boiling the kettle in the next room—would come in and confirm his words. The practices were held on the first Tuesday in December, and on each successive Tuesday until St. Thomas's Day, when they had one extra. If St. Thomas's Day fell on a Tuesday, then the extra practice would be on Wednesday. He had received no notice of the change.

Thomas Rabling rose and explained that at a meeting held last Saturday, the singers had agreed to postpone the first practice in view of Local Self-Government. Mr. James had been present and had not objected.

George William Oke—a blockmaker, who had never sung a carol or attended a practice in his life—stood up and said, rather unnecessarily, that this was the first he'd heard of it.

Old Pilot James, answering Mr. Rabling, admitted that he might have been present at the meeting on Saturday. But he was deaf, as everybody knew—and Mr. Rabling no less than the rest—and hadn't heard a word of what was said. If he had, he should have objected. But, deaf or not deaf, he still took a delight in singing; and, if only as a matter of principle, he was going to sing, "God rest you merry, gentlemen," then and there. He was an old man, and they might turn him out if they liked; but he warned them it would be brutal, and might lead to a summons.

Well, the Chairman was making a long business of the nomination papers: so just to pass the time we let the old man sing. It seemed churlish, too, not to join in the chorus; and by and by the whole meeting was singing with a will. We sang "Tidings of Comfort and Joy," and "I saw Three Ships," and the Cherry-tree Carol, and "Dives and Lazarus." We had come to that verse where Dives is carried off to sit on the serpent's knee, when the Chairman rose and said that only five of the nomination papers were spoilt, and he declared sixty-seven ladies and gentlemen to be duly nominated.

We all pricked up our ears at the word "ladies." However, there turned out to be one lady only; and when the Chairman read out her name, her husband—a naval pensioner, William Carclew—stood up and explained that he had only meant it for a joke upon the old woman, just to give her a start, and he hoped it would go no farther. This seemed fair and natural enough; but the Chairman said if Mrs. Carclew wished to withdraw her name she had better do so at once by word of mouth. So Carclew had to run home and fetch her. While he was gone we finished "Dives and Lazarus."

In five minutes' time back came Carclew, followed by Mrs. Carclew, who announced—in a rich brogue—that since her man had conspired to put this fool's trick upon her, why now she would stand, begob! "Arrah now, people, people, and a gay man he'll look houlding the babby, while I'm afther superinthendin' the Parush!" So the Chairman declared her duly nominated. It will surprise me if she does not head the poll on the 17th.

The Chairman now invited us to interrogate the candidates, if we wished. By this time we were getting pretty well into the way of Self-Government, and all enjoying it amazingly. Of course our lady candidate, Mrs. Carclew, had the first few questions; but these were mostly jocular and domestic, and I am bound to say the lady gave as good as was brought. The only sensible question came from Old Pilot James, who asked if she believed in the ballot. For his part he had never given a vote for anybody since Forster brought in the ballot in 'seventy-one. He favoured peace and quiet; and he liked to walk up to the hustings and give his vote, and hear 'em say, "Well done!" or "You '—' old scoundrel!" as the case might be. He didn't mind being called "a '—' old scoundrel," provided it was said to him by a gentleman who weighed his words. Since Forster brought in the ballot he had always gone to the poll regular. He always took his paper and wrote opposite the names: "Shan't say a word. Got my living to get. Yours obediently, Matthias James"—and would advise everybody else to do the same.

After him, Renatus Hansombody, carpenter, rose at the back of the hall and announced that he had a question to put to the Doctor. The Doctor, by the way, is one of the most popular of the candidates.

"I should like," said Mr. Hansombody, "to ask the Doctor if he will kindly explain to the company Clauses 5, 6, and 13 of the new Act?"

The Chairman protested that this would occupy more time than the meeting had to spare.

"In that case," said Mr. Hansombody, "I will confine myself to a test question. The Act provides that the Chairman of a Parish Meeting is to be elected by the Meeting. Now suppose the votes for two gentlemen are equal. In such a case what would the Doctor advise? For until you have a Chairman elected, there is no Chairman to give a casting vote."

The Doctor thought that, since we had long ago elected a Chairman by acclamation, the question was superfluous.

"And you call him a straightforward man!" Mr. Hansombody exclaimed, turning round on the Meeting. "What I say is, are we to have pusillanimity in our first Parish Council? What I say is, that a gentleman who gives a working man such an answer to such a question—"

At this point the door opened and a shrill voice asked, "Is Hansombody here?"

"I am here," said Hansombody, "to expose impostors!"

"Because if so, he must please come home at once. Mrs. Hansombody's cryin'-out!"

"I always said," remarked Old Pilot James, "that this cussed Act would scare half the women in the Parish before their time."

"Beggin' your pard'n, Doctor," began his denouncer lamely.

"Not at all, not at all," said the Doctor. "We must keep these matters altogether outside the sphere of party politics." (Loud cheering.)

"Then I'll have to ask you to step along with me."

The two political opponents picked up their hats, and left the room together.

The Chairman rose as the door closed behind them. "I think," he said, "this should be a lesson to us to accept the Act in the spirit in which it was given. If nobody else wishes to ask a question, I will now take a show of hands: but I warn you all it'll be a dreary business."

At this, the first hint of tedium, the company rose, drained their glasses, and made for the door, leaving the sixty-six remaining candidates to vote for themselves.

"Well," Mr. Rabling said to me, as we stood in the street; "so far, this here Parish Meeting might be like any other Parish Meeting in the Kingdom!"

I doubted, but did not contradict him.

"There's one thing," he added; "Ironmonger Loveday has laid in a whole stock of sixpenny fire-balloons for to-night: and there isn't a breath of wind. His boy's very clever with the scissors and paste: and he've a-stuck a tissue-paper text on each—'Success to the Charter of our Liberties,' and 'Rule Britannia' and 'God Speed the Plough'; and nothing more than the sixpence charged."

Simple, egregious, delectable town! As I leaned out last night, watching the young moon and smoking the last pipe before bed-time, a dozen of these gay balloons rose from the waterside and drifted on the faint north wind, seaward, past my window. Another dozen followed, and another, until from one point and another of the dark shore a hundred balloons soared over the water, challenging the stars.



II.—THE SIMPLE SHEPHERD.

Troy Town, 29 January, 1895.

"And then, as he set the bowl of goat's milk on the board, that simple Tyrolean turned to me with a magnificent sweep of the hand, and exclaimed—"

Ah, my dear Prince, if you could only tell me what he exclaimed, you would restore a whole parish to its natural slumbers. For indeed he is playing the deuce with our nights, here in Troy, that guileless Tyrolean.

How trivial are the immediate causes of great events! On New Year's Day our excellent Vicar, having bought himself a Whitaker's Almanack for 1895, presented his last year's copy to the Working Men's Reading Room. In itself you would have thought this action of the Vicar's signified no more than a generous desire to keep his parishioners abreast of the times. In effect it inaugurated the Great Temperance Movement in Troy—a social revolution of which we are only now, after four long weeks, beginning to see the end.

You must not, of course, suppose that we had never heard of temperance before. No, Prince, we do not live so far from Abyssinia as all that. In a general way we understood it to be a good thing, and upon that ground (optimists that we are) believed its ultimate success to be but a question of time. But I think I may say we never regarded it as a pressing question—such as the reform of the House of Lords, for instance. The general impression (I call it no more) was that we should all be temperate sooner or later; possibly as the next step after espousing our Deceased Wife's Sister.

Well, our Vicar laid his copy of the 1894 almanack on the reading-room table at 11.30 a.m., or thereabouts, looked over the local papers for a few minutes, and left the building at ten minutes to noon. I get this information from Matthias James, our respected pilot, who happened to be in the room, reading the Shipping Gazette. It is confirmed by Mr. Hansombody and four or five other members. At noon precisely, Mr. Rabling (our gasman and an earnest Methodist) came in. His eye, as it wandered round in search of an unoccupied newspaper, was arrested by the scarlet and green binding of Whitaker. He picked the book up, opened it casually, and read:

The proof gallons of spirits distilled during the year ending March 31st, 1893, were 10,691,576 in England, 20,107,077 in Scotland, and 13,615,668 in Ireland. . . .

He tells me he was on the point of closing the book as a voluptuous work of fiction, when a second and even more dazzling paragraph took his eye.

The beer charged with duty in the United Kingdom was 32,104,320 barrels, 532,047 barrels of which were exported on drawback, leaving 31,572,283 barrels for home consumption. There were also 38,580 barrels of beer, and 1,653 barrels of spruce imported from abroad.

And again:

The spirits "retained for home consumption" in the year were:— rum, 4,268,438 gallons; brandy, 2,668,499 gallons; "other sorts," 824,078 gallons. The home consumption of tobacco in the year reached the total of 63,765,053 lbs. Though the tobacco duty was reduced by 4d. a lb. in 1887-8, the annual yield averages 1,336,240 pounds sterling more than it was ten years ago. Smuggling still continues. . . .

Mr. Rabling was declaiming aloud by this time, and when he read out about the smuggling, one or two of his audience gazed up at the ceiling and agreed that the fellow had some of his facts right. Old Pilot James added that the book could hardly be a work of fiction, since the Vicar had left it on the table, and the Vicar was not one to scatter lies except upon due deliberation.

Mr. Rabling left the room and walked straight up to the Vicarage, and the Vicar assured him that the Customs Returns were almost as accurate as if they had been prepared under a Conservative Government. You must excuse these details, Prince. They are really essential to the story.

At 12.55 Mr. Rabling (after a hasty dinner) handed across the counter of the post-office a telegram addressed to his religious superintendent at Plymouth. The message ran:

"Here anual consumption of beer over three milion barls. Greatly distresd, Rabling."

The telegraph clerk kindly corrected all the errors of spelling in the above, save one, which escaped him. By "here" Mr. Rabling had intended "hear" (scilicet "I hear," or "we hear"). The answer arrived from Plymouth within an hour.

"Am sending missionary next train."

Thus our Temperance movement began. The missionary arrived before set of sun, borrowed a chair from Mr. Rabling, carried it down to the town quay and mounted it. A number of children at once gathered round, in the belief that the stranger intended a tumbling performance. The missionary eyed them and began, "Ah, if I can once get hold of you tender little ones—" an infelicitous opening, which scattered them yelling, convinced that the Bogey-man had come for them at last. Upon this he changed his tone and called "O Gomorrah!" aloud several times in a rich baritone voice, which fetched quite a little crowd of elders around him from the reading-room, the fish-market, the "King of Prussia" Inn, and other purlieus of the quay.

Then the missionary gave us a most eloquent and inspiriting address, in the course of which he mentioned that if all the beer annually consumed in England were placed in bottles, and the bottles piled on one another, it would reach within five hundred miles of the moon. He asked us if this were not an intolerable state of things and a disgrace to our boasted civilisation? Of course, there could be no two questions about it. We are not unreasonable, down in Troy. We only want a truth to be brought home to us. The missionary said that if only a man would deny himself his morning glass, in eight months he could buy himself a harmonium, besides being better in mind and body. And he wound up by inviting us to attend a meeting in the Town Hall that evening.

Well, at the evening performance he made us all feel so uncomfortable that, as soon as it was over, we held an informal gathering in the bar of the "King of Prussia," and decided that temperance must be given a fair trial. The missionary had laid particular stress on the necessity of taking the rising generation and taking them early. So we decided to try it first upon the children, and see how it worked.

The missionary was delighted with our zeal. (Our zeal has often surprised and delighted strangers.) And he helped with a will. Early next morning he organised what he called a "Little Drops of Water League," and a juvenile branch of the Independent Order of Good Templars, entitled the "Deeds not Words Lodge of Tiny Knights of Abstinence." Each of these had its insignia. He sent us down the patterns as soon as he returned to Plymouth, and within a week the drapers' shops were full of little scarves and ribbons—white and gold for the girls, pink and silver for the boys. By this time there wasn't a child under fourteen but had taken the pledge; and as for narrow blue ribbon, it could not be supplied fast enough. I heard talk, too, of a juvenile fife-and-drum band; and the mothers had already begun stitching banners for the processions. I tell you it was pleasant, over a pipe and glass, to watch all these preparations, and think how much better the world would be when the rising generation came to take our places.

But, of course, no popular movement ever took root in our town without a "tea-drink" or some such public function. And you may judge of our delight when, on applying to the Vicar, we heard that he had been talking to the Squire, Sir Felix Felix-Williams, and Sir Felix would gladly preside. Sir Felix suggested the following programme—(1) A Public Lecture in the Town Hall, with a Magic Lantern to exhibit the results of excessive drinking. The missionary would lecture, and Sir Felix would take the chair. (2) The lecture over, the children were to form outside in procession and march up behind the Town Band to Sir Felix's great covered tennis-court, where tea would be spread.

I have mentioned the Magic Lantern and the Town Band, and must say a word here on each. When the late Government set aside a sum of money for Technical Instruction throughout the country, Sir Felix, who, as our chief landlord, may be supposed to know best what we need, decided that we needed to learn drawing. His idea was, by means of a magic lantern, to throw the model upon a screen for the class to copy; and in the heat of his enthusiasm he purchased two magic lanterns at 25 pounds apiece before consulting the drawing-master, who pointed out that a drawing-lesson, to be thorough, must be conducted in a certain amount of light, whereas a magic lantern is only effective in a dark room. So Sir Felix was left with two very handsome lanterns on his hands, and burned for an opportunity of turning them to account. Hence his alacrity in suggesting a lecture.

As for the Town Band, it was started last autumn with a view to rendering our little town more attractive than ever to summer visitors. The bandsmen have practised sedulously through the winter, and are making great strides; but—if fault must be found—I am sorry that our bandmaster, Mr. Patrick Sullivan (an Irishman), left the purchase and selection of the music to his brother, who lives in London and plays the piccolo at one of the music-halls. The result— but you shall hear.

Punctually at 3.30 p.m. last Wednesday, Sir Felix drove down to the Town Hall in his brougham. The body of the Hall was already packed, and the missionary busy on the platform with his lanterns and white sheet. Mr. Rabling and an assistant stood ready to close the shutters and turn up the gas at the proper moment. The band waited outside; and as Sir Felix alighted, mounted the steps and entered the hall, bowing to right and left with the air of a real patriarch, the musicians crashed out the tune of—

They all take after me, Take whisky in their tea. . . .

Fortunately no one associated the tune with its words. Sir Felix mounted the platform; and after sipping a little water (such was our thoroughness that a glassful stood ready for each speaker), began to introduce the lecturer, whose name he mispronounced. The missionary was called Stubbs; and by what mnemonic process Sir Felix converted this into Westmacott I have never been able to guess. However, for purposes of introduction that afternoon Westmacott he was and Westmacott he remained. Now Sir Felix, though not a very old man, has a rambling habit of speech, and tends in public discourse to forget alike the thread of his argument and the lapse of time. Conceive then our delight on his announcing that he would confine himself to a brief anecdote.

"The beauty of temperance," said Sir Felix, "was once brought home to me very forcibly in rather peculiar circumstances. Many years ago I was travelling afoot in the Tyrol, and chancing to pass by a shepherd's cottage, turned aside to inquire my way. The good people of the house, with native hospitality, pressed me to tarry an hour and partake of their mid-day meal. I acceded. The fare, as you may suppose, was simple. There was no intoxicating liquor. But never shall I forget the gesture or the words of that simple shepherd as he placed a bowl of goat's milk before me on the board. His words—a short sentence only—left such an impression on my mind that to this day I never seat myself at table without repeating them to myself. Three times a day for over thirty years I have repeated those words and seen in imagination the magnificent gesture which accompanied them. The words of my simple shepherd were—"

(Here Sir Felix reproduced the simple shepherd's magnificent gesture, and paused.)

"And then," he pursued, "as he set the bowl of goat's milk on the board, that simple Tyrolean turned to me with a magnificent sweep of the hand"—gesture repeated—"and exclaimed—"

Here followed a prolonged pause, and it slowly dawned upon the audience that by a pardonable trick of memory Sir Felix was for the moment unable to recall the words he had repeated thrice a day for the last thirty years.

The situation was awkward. At the back of the platform Mr. Rabling rose to it. He had once a tenor voice of moderate calibre which he was used to exert publicly in the days of Penny Readings. And the word "Tyrolean" now suggested to him a national song which had long reposed in his musical cabinet at home. He leaned forward, screened his mouth with one hand and whispered—

"Sir Felix—"

"Hey?" Sir Felix whipped round.

"Did a' say" (with sudden and piercing jodel) "Lul-ul-i-e-tee! Lul-ul-i-ee! Lul-ul—"

Sir Felix stamped his foot; and I think we all felt glad for Rabling at that moment that he held his cottage on a ninety-nine years' lease. But the lecture was spoilt before it began. The missionary piled his statistics to the moon, and turned down the gas, and showed us "The Child: What will he become?" But we took no interest in that question. The question for us was, What exactly did that simple Tyrolese shepherd say to Sir Felix? And that is just what we have been asking each other for a week past.

Sir Felix recovered himself towards the close of the address, and at the close acknowledged our vote of thanks in a pleasant little speech—in which, however, his Tyrolean friend was not so much as alluded to. It was pretty, too, to see the Little Knights of Abstinence afterwards, with their sashes and banners, marching uphill after the band, like so many children of Hamelin after the Pied Piper. Only, my dear Prince, what tune do you think the band was playing? Why—

Come where the booze is cheaper, Come where the pints hold more . . .!

The missionary, I am told, is already beginning to talk as if we disappointed him. But this was certain to befall a man of one idea in a place of so many varied interests.



LEGENDS.



I.—THE LEGEND OF SIR DINAR.

A puff of north-east wind shot over the hill, detached a late December leaf from the sycamore on its summit, and swooped like a wave upon the roofs and chimney-stacks below. It caught the smoke midway in the chimneys, drove it back with showers of soot and wood-ash, and set the townsmen sneezing who lingered by their hearths to read the morning newspaper. Its strength broken, it fell prone upon the main street, scattering its fine dust into fan-shaped figures, then died away in eddies towards the south. Among these eddies the sycamore leaf danced and twirled, now running along the ground upon its edge, now whisked up to the level of the first-storey windows. A nurse, holding up a three-year-old child behind the pane, pointed after the leaf—

"Look—there goes Sir Dinar!"

Sir Dinar was the youngest son and the comeliest of King Geraint, who had left Arthur's Court for his own western castle of Dingerein in Roseland, where Portscatho now stands, and was buried, when his time came, over the Nare, in his golden boat with his silver oars beside him. To fill his siege at the Round Table he sent, in the lad's sixteenth year, this Dinar, who in two years was made knight by King Arthur, and in the third was turned into an old man before he had achieved a single deed of note.

For on the fifth day after he was made knight, and upon the Feast of Pentecost, there began the great quest of the Sancgrael, which took Sir Lancelot from the Court, Sir Perceval, Sir Bors, Sir Gawaine, Sir Galahad, and all the flower of the famous brotherhood. And because, after their going, it was all sad cheer at Camelot, and heavy, empty days, Sir Dinar took two of his best friends aside, both young knights, Sir Galhaltin and Sir Ozanna le Coeur Hardi, and spoke to them of riding from the Court by stealth. "For," he said, "we have many days before us, and no villainy upon our consciences, and besides are eager. Who knows, then, but we may achieve this adventure of the Sancgrael?" These listened and imparted it to another, Sir Sentrail: and the four rode forth secretly one morning before the dawn, and set their faces towards the north-east wind.

The day of their departure was that next after Christmas, the same being the Feast of Saint Stephen the Martyr. And as they rode through a thick wood, it came into Sir Dinar's mind that upon this day it was right to kill any bird that flew, in remembrance that when Saint Stephen had all but escaped from the soldiers who guarded him, a small bird had sung in their ears and awakened them. By this, the sky was growing white with the morning, but nothing yet clear to the sight: and while they pressed forward under the naked boughs, their horses' hoofs crackling the frosted undergrowth, Sir Dinar was aware of a bird's wing ruffling ahead, and let fly a bolt without warning his companions; who had forgotten what morning it was, and drew rein for a moment. But pressing forward again, they came upon a gerfalcon lying, with long lunes tangled about his feet and through his breast the hole that Sir Dinar's bolt had made. While they stooped over this bird the sun rose and shone between the tree-trunks, and lifting their heads they saw a green glade before them, and in the midst of the glade three pavilions set, each of red sendal, that shone in the morning. In the first pavilion slept seven knights, and in the second a score of damsels, but by the door of the third stood a lady, fair and tall, in a robe of samite, who, as they drew near to accost her, inquired of them—

"Which of you has slain my gerfalcon?"

And when Sir Dinar confessed and began to make his excuse, "Silly knight!" said she, "who couldst not guess that my falcon, too, was abroad to avenge the blessed Stephen. Or dost think that it was a hawk, of all birds, that sang a melody in the ears of his guards?"

With that she laughed, as if pacified, and asked of their affairs; and being told that they rode in search of the Sancgrael, she laughed again, saying—

"Silly knights all, that seek it before you be bearded! For three of you must faint and die on the quest, and you, sir," turning to Sir Dinar, "must many times long to die, yet never reach nearer by a foot."

"Let it be as God will," answered Sir Dinar. "But hast thou any tidings, to guide us?"

"I have heard," said she, "that it was seen latest in the land of Gore, beyond Trent Water." And with her white finger she pointed down a narrow glade that led to the north-west. So they thanked her and pricked on, none guessing that she herself was King Urience' wife, of Gore, and none other than Queen Morgan le Fay, the famous enchantress, who for loss of her gerfalcon was lightly sending Sir Dinar to his ruin.

So all that day they rode, two and two, in the strait alley that she had pointed out; and by her enchantments she made the winter trees to move with them, serried close on either hand, so that, though the four knights wist nothing of it, they advanced not a furlong for all their haste. But towards nightfall there appeared close ahead a blaze of windows lit and then a tall castle with dim towers soaring up and shaking to the din of minstrelsy. And finding a great company about the doors, they lit down from their horses and stepped into the great hall, Sir Dinar leading them. For a while their eyes were dazed, seeing that sconces flared along the walls and the place was full of knights and damsels brightly clad, and the floor shone. But while they were yet blinking, a band of maidens came and unbuckled their arms and cast a shining cloak upon each; which was hardly done when a lady came towards them out of the throng, and though she was truly the Queen Morgan le Fay, they knew her not at all, for by her necromancy she had altered her countenance.

"Come, dance," said she, "for in an instant the musicians will begin."

The other three knights tarried awhile, being weary with riding; but Sir Dinar stepped forward and caught the hand of a damsel, and she, as she gave it, looked in his eyes and laughed. She was dressed all in scarlet, with scarlet shoes, and her hair lay on her shoulders like waves of burnished gold. As Sir Dinar set his arm about her, with a crash the merry music began; and floating out with him into the dance, her scarlet shoes twinkling and her tossed hair shaking spices under his nostrils, she leaned back a little on his arm and laughed again.

Sir Galhaltin was leaning by the doorway, and he heard her laugh and saw her feet twinkle like blood-red moths, and he called to Sir Dinar. But Sir Dinar heard only the brassy music, nor did any of the dancers turn their heads, though Sir Galhaltin called a second time and more loudly. Then Sir Sentrail and Sir Ozanna also began to call, fearing they knew not what for their comrade. But the guests still drifted by as they were clouds, and Sir Dinar, with the red blood showing beneath the down on his cheeks, smiled always and whirled with the woman upon his arm.

By and by he began to pant, and would have rested: but she denied him.

"For a moment only," he said, "because I have ridden far to-day."

But "No" she said, and hung a little more heavily upon his arm, and still the music went on. And now, gating upon her, he was frightened; for it seemed she was growing older under his eyes, with deep lines sinking into her face, and the flesh of her neck and bosom shrivelling up, so that the skin hung loose and gathered in wrinkles. And now he heard the voices of his companions calling about the door, and would have cast off the sorceress and run to them. But when he tried, his arm was welded around her waist, nor could he stay his feet.

The three knights now, seeing the sweat upon his white face and the looks he cast towards them, would have broken in and freed him: but they, too, were by enchantment held there in the doorway. So, with their eyes starting, they must needs stay there and watch; and while they stood the boards became as molten brass under Sir Dinar's feet, and the hag slowly withered in his embrace; and still the music played, and the other dancers cast him never a look as he whirled round and round again. But at length, with never a stay in the music, his partner's feet trailed heavily, and, bending forward, she shook her white locks clear of her gaunt eyes, and laughed a third time, bringing her lips close to his. And the poison of death was in her lips as she set them upon his mouth. With that kiss there was a crash. The lights went out, and the music died away in a wail: and the three knights by the door were caught away suddenly and stunned by a great wind.

Awaking, they found themselves lying in the glade where they had come upon the three red pavilions. Their horses were cropping at the turf, beside them, and Sir Dinar's horse stood in sight, a little way off. But Sir Dinar was already deep in the forest, twirling and spinning among the rotten leaves, and on his arm hung a corrupting corpse. For a whole day they sought him and found him not (for he heard nothing of their shouts), and towards evening mounted and rode forward after the Sancgrael; on which quest they died, all three, each in his turn.

But Sir Dinar remained, and twirled and skipped till the body he held was a skeleton; and still he twirled, till it dropped away piecemeal; and yet again, till it was but a stain of dust on his ragged sleeve. Before this his hair was white and his face wizened with age.

But on a day a knight in white armour came riding through the forest, leaning somewhat heavily on his saddle-bow: and was aware of an old decrepit man that ran towards him, jigging and capering as if for gladness, yet caught him by the stirrup and looked up with rheumy tears in his eyes.

"In God's name, who art thou?" asked the knight. He, too, was past his youth; but his face shone with a marvellous glory.

"I am young Sir Dinar, that was made a knight of the Round Table but five days before Pentecost. And I know thee. Thou art Sir Galahad, who shouldst win the Sancgrael: therefore by Christ's power rid me of this enchantment."

"I have not won it yet," Sir Galahad answered, sighing. "Yet, poor comrade, I may do something for thee, though I cannot stay thy dancing."

So he stretched out his hand and touched Sir Dinar: and by his touch Sir Dinar became a withered leaf of the wood. And when mothers and nurses see him dancing before the wind, they tell this story of him to their children.



II.—"FLOWING SOURCE."

Master Simon's inn, the "Flowing Source"—"Good Entertainment for Man and Beast"—leant over the riverside by the ferry, a mile and a half above Ponteglos town. The fresh water of Cuckoo River met the salt Channel tide right under its windows, by the wooden ladder where Master Simon chained his ferry-boat. Fourteen miles inland, a brown trout-stream singing down from the moors, plunged over a ledge of rock into the cool depths of Cuckoo Valley. Thenceforward it ran by beds of sundew, water-mint and asphodel, under woods so steeply converging that the traveller upon the ridges heard it as the trickle of water in a cavern. But just above Master Simon's inn the valley widened out into arable and grey pasture land, and the river, too, widened and grew deep enough to float up vessels of small tonnage at the spring tides. In summer, from the bow-window of his coffee-room, Master Simon could follow its course down through the meadows to the church-tower of Ponteglos and the shipping congregated there about the wharves, and watch in the middle distance the sails of a barge or shallow trading-ketch moving among the haymakers. But from November to March, when the floods were out, the "Flowing Source" stood above an inland sea, with a haystack or two for lesser islets. Then the river's course could be told only by a line of stakes on which the wild fowl rested. The meadows were covered. Only a few clumps of reed rose above the clapping water and shook in the northerly gales. And then, when no guests came for weeks together, and the salt spray crusted the panes so thickly that looking abroad became a weariness of the spirit, Master Simon would reach down his long gun from the chimney-piece and polish it, and having pulled on his wading-boots and wrapped a large woollen comforter round his throat and another round his head, would summon his tap-boy, unmoor the ferry-boat, and go duck-shooting. For in winter birds innumerable haunt the riverside here—wild duck, snipe, teal, and widgeon; curlews, fieldfares, and plovers, both green and golden; rooks, starlings, little white-rumped sandpipers; herons from the upper woods and gulls from seaward. Master Simon had fine sport in the short days, and the inn might take care of itself, which it was perfectly well able to do. Its foundations rested on sunken piles of magnificent girth—"as stout as myself," said Master Simon modestly—and on these it stood so high that even the great flood of 'fifty-nine had overlapped the kitchen threshold but once, at the top of a spring tide with a north-westerly gale behind it; and then had retreated within the hour. "It didn't put the fire out," boasted Master Simon.

He was proud of his inn, and for some very good reasons. To begin with, you would not find another such building if you searched England for a year. It consisted almost wholly of wood; but of such wood! The story went that on a blowing afternoon, in the late autumn of 1588, two Spanish galleons from the Great Armada—they had been driven right around Cape Wrath—came trailing up the estuary and took ground just above Ponteglos. Their crews landed and marched inland, and never returned. Some say the Cornishmen cut them off and slew them. For my part, I think it more likely that these foreigners found hospitality, and very wisely determined to settle in the country. Certain it is, you will find in the upland farms over Cuckoo Valley a race of folks with olive complexions, black curling hair and beards, and Southern names—Santo, Hugo, Jago, Bennett, Jose. . . .

At all events, the Spanyers (Spaniards) never came back to their galleons, which lay in the ooze by the marsh meadows until the very birds forgot to fear them, and built in their rigging. By the Roles d'Oleron—which were, in effect, the maritime laws of that period— all wrecks or wreckage belonged to the Crown when neither an owner nor an heir of a late owner could be found for it. But in those days the king's law travelled lamely through Cornwall; so that when, in 1605, these galleons were put up to auction and sold by the Lord of the Manor—who happened to be High Sheriff—nobody inquired very closely where the money went. It is more to the point that the timber of them was bought by one Master Blaise—never mind the surname; he was an ancestor of Master Simon's, and a well-to-do wool-comber of Ponteglos.

This Master Blaise already rented the ferry-rights by Flowing Source, and certain rights of fishery above and below; and having a younger son to provide for, he conceived the happy notion of this hostelry beside the river. For ground-rent he agreed to carry each Michaelmas to the Lord of the Manor one penny in a silk purse; and the lord's bailiff, on bringing the receipt, was to take annually of Master Blaise and his heirs one jack of ale of the October brewing and one smoke-cured salmon of not less than fifteen pounds' weight. These conditions having been duly signed, in the year 1606 Master Blaise laid the foundations of his inn upon the timbers of one galleon and set up the elm keelson of the other for his roof-tree. Its stout ribs, curving outwards and downwards from this magnificent balk, supported the carvel-built roof, so that the upper half of the building appeared—and indeed was—a large inverted hull, decorated with dormer windows, brick chimneys, and a round pigeon-house surmounted by a gilded vane. The windows he took ready-made from the Spaniard's bulging stern-works. And for signboard he hung out, between two bulging poop-lanterns, a large bituminous painting on panel, that had been found on board the larger galleon, and was supposed to represent the features of her patron, Saint Nicholas Prodaneli. But the site of the building had always been known as Flowing Source, and by this name and no other Master Blaise's inn was called for over two hundred years.

By this time its timber roof had clothed itself with moss upon the north side, and on the west the whole framework inclined over the river, as though the timbers of the old galleon regretted their proper element and strained towards it tenderly, quietly, persistently. But careful patching and repairing had kept the building to all appearance as stout as ever; and any doubts of its stability were dispelled in a moment by a glance at Master Simon, the landlord. Master Simon's age by parish register fell short of forty, but he looked at least ten years older: a slow man with a promising stomach and a very satisfactory balance at the bank; a notable breeder of pigeons and fisher of eels. He could also brew strong ale, and knew exactly how salmon should be broiled. He had heard that the world revolves, and decided to stand still and let it come round to him. Certainly a considerable number of its inhabitants found their way to the "Flowing Source" sooner or later. Marketers crossed the ferry and paused for a morning drink. In the cool of the day quiet citizens rambled up from Ponteglos with rod and line, or brought their families by boat on the high evening tide to eat cream and junket, and sit afterwards on the benches by the inn-door, watching the fish rise and listening to the song of the young people some way up stream. Painters came, too, and sketched the old inn, and sometimes stayed for a week, having tasted the salmon. Pigeon-breeders dropped in and smoked long pipes in the kitchen with Master Simon, and slowly matured bets and matches. And once or twice in the summer months a company of pilgrims would arrive—queer literary men in velveteen coats, who examined all the rooms and furniture as though they meant to make a bid for the inn complete; who talked with outlandish tongues and ordered expensive dinners, and usually paid for them next morning, rather to Master Simon's surprise. It appeared that there had been once, in the time of Master Simon's grandfather, a certain pot-boy at the "Flowing Source" who ran off into the world and became a great poet; and these pilgrimages were made in his honour. Master Simon found this story somehow very creditable to himself, and came in time to take almost as much pride in it as in his pigeons and broiled salmon. Regularly after dinner on these occasions he would exhibit an old pewter pint-pot to the pilgrims, and draw their attention to the following verse, scratched upon it—as he asserted—by the poet's own hand:

Who buys beef buys bones, Who buys land buys stones, Who buys eggs buys shels, But who buys ale buys nothing els.

And the pilgrims feigned credulity according as they valued Master Simon's opinion of their intelligence.

But most welcome of all were the merchant-captains from Ponteglos, among whom custom had made it a point of honour to report themselves at the "Flowing Source" within twenty-four hours after dropping anchor by Ponteglos Quay. When or why or how the custom arose nobody was old enough to remember; but a master mariner would as soon have thought of sailing without log or leadline as of putting in and out of Ponteglos without tasting Master Simon's ale—"calling for orders," as they put it. Master Simon had never climbed a sea-going ship except to shake hands with a friend and wish him good passage and return to shore with the pilot; but the teak walls of his parlour were lined with charts of such very remote parts of the globe, and his shelves with such a quantity of foreign china and marine curiosities, and he spoke so familiarly of Galapagos, Batavia, Cape Verde, the Horn, the Straits of Magellan, and so forth, and would bring his telescope so knowingly to bear on the gilt weathercock over Ponteglos church tower, that until you knew the truth you would have sworn half his life had been spent on the quarter-deck. And while the sea-captains—serious men, attired in blue cloth, wearing rings in their ears—sat and smoked canaster and other queer tobaccos in painted china pipes, and talked of countries whose very names conjured up visions of parrots, and carved idols, and sharks, and brown natives in flashing canoes, Master Simon would put a shrewd question or two and wag his head over the answers as a man who hears just what he expected. And sometimes towards the close of the sitting, if he knew his company very well, he would reward them with his favourite and only song, "The Golden Vanitee":

A ship I have got in the North Countree, And I had her christened the Golden Vanitee; O, I fear she's been taken by a Spanish Gal-a-lee, As she sailed by the Lowlands low!

In some hazy way he had persuaded himself that the Spanish galleon of the ballad was the very ship whose timbers over-arched him and his audience; and for the moment, being himself inverted (so to speak) by the potency of his own singing, he blew out his chest and straddled out his thick calves and screwed up his eyes, quite as if his roof-tree were right-side-up once more in blue water, and he on deck beside the weather-rail. But the mood began to pass as soon as he bolted the front door behind his guests, and Ann the cook poured him out his last cup of mulled ale and withdrew with the saucepan. And another noon would find him seated under his leaning house-front, his eyes half-closed, his attention divided between the whisper of the tide and the murmur in the pigeon-cotes overhead, his body at ease and his soul content. His was a happy life—or had been, but for two crumpled rose-leaves.

To begin with, there were those confounded pot-boys. It puzzled Master Simon almost as much as it annoyed him; he paid fair wages and passed for a good employer; but he could not keep a pot-boy for twelve months. As a matter of fact, I know the river to have been the bottom of the mischief—the river, and perhaps the talk of the ship-captains. It might satisfy Master Simon to sit and watch the salmon passing up in autumn towards their spawning beds, and rubbing, as they went, their scales against his landing-stage to clear them of the sea-lice; to watch them and their young passing seaward in the early spring; to watch and wait and spread his nets in the due season. But for the youngsters this running water was a constant lure—the song of it and the dimple on it. It coaxed them, as it coaxed the old galleon, to lean over and listen. And the moment that listening became intolerable, they were off. Only one of them—the poet before mentioned—had ever expressed any desire to return and revisit—

The shining levels and the dazzled wave Emerging from his covert, errant long, In solitude descending by a vale Lost between uplands, where the harvesters Pause in the swathe, shading their eyes to watch Some barge or schooner stealing up from sea; Themselves in sunset, she a twilit ghost Parting the twilit woods . .

Ah, loving God! Grant, in the end, this world may slip away With whisper of that water by the bows Of such a bark, bearing me home—thy stars Breaking the gloom like kingfishers, thy heights Golden with wheat, thy waiting angels there Wearing the dear rough faces of my kin!

I doubt if he meant it, any more than Virgil meant his "flumina amem silvasque inglorius." At any rate, the public knew what was due to itself, and when the time came, gave the man a handsome funeral in Westminster Abbey. Among his pall-bearers walked the Prime Minister, the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the Royal Academy of Arts, and (as representing rural life) the Chief Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

What else disturbed the placid current of Master Simon's cogitations? Why, this: he was the last of his race, and unmarried.

For himself, he had no inclination to marry. But sometimes, as he shaved his chin of a morning, the reflection in his round mirror would suggest another. Was he not neglecting a public duty?

Now there dwelt down at Ponteglos a Mistress Prudence Waddilove, a widow, who kept the "Pandora's Box" Inn on the quay—a very tidy business. Master Simon had known her long before she married the late Waddilove; had indeed sat on the same form with her in infants' school—she being by two years his junior, but always a trifle quicker of wit. He attended her husband's funeral in a neighbourly way, and, a week later, put on his black suit again and went down—still in a neighbourly way—to offer his condolence. Mistress Prudence received him in the best parlour, which smelt damp and chilly in comparison with the little room behind the bar. Master Simon remarked that she must be finding it lonely. Whereupon she wept.

Master Simon suggested that he, for his part, had tried pigeon-breeding, and found that it alleviated solitude in a wonderful manner. "There's my tumblers. If you like, I'll bring you down a pair. They're pretty to watch. Of course, a husband is different—"

"Of course," Mistress Prudence assented, her grief too recent to allow a smile even at the picture of the late Waddilove (a man of full habit) cleaving the air with frequent somersaults. She added, not quite inconsequently:

"He is an angel."

"Of course," said Master Simon, in his turn.

"But I think," she went on, quite inconsequently, "I would rather have a pair of carriers."

"Now, why in the world?" wondered Master Simon. He kept carrier pigeons, to be sure. He kept pigeons of every sort—tumblers, pouters, carriers, Belgians, dragons . . . the subdivisions, when you came to them, were endless. But the carriers were by no means his show-birds. He kept them mainly for the convenience of Ann the cook. Ann had a cunning eye for a pigeon, and sometimes ventured a trifle of her savings on a match; and though in his masculine pride he never consulted her, Master Simon always felt more confident on hearing that Ann had put money on his bird. Now, when a match took place at some distant town or flying-ground, Ann would naturally be anxious to learn the result as quickly as possible; and Master Simon, finding that the suspense affected her cookery, had fallen into the habit of taking a hamper of carriers to all distant meetings and speeding them back to "Flowing Source" with tidings of his fortune. Apart from this office—which they performed well enough—he took no special pride in them. The offer of a pair of his pet tumblers, worth their weight in gold, had cost him an effort; and when Mistress Prudence, ordinarily a clear-headed woman, declared that she preferred carriers, she could hardly have astonished him more by asking for a pair of stock-doves.

"Oh, certainly," he answered, and went home and thought it over. Women were a puzzle; but he had a dim notion that if he could lay hand on the reason why Mistress Prudence preferred ordinary carriers to prize tumblers, he would hold the key to some of the secrets of the sex. He thought it over for three days, during which he smoked more tobacco than was good for him. At about four o'clock in the afternoon of the third day, a smile enlarged his face. He set down his pipe, smacked his thigh, stood up, sat down again, and began to laugh. He laughed slowly and deliberately—not loudly—for the greater part of that evening, and woke up twice in the night and shook the bedclothes into long waves with his mirth.

Next morning he took two carriers from the cote, shut them in a hamper, and rowed down to Ponteglos with his gift. But Mrs. Waddilove was not at home. She had started early by van for Tregarrick (said the waitress at the "Pandora's Box") on business connected with her husband's will. "No hurry at all," said Master Simon. He slipped a handful of Indian corn under the lid, and left the hamper "with his respects."

Then he rowed home, and spent the next two days after his wont; the only observable difference being the position of his garden chair. It stood as a rule under the shadow of the broad eaves, but now Master Simon ordered the tap-boy to carry it out and set it by a rustic table close to the river's brink, whence, as he smoked, he could keep comfortable watch upon the pigeon-cote.

"You'll catch a sunstroke," said Ann the cook. "I hope you're not beginning to forget how to take care of yourself."

"Well, I hope so too," Master Simon answered; but he did not budge.

On the morning of the third day, however, he saw that which made him step indoors and mount to the attic under the cote. Having opened with much caution a trap-door in the roof, he slipped an arm out and captured a carrier pigeon.

The bird carried a note folded small and bound under its wing with a thread of silk. Master Simon opened the note and read:

If you loves me as I loves you, No knife can cut our loves in two.

He had prepared himself for a hearty chuckle; but he broke out with a profuse perspiration instead. "Oh, this is hustling a man!" he ingeminated, staring round the empty attic like a rabbit seeking a convenient hole. "Not three weeks buried!" he added, with another groan, and began to loosen his neck-cloth.

While thus engaged, he heard a flutter above the trap-door, and a second pigeon alighted, with a second note, also bound with a silken thread.

"Lor-a-mercy!" gasped Master Simon.

But the second note was written in a different hand, and ran as follows:

"I could die of shame. It was all that hussy of a girl. She did it for a joke. I'll joke her. But what will you be thinking?—P. W."

Master Simon rowed down to Ponteglos that very afternoon, and the two carriers went back with him. Happiness seemed to have shaken its wings and quite departed from "Pandora's Box"; but a twinkle of something not entirely unlike hope lurked in the corners of the waitress's eyes—albeit their lids were red and swollen—as she ushered Master Simon into the best parlour.

"What can you be thinking of me?" began the widow. Her eyes were red and swollen, too.

"I've brought back the pigeons."

"I can never bear the sight of them again!"

"You might begin different, you know," suggested Master Simon, affably. "Some little message about the weather, for instance. Have you given that girl warning to leave?"

"You see, I'm so lonely here . . ."

Some three months after this, and on an exceptionally fine morning in September, Master Simon put Harmony, his celebrated almond hen, into her travelling hamper, and marched over to the crossroads to take coach for Illogan, in the mining district, where the matches for the championship cup were to be flown that year.

Now Ann the cook had ventured no less than five pounds upon Harmony. Five pounds represented a half of her annual wage, and a trifle less than half of her annual savings. Therefore she spent the greater part of the following afternoon at her window, gazing westward in no small perturbation of spirit.

It wanted a few minutes to five when a carrier pigeon came travelling across the zenith, shot downwards suddenly, and alighted on the roof. Ann climbed to the trap-door and put out a hand. The bird was preening his feathers, and allowed himself to be taken easily.

In circumstances less agitating Ann had not failed to observe that the thread about the messenger's wing was not of the kind that Master Simon used. But her eyes opened wide as they fell on the handwriting, and still wider as she read:

"It is all for the best, perhaps. If only people have not begun to talk.—Prudence."

A second messenger arrived towards evening with word of Harmony's success. But the news hardly relaxed Ann's brow, which kept a pensive contraction even when her master arrived next evening and poured out her winnings on the table from the silver challenge cup.

She wore this frown at intervals for a fortnight, and all the while maintained an unusual silence which puzzled Master Simon. Then one morning he heard her in the kitchen scolding the tap-boy with all her pristine heartiness. That night, after mulling her master's ale, she turned at the door, saucepan in hand, and coughed to attract attention.

"Well, Ann; what is it?"

"You've been philanderin'."

"Hey! Upon my word, Ann—"

Ann produced the Widow Waddilove's note and flattened it out under Master Simon's eyes. And Master Simon blushed painfully.

"Are you goin' to marry the woman?" Ann demanded.

"I think not."

"I reckon you will."

"Well, you see, there has been a hitch. She won't leave the 'Pandora's Box,' and I'm not going to budge from 'Flowing Source.' If a woman won't put herself out to that extent—Besides, she cooks no better than you."

"Not so well. You wasn't thinking, by any chance, o' marrying me?"

"Ann, you're perfectly brazen! Well, no; to tell you the plain truth, I wasn't."

"That's all right; because I've gone and promised myself to a young farmer up the valley."

"What's his name?"

"I shan't tell you; for the reason that I've a second to fall back on, if I find on acquaintance that the first won't do. But first or second, I'll marry one or t'other at the month-end, and so I give you notice."

Master Simon sighed. "Well! well! I must get on as best I can with Tom for a while." Tom was the tap-boy.

"Tom's going, too. I bullied him so this morning that he means to give notice to-morrow; that is, if he don't save himself the trouble by running off to sea."

"The twelfth in five years!" ejaculated Master Simon, stopping his pipe viciously.

"And small blame to them! Married man or mariner—that's what a boy is born for. Better dare wreck or wedlock than sit here and talk about both. Take my advice, master, and marry the widow!"

Ann carried out her own matrimonial programme, at any rate, with spirit and determination. Finding the first young farmer satisfactory, she espoused him at the end of the month, and turned her back on "Flowing Source." And Tom the tap-boy fulfilled her prophecy and ran away to sea. And the old inn leaned after him until its timbers creaked. And the autumn floods rose and covered the meadows.

Master Simon sat and smoked, and made his own bed, and accomplished some execrable cookery in the intervals of oiling his duck-gun. Even duck-shooting becomes a weariness when a man has to manage gun and punt single-handed. One afternoon he abandoned the sport in an exceedingly bad temper, and pulled up to the jaws of Cuckoo Valley. Here he landed, and after an hour's trudge in the marshy bottoms had the luck to knock over two couple of woodcock.

He rowed back with his spoil, and was making fast to the ferry steps, when a thought struck him. He shipped the paddles again, and pulled down to Ponteglos. The short day was closing, and already a young moon glimmered on the floods.

The woodcock were cooked to a turn; juicier birds never reclined on toast. The waitress removed the cloth and returned with a kettle; retired and returned again with a short-necked bottle, a glass and spoon, sugar, a nutmeg, and a lemon; retired with a twinkle in her eye.

"To fortify you!" said Mistress Prudence, rubbing a lump of sugar gently on the lemon-rind.

"The night air," Master Simon murmured.

"—Against the damp house you're going back to," the lady corrected.

"You talk without giving it a trial."

"As you talk, in your parlour, of deep-sea voyages."

"As a ship's captain you would respect me perhaps?"

"No, for you haven't the head. But I should like your pluck. If I saw you setting off for sea in earnest, I would run out and give you a chance to steer a woman instead of a ship. You would find her safer."

Master Simon emptied his glass, rose, and wound his great comforter about his neck. The widow saw him to the door.

"You're a very obstinate woman," he said.

And with this he unmoored his boat and rowed resolutely homewards. A strong wind came piping down on the back of a strong tide, and Master Simon arched his shoulders against it.

"Married man or mariner!" it piped, as he rounded the first bend.

"I know my own mind, I believe," said Master Simon to himself. "There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it; and for salmon, 'Flowing Source' will beat Christchurch any day, I've always maintained."

"Married man or mariner!" piped the wind in the words of Ann the cook.

Master Simon pulled his left paddle hard and rounded the second bend.

"Married man or mar—"

Crash!

His heels flew up and his head struck the bottom-boards. Then, in a moment, the boat was gone, and a rush of water sang in his ears and choked him. He saw a black shadow overhanging, and clutched at it.

Mistress Prudence stood in her doorway on the quay, as Master Simon had left her. In the room above, the waitress blew out her candle, drew up the blind, and opened her window to the moonlight.

"Selina!" the mistress called.

Selina thrust out her head.

"What's that coming down the river?"

A black, unshapely mass was moving swiftly down towards the quay.

"I think 'tis a haystack," Selina whispered, and then, "Lord save us all, there's a man on it!"

"A man?" cried the widow, shrilly. "What man?"

A voice answered the question, calling for help out of the river—a voice that she knew.

"What is it?" she called back.

"I think," quavered Master Simon, "I think 'tis the roof o' 'Flowing Source'!"

Mistress Prudence ran down the quay steps, cast off the first boat that lay handy, and pulled towards the dark mass sweeping seaward. As it crossed ahead of her bows, she dropped the paddles, ran to the painter, and flung it forward with all her might.

The "Pandora's Box" Inn stands on Ponteglos Quay to this day. And all that is left of "Flowing Source" hangs on the wall of its best parlour—four dark oak timbers forming a frame around a portrait, the portrait of a woman of middle age and comfortable countenance. In the right-hand top corner of the picture, in letters of faded gold, runs the legend—VXOR BONA INSTAR NAVIS.



EXPERIMENTS.



I.—A YOUNG MAN'S DIARY.

Monday, Sept. 7th, 189-. I am one year old to-day.

I imagine that most people regard their first birthday as something of an event; a harvest-home of innocence, touched with I know not how delicate a bloom of virginal anticipation; of emotion too volatile for analysis, or perhaps eluding analysis by its very simplicity. But whatever point the festival might have had for me was rudely destroyed by my parents, who chose this day for jolting me back to London in a railway-carriage. We have just arrived home from Newquay, Cornwall, where we have been spending the summer holidays for the sake of my health, as papa has not scrupled to blurt out, once or twice, in my presence.

There is a strain of coarseness in papa; or perhaps I should say—for the impression it leaves is primarily negative, as of something manque—an incompleteness in the sensitive equipment. As yet it can hardly be said to embarrass me; though I foresee a time when I shall have to apologise for it to strangers. There is nothing absurd in this. If a man may take pride in his ancestry, why may he not apologise for his papa? My papa will be forgiven, for he is so splendidly virile! He left our compartment at Bristol and did not return again until the train stopped at Swindon for him to eat a bun. In the interval, mamma took me from nurse and endeavoured to hush me by singing—

Father's gone a-hunting. . . .

Which was untrue, for he had lit a pipe and withdrawn to a smoking compartment. My nurse—an egregious female—had previously remarked, "The dear child do take such notice of the puff-puff!" As a matter of fact, I took no interest in the locomotive; but I had observed it sufficiently to be sure that it offered no facilities for hunting. A few months ago I might have accepted the explanation: for our family has affinity with what is vulgarly termed the upper class, and my father inherits its crude and primitive instincts; among them a passion for the chase. His appearance, as he returned to our compartment, oppressed me for the hundredth time with a sense of its superabundant and even riotous vitality. His cheeks were glowing, and his whiskers sprouted like cabbages on either side of his otherwise clean-shaven face. An indefinable flavour of the sea mingled with the odour of tobacco which he diffused about the carriage. It seemed as if the virile breezes of that shaggy Cornish coast still blew about him; and I felt again that constriction of the chest from which I had suffered during the past month.

After all, it is good to be back in London! Newquay, with its obvious picturesqueness, its violent colouring, its sands, rocks, breakers and by-laws regulating the costume of bathers, merely exasperated my nerves. How far more subtle the appeal of these grey and dun-coloured opacities, these tent-cloths of fog pressed out into uncouth, dumbly pathetic shapes by the struggle for existence that seethes below it always—always! Decidedly I must begin to-morrow to practise walking. It seems a necessary step towards acquainting myself with the inner life of these inchoate millions, which must be well worth knowing. Papa, on arriving at our door, plunged into an altercation with a cab-tout. What a man! And yet sometimes I could find it in my heart to envy his robustness, his buoyancy. A Huntley and Palmer's Nursery Biscuit in a little hot water has somewhat quieted my nerves, which suffered cruelly during the scene. I believe I shall sleep to-night.

Tuesday, 8th. The beginning of Sturm und Drang; I am learning to walk. Moreover I have surprised in myself, during the day, a tendency to fall in love with my nurse. On the pretence that walking might give me bandy legs she caught me up and pressed me to her bosom. We have no affinities; indeed, beyond cleanliness and a certain unreasoning honesty, she can be said to possess no attributes at all. I am convinced that a serious affection for her could only flourish on an intellectual atrophy; and yet for a while I abandoned myself. We went out into the bright streets together, and it was delicious to be propelled by her strong arms. We halted, on our way to Kensington Gardens, to listen to a German band. The voluptuous waltz-music affected me strangely, and I was sorry that, owing to my position in the vehicle, her face was hidden from me. In the midst of my ecstasy, a square object on wheels came round the street corner. It was painted a bright vermilion and bore the initials of K.V.—"Kytherea Victrix!" I cried in my heart; but as it passed, at a slow pace, it rained a flood of tears upon the dusty road-way. For some time after I sat in a strange calm, but with a sensation in the region of the diaphragm as if I had received a severe blow; and in truth I had. But the shock was salutary, and by the time that nurse and I were seated together by the Round Pond, I was able to listen to her talk without a quiver of the eyelids. Poor soul! What malefic jest of Fate led her to select the story of Georgie-Porgie?

Georgie-Porgie, pudding and pie. . . .

It is as irrelevant as life itself.

Georgie-Porgie, pudding and pie, Kissed the girls and made them cry. . . .

Why pudding? Why pie? Why—if you ask this—why any realism? These concrete accidents solidify a thin and abstract love-story for our human comprehension. Or are they, perchance, symbolical? Georgie-Porgie's promises, like pie-crust, were made to be broken. He—

Kissed the girls and made them cry. When the girls came out to play, Georgie-Porgie ran away.

—Simple solution of the difficulty! And I am already learning to walk! Poor woman!

Wednesday, 9th. I am troubled whenever I reflect on the subject of heredity. It terrifies me to think that I may grow up to resemble papa. Mamma, too, is hardly less a savage: she wore diamonds in her hair when she came up to the nursery, late last night, to look at me. She believed that I was asleep; but I wasn't, and I never in my life felt so sorry that I couldn't speak. The appalling barbarism of those trinkets! I got out of the cradle and rocked myself to sleep.

It is raining this afternoon—the sky weeping like a Corot—and I am forced to stay indoors and affect an interest in Noah and his ark! Nurse's father came up and accosted her in the Gardens this morning. He is one of the Submerged Tenth, and extremely interesting. On the threat of running off with me and pitching me neck and crop into the Round Pond, he extracted half a crown from her. She gave him the coin docilely. I found myself almost hoping that he would raise his price, that I might discover how much the poor creature was ready to sacrifice for my sake. She is looking pale this afternoon; but this may be because I cried half the night and kept her awake. The fact is, I was cutting a tooth. I have given up learning to walk; but have some idea of trying somnambulism instead.

Thursday, 10th. To-day I was spanked for the first time. When I have stopped crying, I mean to analyse my sensations. Sometimes, in Kensington Gardens, I feel like a boy who is never growing up. . .



II.—THE CAPTAIN FROM BATH.

Extract from the Memoirs of GABRIEL FOOT, Highwayman.

Our plan of attack upon Nanscarne House was a simple one.

The old baronet, Sir Harry Dinnis, took a just pride in his silver-ware. Some of it dated from Elizabeth: for Sir Harry's great-great-grandfather, as the unhappy alternative of melting it down for King Charles, had taken arms against his Majesty and come out of the troubles of those times with wealth and credit.

The house, too, was Elizabethan, shaped like the letter L, and, like that letter, facing eastward. The longer arm, which looked down the steep slope of the park, contained the entrance-hall, chapel, dining-hall, principal living-rooms, and kitchens.

The ground-floor of the other (and to us more important) arm was taken up by the housekeeper's rooms, audit-room and various offices, the butler's bedroom, and the strong-room, where the plate lay. On the upper floor a long gallery full of pictures ran from end to end, with a line of doors on the southern side, all opening into bedrooms, except one which led to the back-stairs.

Now, properly speaking, the strong-room was no strong-room at all. It had an ordinary deal door and an ordinary country-made lock. But in some ways it was very strong indeed. The only approach to it on the ground-floor lay through the butler's bedroom, of which you might call it but a cupboard. It had no window, and could not therefore be attacked from outside. The very small amount of light that entered it filtered through a pane of glass in the wall of the back-staircase, which ran up close behind.

I have said enough, I hope, for any reflective man to draw the conclusion that, since we desired no unpleasantness with the butler (a man between fifty and sixty, and notoriously incorruptible), our only plan was to make an entrance upstairs by the long window at the end of the picture gallery or corridor—whichever you choose to call it—descend the back-stairs, remove the pane of glass from the wall, and gain the strong-room through the opening.

The house was dark from end to end, and the stable clock had just chimed the quarter after midnight, when I went up the ladder. I never looked for much carefulness in this honest country household, but I did expect to spend twenty minutes on the heavy lead-work of the lower panes, and it seemed as good as a miracle to find the lattice unlatched and opening to the first gentle pull. I pressed it back; hitched it under a stem of ivy that the wind might not slam it after me; and, signalling down to Jimmy at the foot of the ladder to wait for my report, pulled myself over the sill and dropped softly into the gallery.

And then somebody stepped quickly from behind the heavy window curtain, reached out, shut the lattice smartly behind me, and said composedly—

"Show a light, Jenkins, and let us have a look at the gentleman."

Though it concerned my neck, I was taken too quickly aback to stir; but stood like a stuck pig, while the butler fumbled with his tinder-box.

"Light all the candles!"

"If it please you, Sir Harry," Jenkins answered, puffing at the tinder.

The first thing I saw by the blue light of the brimstone match was the barrel of old Sir Harry's pistol glimmering about six inches from my nose. On my left stood a long-legged footman, also with a pistol. But all this, though discomposing, was no more than I had begun to expect. What really startled me, as old Jenkins lit the candles, was the sight of two women standing a few paces off, beneath a tall picture of a gentleman with a big lace collar. One of them, a short woman with a bunchy shape, I recognised for the housekeeper. The other I guessed as quickly to be Sir Harry's daughter, Mistress Kate—a tall and slender young lady, dark-haired, and handsome as any man could wish. She was wrapped in a long travelling-cloak, the hood of which fell a little off her shoulders, allowing a glimpse of white satin. A train of white satin reached below the cloak, and coiled about her pretty feet.

Now, the change from darkness to very bright light—for Jenkins went down the gallery lighting candle after candle, as if for a big reception—made us all wink a bit. And excitement would account for the white of the young lady's cheeks—I dare say I had turned pretty pale myself. But it did not seem to me to account for the look of sheer blank astonishment—no, it was more than this; a wild kind of wonder would be nearer the mark—that came into her eyes and stayed there. And I didn't quite see why she should put a hand suddenly against the wainscot, and from sickly white go red as fire and then back to white again. If they were sitting up for housebreakers, I was decidedly a better-looking one than they had any right to expect. The eyes of the others were fastened on me. I was the only one to take note of the girl's behaviour: and I declare I spared a second from the consideration of my own case to wonder what the deuce was the matter with her.

"Well, upon my soul!" cried Sir Harry, with something between a laugh and a sniff of disgust; and the footman on the other side of me echoed it with a silly cackle. "He certainly doesn't look as if he came from Bath!"

"Sir," I expostulated—for when events seem likely to prove overwhelming, I usually find myself clutching at my original respectability—"Sir, although the force of circumstances has brought me thus low, I am by birth and education a gentleman. Having told you this, I trust that you will remember it, even in the heat of your natural resentment."

"You speak almost as prettily as you write," he answered scornfully, pulling a letter from his pocket.

"This is beyond me," thought I; for of course I knew it could be no letter of mine. Besides, a glance told me that I had never set eyes on the paper or handwriting before. I think my next remark showed self-possession. "Would you be kind enough to explain?" I asked.

"I rather think that should be your business," said he; and faith, I allowed the justice of that contention, awkward though it was. But he went on, "It astonishes you, I dare say, to see this letter in my hand?"

It did. I acknowledged as much with a bow.

He began to read in an affected mimicking voice, "My ever-loved Kate, since your worthy but wrong-headed father—"

"Father!" It sounded like an echo. It came from the young lady, who had sprung forward indignantly, and was holding out a hand for the letter. "The servants! Have you not degraded me enough?" She stamped her foot.

The old gentleman folded up the letter again, and gave it into her hand with a cold bow. She was handing it to me—Oh, the unfathomable depth of woman!—when he interfered.

"For your own delectation if you will, miss; but as your protector I must ask you not to give it back."

He turned towards me again. As he did so, I caught over his shoulder, or fancied I caught, a glance from Miss Kate that was at once a warning and an appeal. The next moment her eyes were bent shamefast upon the floor. I began to divine.

Said I, "If that's a sample of your manner towards your daughter, even you, in your cooler moments, can hardly wonder that she chooses another protector."

"Protector!" he repeated, lifting his eyebrows; and that infernal footman cackled again.

"If you can't behave with common politeness to a lady," I put in smartly, "you might at least exhibit enough of rude intelligence to lay hold of an argument that's as plain as the nose on your face!"

"Gently, my good sir!" said he. "Do you know that, if I choose, I can march you off to jail for a common housebreaker?"

I should think I did know it—a plaguy sight better than he!

"To begin with," he went on, "you look like one, for all the world."

This was sailing too close for my liking.

"Old gentleman," said I, "you are wearisomely dull. Possibly I had better explain at length. To be frank, then, I had counted, in case of failure, to avoid all scandal to your daughter's name. I had hoped (you will excuse me) to have carried her off and evaded you until I could present myself as her husband. If baffled in this, I proposed to make my escape as a common burglar surprised upon your premises. It seems to me," I wound up, including the three servants with an indignant sweep of the arm, "that you might well have emulated my delicacy! As it is, I must trouble you to recognise it."

"Heaven send," I added to myself, "that the real inamorato keeps his bungling foot out of this till I get clear!" And I reflected with much comfort that he was hardly likely to make an attempt upon premises so brilliantly lit up.

"In justice to my daughter's taste," replied Sir Harry, "I am willing to believe you looked something less like a jail-bird when she met you in the Pump Room at Bath. You have fine clothes in your portmanteau no doubt, and I sincerely trust they make all the difference to your appearance. But a fine suit is no expensive outfit for the capture of an heiress. You may be the commonest of adventurers. How do I know, even, what right you have to the name you carry?"

If he didn't, it was still more certain that I didn't. Indeed he had a conspicuous advantage over me in knowing what that name was. This very painful difficulty had hardly presented itself, however, before the girl's wit smoothed it away. She spoke up,—looking as innocent as an angel, too.

"Captain Fitzroy Pilkington could add no lustre to his name, father, by giving it to me. His family is as good as our own, and his name is one to be proud of."

"So it is, my dear," thought I, "if I can only remember it. So it's Captain Fitzroy Pilkington I am—and from Bath. Decidedly I should have taken some time in guessing it."

"I suppose, sir, I may take it for granted you have not brought your credentials here to-night?" said the old boy, with a grim smile.

It was lucky he had not thought of searching my pockets for them.

"Scarcely, sir," I answered, smiling too and catching his mood; and then thought I would play a bold card for freedom. "Come, come, sir," I said; "I have tried to deceive you, and you have enjoyed a very adequate revenge. Do not prolong this interview to the point of inflicting torture on two hearts whose only crime is that of loving too ardently. You have your daughter. Suffer me to return to the inn in the village, and in the morning I will call on you with my credentials and humbly ask for her hand. If, on due examination of my history and circumstances, you see fit to refuse me—why then you make two lovers miserable: but I give you my word—the word of a Fitzroy Pilkington—that I will respect that decision. 'Parcius junctas quatiam fenestras': or, rather, I will discontinue the practice altogether."

"William," said Sir Harry, shortly, to the footman, "show Mr. Pilkington to the door. Will you take your ladder away with you, sir, or will you call for it to-morrow?"

"To-morrow will do," I said, airily, and stepping across to Mistress Kate I took her hand and raised it as if for a kiss. Her fingers gave mine an appreciative squeeze.

"But who in the world are you?" she whispered.

"I think," said I, bending over her hand, "I have fairly earned the right to withhold that."

Sir Harry bowed a stiff good night to me, and William, the footman, took a candle and led the way along the gallery and down the great staircase to the front door. While he undid the chain and bolts I was thinking that he would be all the better for a kick; and as he drew aside to let me pass I took him quickly by the collar, spun him round, and gave him one. A flight of a dozen steps led down from the front door, and he pitched clean to the bottom. Running down after, I skipped over his prostrate body and walked briskly away in the darkness, whistling and feeling better.

I went round the end of the gallery wing, just to satisfy myself that Jimmy had got away with the ladder, and then I struck across the plantation in the direction of the village. The June day was breaking before I turned out of the woods into the high road, and already the mowers were out and tramping to their work. But in the porchway of the village inn—called the "Well-diggers' Arms"— whatever they may be—I surprised a cockneyfied groom in the act of kissing a maiden who, having a milk-pail in either hand, could not be expected to resist.

"H'm," said I to the man, "I am sorry to appear inopportunely, but I have a message for your master."

The maiden fled. "And who the doose may you be?" asked the groom, eyeing me up and down.

"I think," I answered, "it will be enough for you that I come from Nanscarne. You were late there. Oh, yes," I went on sharply, for fellows of this class have a knack of irritating me, "and I have a message for your master which I'll trouble you to deliver when he comes down to breakfast. You will tell him, if you please, that Sir Harry was expecting him last night, and the lights he saw lit in the long gallery were there for his reception. You won't forget?"

"Who sent you here?" the fellow asked.

"On second thoughts," I continued, "you had better go in and wake Captain Fitzroy Pilkington up at once. He will pardon you when he has my message, for Sir Harry's temper is notoriously impatient."

And with that I turned and left him, for it was high time to find out how Jimmy had been faring. The past night's experience must have given him a shock, and I reckoned to give him another. I wasn't disappointed either. I walked leisurably down the village street, then crossed the hedge and doubled back on the high moors. At length, drawing near the old gravel-pit, where we had fixed to meet in case of separation, I dropped on all-fours and so came up to the edge and gave a whistle.

Jimmy was sitting with his back to me, and about to cut a hunch of bread to eat with his cold bacon for breakfast. Instead, he cut his thumb, and jumped up, singing out—

"S'help me, but I never looked to see you again outside o' the dock!"

"No more you did," said I; and climbing down and sitting on a gravel-heap beside him, I told him all the story.

"And now, Jimmy," I wound up, "you must guess what I'm going to do."

"I don't need to," said he. "I know."

"I wager you don't."

"I wager I do."

"Well, then, I'm going back. Was that what you guessed?"

"I think you will not."

"Ah, but I will," said I. "I swore by the blood of a Fitzroy Pilkington I'd be back in the morning, and I can't retreat from so tremendous an oath as that. Back I mean to go. As for the real Captain—if Captain he is—I fancy I've scared him out of this neighbourhood for some time to come. And as for the credentials, I fancy, at my time of life, I should be able to write my own commendation. I believe the old boy has a sneaking good-will towards me. I can't answer for the girl; but I can answer that she'll hold her tongue for a while, at all events. This life doesn't become a man of my education and natural ability. And the risk is worth running."

"I wouldn't, if I were you," says he, very drily.

"And why not?"

"Well, you see, when I heard the noise last night, and all the place grew light as it did, I was just starting to run for dear life, till it struck me that if the folks meant to go searching for me they wouldn't begin by lighting the picture-gallery from end to end. So I drew close under shadow of the wall and waited, ready to run at any moment. But after a while, finding that nothing happened, I grew curious and crept up after you and looked in through the window, very cautious. A nice fix you seemed to be in; but old Jenkins was there. And while Jenkins was there—"

"Well?"

"Well, I should have thought you might have guessed. The bolt of his bedroom window wasn't hard to force, nor the lock of the small room. Being single-handed, I had to pick and choose what to carry off. But if you'll look under the bracken yonder you'll own I know my way among silver-ware."

I looked at him for a moment, and then lay gently back on the turf and laughed till I was tired of laughing.

THE END