Hocken and Hunken / A Tale of Troy

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

BOOK III.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PLOUGHING.

It is possible—though not, perhaps, likely—that had Cai obeyed his first impulse and pursued 'Bias down the valley, to overtake him, the two friends might after a few hot words have found reconciliation, or at least have patched up an honourable truce. As it was, 'Bias carried home a bitter sense of betrayal, supposing that he had left Cai master of the field. He informed Mrs Bowldler that he would dine and sup alone.

"Which the joint to-day is a goose," protested that lady; "and one more difficult to halve at short notice I don't know, for my part."

"You must do the best you can." He vouchsafed no other reply.

Mrs Bowldler considered this problem all the rest of the morning. "Palmerston," she asked, as she opened the oven door to baste the bird, "supposin' you were asked to halve a roast goose, how would you begin?"

"I'd say I wouldn't," answered Palmerston on brief reflection.

"But supposin' you had to?"

Palmerston reflected for many seconds. "I'd start by gettin' my knee on it," he decided.

Mrs Bowldler, albeit much vexed in mind, deferred solving the problem, and was rewarded with good luck as procrastinators too often are in this world.

Dinner-time arrived, but Captain Hocken did not. She served the goose whole and carried it in to Captain Hunken.

"Eh?" said 'Bias, as she removed the cover. "What about—about Cap'n
Hocken?"

"He have not arrove."

'Bias ground his teeth. "Havin' dinner with her!" he told himself, and fell to work savagely to carve his solitary portion.

Having satisfied his appetite, he lit a pipe and smoked. But tobacco brought no solace, no charitable thoughts. While, as a matter of fact, Cai tramped the highroads, mile after mile, striving to deaden the pain at his heart, 'Bias sat puffing and let his wrath harden down into a fixed mould of resentment.

Dusk was falling when Cai returned. Mrs Bowldler, aware that something was amiss, heard his footsteps in the passage and presented herself.

"Which, having been detained, we might make an 'igh tea of it," she suggested, "and venture on the wing of a goose. Stuffing at this hour I would 'ardly 'int at, being onion and apt to recur." But Captain Hocken desired no more than tea and toast.

Mrs Bowldler was intelligently sympathetic, because Fancy had called early in the afternoon and brought some enlightenment.

"There's a row," said Fancy, and told about the sale of the parrot. "That Mrs Bosenna's at the bottom of it, as I've said all along," she concluded.

"Do you reelly think the bird has been talking?"

"I don't think: I know."

Mrs Bowldler pondered a moment. "Ho! well—she's a widow."

"I reckon," said Fancy, "if these two sillies are goin' to fall out over her and live apart, you'll be wantin' extra help. Two meals for every one—I hope they counted that before they started to quarrel."

"I'll not have another woman in the house," declared Mrs Bowldler, and
repeated it for emphasis after the style of the great Hebrew writers.
"Another woman in the house have I will not! What do you say,
Palmerston?"

Palmerston, who had been on the edge of tears for some time, broke down and fairly blubbered.

"There's a boy!" exclaimed the elder woman. "Mention a little hard work and he begins to cry."

"I don't believe he's cryin' for that at all," spoke up Fancy.
"Are you, Pammy dear?"

"Nun-nun-No-o!" sobbed Palmerston.

"He can't abide quarrellin'—that's what's the matter. . . . Ah, well!" sighed Fancy, and fell back on her favourite formula of resignation. "It'll be all the same a hundred years hence; when we mee-eet," she chanted, "when we mee-eet, when we mee-eet on that Beyewtiful Shore! And in the meantime we three have got to sit tight an' watch for an openin' to teach 'em that their little hands were never made. No talkin' outside, mind!"

"As if I should!" protested Mrs Bowldler, and added thoughtfully,
"I often wonder what happens to widows."

"They marry again, mostly."

"I mean up there—on the Beautiful Shore, so to speak. They don't marry again, because the Bible says so: but how some contrytomps is to be avoided I don't see."

Chiefly through the loyalty of these three, some weeks elapsed before the breach of friendship between Captain Caius Hocken and Captain Tobias Hunken became a matter of common talk. Mr Rogers must have had an inkling; for the pair consulted him on all their business affairs and investments, and in two or three ships their money had meant a joint influence on the shareholders' policy. Now, as they came to him separately, and with suggestions that bore no sign of concerted thought, so astute an adviser could hardly miss a guess that something was wrong. Nor did it greatly mend matters that each, on learning the other's wish upon this or that point where it conflicted with his own, at once made haste to yield. "If that's how 'Bias looks at it," Cai would say, "why o' course we'll make it so. I must have misunderstood him:" and 'Bias on his part would as promptly take back a proposal—"Cai thinks otherwise, eh? Oh, well that settles it! We haven't, as you might say, threshed it out together, but I leave details to him." "If you call this a detail—" "Yes, yes: leave it to Cai." Mr Rogers blinked, but asked no questions and kept his own counsel.

Mr Philp was more dangerous. (Who in Troy could keep Mr Philp for long off the scent of a secret?) But, as luck would have it, Cai in pure innocence routed Mr Philp at the first encounter.

It happened in this way. Towards the end of the first week of estrangement Cai, who bore up pretty well in the day time with the help of Mr Rogers, Barber Toy, and other gossips, began to find his evenings intolerably slow. He reasoned that autumn was drawing in, that the hours of darkness were lengthening, and that anyway, albeit the weather had not turned chilly as yet, a fire would be companionable. He ordered a fire therefore (more work for Mrs Bowldler). But somehow, after a brief defeat, his ennui returned. Then of a sudden, one night at bed-time, he bethought him of the musical box, and that John Peter Nanjulian needed hurrying-up.

Accordingly the next morning, as the church clock struck ten, found him climbing the narrow ascent to On the Wall: where, at the garden gate, he encountered Mr Philp in the act of leaving the house with a bulging carpet-bag.

"Eh? Good mornin', Mr Philp."

"Good mornin' to you, Cap'n Hocken." Mr Philp was hurrying by, but his besetting temptation held him to a halt. "How's Cap'n Hunken in these days?" he inquired.

"Nicely, thank you," answered Cai, using the formula of Troy.

"I ha'n't see you two together o' late."

"No?" Cai, casting about to change the subject, let fall a casual remark on the weather, and asked, "What's that you're carryin', if one may make so bold?"

"It's—it's a little commission for John Peter," stammered Mr Philp.
"Nothin' to mention."

He beat a hasty retreat down the hill.

"'Tis curious now," said Cai to John Peter ten minutes later, "how your inquisitive man hates a question, just as your joker can't never face a joke that goes against him. I met Philp, just outside, with a carpet bag: and I no sooner asked what he was carryin' than he bolted like a hare."

"There's no secret about it, either," said John Peter. "He tells me that, for occupation, he has opened an agency for the Plymouth Dye and Cleanin' Works."

"And you've given him some clothes to be cleaned? Well, I don't see why he need be ashamed o' that."

"Well, I haven't, to tell you the truth. For my part, I like my clothes the better the more I'm used to 'em. But my sister's laid up with bronchitis."

"Miss Susan? . . . Nothin' serious, I hope?"

"She always gets it, in the fall o' the year. No, nothing serious. But the doctor says she must keep her bed for a week—and now she's got to. . . . There'll be a rumpus when she finds out," said John Peter resignedly: "for she don't like clean clothes any better than I do. But one likes to oblige a neighbour; and if he'd taken my trowsers 'twould ha' meant the whole household bein' in bed, which," concluded John Peter with entire simplicity, "would not only be awkward in itself, but dangerous when only two are left of an old family."

Cai agreed, if he did not understand. He reclaimed his musical box— needless to say, John Peter had not yet engraved the plate—and carried it home, promising to restore it when that adornment was ready. For the next night or two it soothed him somewhat while he smoked and meditated on public duties soon to engage his leisure. For he had been co-opted a member of the School Board in room of Mr Rogers, resigned: and in Barber Toy's shop it was understood that he would be a candidate not only for the Parish Council to be elected before Christmas, but for a Harbour Commissionership to fall vacant in the summer of next year.

The notification of his appointment on the School Board reached him by post on the last Tuesday in September. Now, as it happened, the Technical Instruction Committee of the County Council had arranged to hold at Troy, some four days later, an Agricultural Demonstration, with competitions in ploughing, hedging, dry-walling, turfing, the splitting and binding of spars, &c.

Behold, now, on the morning of the Demonstration, Captain Caius Hocken, School Manager and therefore ex officio a steward, taking the field in his Sunday best with a scarlet badge in his buttonhole, "quite," declared Mrs Bowldler, "like a gentleman of the French Embassy as used frequent to take luncheon with us in the Square."

The morning was bright and clear: the sky a pale blue and almost cloudless, the season—

Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter,

—and Cai walked with a lightness of spirit to which since the quarrel he had been a stranger. The Demonstration was to be held at the Four Turnings, where the two roads that lead out of Troy and form a triangle with the sea for base, converge to an apex and branch off again into two County highways. The field lay scarcely a stone's throw from this apex—that is to say from the spot where the late Farmer Bosenna had ended his mortal career. It belonged in fact to Mrs Bosenna, and had been hired from her by the Technical Instruction Committee for a small sum; but Cai did not happen to know this, for the arrangement had been made some weeks ago, before his elevation to the School Board.

It was with a shock of surprise, therefore, that on passing the gate he found Mrs Bosenna close within, engaged in talk with two rosy-faced farmers; and, moreover, it brought a rush of blood to his face, for he had neither seen her nor heard from her since the fatal morning. There was, however, no way of retreat, and he stepped wide to avoid the group, lifting his hat awkwardly as he passed, not daring to meet the lady's eyes.

"Captain Hocken!" she called cheerfully.

"Ma'am?" Cai halted in confusion.

"Come here for a moment—that is, if it doesn't interrupt your duties— and be introduced to our two ploughing judges. Mr Widger of Callington, Mr Sam Nicholls of St Neot—Captain Hocken." Cai's cheeks in rosiness emulated those of the two men with whom he shook hands. "Captain Hocken," she explained to them, "takes a great interest in education."

For a moment it struck Cai that the pair, on hearing this, eyed him suspiciously; but his brain was in a whirl, and he might easily have been mistaken.

"Not at all," he stammered; "that is, I mean—I am new to this business, you see."

"You are a practical man, I hope, sir?' asked Mr Nicholls.

"I—I've spent the most part of my life at sea, if you'd count that bein' practical," said Cai modestly.

"To be sure I do," Mr Nicholls assented. "It's as practical as farmin', almost."

"In a manner o' speakin' it is," agreed Mr Widger grudgingly. "Men haven't all the same gifts. Now you'll hardly believe what happened to me the only time I ever took a sea trip."

"No?" politely queried Cai.

"I was sick," said Mr Widger, in a tone of vast reminiscent surprise.

"It does happen sometimes."

"Yes," repeated Mr Widger, "sick I was. It took place in Plymouth
Sound: and you don't catch me tryin' the sea again."

"Now what," inquired Mr Nicholls, "might be your opinion about Labour
Exemption Certificates, Captain Hocken?"

Cai was gravelled. His alleged interest in education had not as yet extended to a study of the subject.

Mrs Bosenna came to the rescue. Talk about education (she protested) was the last thing she could abide. Before the ploughing began she wanted to show Captain Hocken some work the hedgers had been doing at the lower end of the field.

At that moment, too, the local secretary came running with word that the first teams were already harnessed, and awaited the judges' preliminary inspection. Mr Widger and Mr Nicholls made their excuses, therefore, and hurried off to their duties.

"I have a bone to pick with you," said Mrs Bosenna, as she and Cai took their way leisurably across the field.

Cai groaned at thought of those unhappy letters.

But Mrs Bosenna made no allusion to the letters.

"You have not been near Rilla for weeks," she went on, reproachfully.

Cai glanced at her. "I thought—I was afraid you were offended," he said, his heart quickening its beat.

"Well, and so I was. To begin brawling as you did in a lady's presence—and two such friends as I'd always supposed you to be! It was shocking. Now, wasn't it?"

"It has made me miserable enough," pleaded Cai.

"And so it ought. . . . I don't know that I should be forgiving you now," added Mrs Bosenna demurely, "if it didn't happen that I wanted advice."

"My advice?" asked Cai incredulous.

"It's a business matter. Women, you know, are so helpless where business is concerned." (Oh, Mrs Bosenna!)

"If I can be of any help—" murmured Cai, somewhat astonished but prodigiously flattered.

"Hush!" she interrupted, lifting a quick eye towards the knap of the hill they had descended. "Isn't that Captain Hunken, up above? . . . Yes, to be sure it is, and he's turned to walk away just as I was going to call him!" She glanced at Cai, and there was mischief in the glance. "I expect the ploughing has begun, and I won't detain either of you. . . . The business? We won't discuss it now. I have to wait here for Dinah, who is coming for company as soon as she's finished her housework. . . . To-morrow, then, if you have nothing better to do. Good-bye!"

He left her and climbed the hill again. He seemed to tread on air; and no doubt, when he reached the plateau where the ploughmen were driving their teams to and fro before the judges, with corrugated brows, compressed lips, eyes anxiously bent on the imaginary line of the furrow to be drawn, this elation gave his bearing a confidence which to the malignant or uncharitable might have presented itself as bumptiousness. He mingled with the small group of cognoscenti, listened to their criticisms, and by-and-by, cocking his head knowledgeably on one side, hazarded the remark that "the fellow coming on with the roan and grey seemed to be missing depth in his effort to keep straight."

It was an innocent observation, uttered, may be, a thought too dogmatically, but truly with no deeper intent than to elicit fresh criticism from an expert who stood close beside his elbow. But a voice behind him said, and carried its sneer—

"Maybe he ain't the only one hereabouts as misses depth."

Cai, with a grey face, swung about. He had recognised the voice.
Some demon in him prompted the retort—

"Eh, 'Bias? Is that you?—and still takin' an interest in agriculture?"

The shaft went home. 'Bias's voice shook as he replied—

"I mayn't know much about education, at two minutes' notice; and I mayn't pretend to know much about ploughin' and wear a button in my coat to excuse it. But I reckon that for a pound a side I could plough you silly, Cai Hocken."

It was uttered in full hearing of some ten or twelve spectators, mostly townsmen of Troy; and these, turning their heads, for a moment not believing their ears, stared speechlessly at the two men whose friendship had in six months passed into a local byword. Cap'n Hocken and Gap'n Hunken—what, quarrelling? No, no—nonsense: it must be their fun!

But the faces of the pair told a different tale.

It was a stranger—a young farmer from two parishes away—who let off the first guffaw.

"A bet, naybours!—did 'ee hear that? Take him up, little man—he won't eat 'ee."

"I'll go ten shillin' myself, rather than miss it," announced another voice. "Ten shillin' on the bantam!"

"Get out with 'ee both," spoke up a citizen of Troy. "You don't know the men. 'Tisn't serious now—is it, Cap'n Hocken?—well as you're actin'—"

"Why not?" Cai stood, breathing hard, eyeing his adversary. "If he means it?"

"That's right! Cover his money?" cried an encouraging voice behind him.

The young farmer slapped his thigh, and ran off to the next group.
"Hi, you fellows! A match!"

He shouted it. They turned about. "What is it, Bill Crago?"—for they read in his excited gestures that he had real news.

"The fun o' the fair, boys! Two ships'-cap'ns offering to plough for a pound a side—if you ever!"

"Drunk!" suggested somebody.

"What's the odds if they be? 'Twill be all the better fun," answered Mr Crago. "No—far's one can tell they're dead sober. Come along and listen—" He hurried back and they after him.

"If he chooses to back out?" Cai was taunting Bias as the crowd pressed around. So true is it that:—

"To be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain."

"Who wants to back out?" answered 'Bias sullenly.

"If a man insults me, I hold him to his word: either that or he takes it back."

"Quite right, Cap'n';" prompted a voice. "And he can't tell us he didn't say it, for I heard him!"

"I ain't takin' nothin' back." 'Bias faced about doggedly.

By this time, as their wits cleared a little, each was aware of his folly, and each would gladly have retreated from this public exhibition of it. But as the crowd increased, neither would be the first to yield and invite its certain jeers. Moreover, each was furiously incensed: anything seemed better than to be shamed by him, to give him a cheap triumph.

News of the altercation had spread. Soon two-thirds of the spectators were trooping to join the throng in the upper field, pressing in on the antagonists, jostling in their eagerness to catch a word of the dispute. The competitors in Class D were left to plough lonely furrows and finish them unapplauded. Young Mr Crago had run off meantime to secure the services of the two judges.

Now Mrs Bosenna, after waiting some ten minutes by the lower gate for Dinah (whose capital fault was unpunctuality), had lost patience and walked back towards Rilla to meet and reproach her. She had almost reached the small gate when she spied Dinah hurrying down the steep path to the highroad, and halted. Dinah, coming up, excused herself between catches of breath. She had been detained by the plucking of a fowl, and a feather—or, as you might call it a fluff—had found its way into her throat. "Which," said she, "the way I heaved, mistress, is beyond belief."

Mrs Bosenna having admonished her to be more careful in future, turned to retrace her steps to the field.

They reached it and climbed the slope crosswise. They had scarcely gained the edge of the upper plateau when Mrs Bosenna stopped short and gave a gasp. For at that moment there broke on their view, against the near sky-line, the figure of a man awkwardly turning a plough, behind a team of horses.

"Save us, mistress!" cried keen-eyed Dinah. "If it isn't—"

"It can't be!" cried Mrs Bosenna, as if in the same breath.

"It's Cap'n Hunken," said Dinah positively.

"But why? Dinah—why?"

"It's Cap'n Hunken," repeated Dinah. "The Lord knows why. If he's doin' it for fun, I never saw worse entry to a furrow in my life."

"Nor I. But what can it mean?" Mrs Bosenna, panting, paused at the sound of derisive cheers, not very distant.

The two women ran forward a pace or two, until their gaze commanded the whole stretch of the upper slope. 'Bias, stolidly impelling his team— a roan and a rusty-black—had, in the difficult process of steering the turn, been too closely occupied to let his gaze travel aside. He was off again: his stalwart back, stripped to braces and shirt, bent as he trudged in wake of the horses, clinging to the plough-tail, helplessly striving to guide them by the wavy parallel his last furrow had set.

Down the field, nearer and nearer, approached Cai, steering a team as helplessly. Ribald cheers followed him.

Mrs Bosenna, though quite at a loss to explain it, grasped the situation in less than a moment. She followed up 'Bias, keeping wide and running—yet not seeming to hasten—over the unbroken ground to the left.

"Captain Hunken!"

'Bias, throwing all his weight back on the plough-tail, brought his team to a halt and looked around. He was bewildered, yet he recognised the voice.

While he paused thus, Cai steadily advanced to meet and pass him. He was plainly at the mercy of his team—a grey and a brown, both of conspicuous height—and they were drawing the furrow at their own sweet will. But he, too, clung to the plough-tail, and his lips were compressed, his eyes rigid, as he drew nearer, to meet and pass his adversary. He, likewise, had cast coat and waistcoat aside: his hat he had entrusted to an unknown backer. He saw nothing, as he came, but the line of the furrow he prayed to achieve.

"Captain Hocken!" She stepped forward hardily, holding up a hand, and Cai's team, too, came to a halt as if ashamed. "What—what is the meaning of this foolishness?"

"I've had enough, it he has," said Cai sheepishly, glancing past her and at 'Bias.

"I ain't doin' this for fun, ma'am," owned 'Bias. "Fact is, I'd 'most as lief steer a monkey by the tail."

"Then drop it this instant, the pair of you!"

'Bias scratched his head.

"As for that, ma'am, I don't see how we can oblige. There's money on it—bets."

"There won't be money's worth left in my field, at the rate you're spoilin' it." She turned upon the two judges, who were advancing timidly to placate her, while the crowd hung back. "And now, Mr Nicholls—now, Mr Widger—I'd like to hear what you have to say to this!"

"'Tis a pretty old cauch, sure 'nough," allowed Mr Sam Nicholls, pushing up the brim of his hat on one side and scratching his head while his eye travelled along the furrows. "Cruel!"

"And you permitted it! You, that might be supposed to have some knowledge o' farmin'!"

"Why, to be sure, ma'am," interposed Mr Widger, "we never reckoned as 'twould be so bad as all this. . . . Young Bill Crago came to us with word as how these—these two gentlemen—had made a match, and he asked us to do the judgin' same as for the classes 'pon the bills—"

"And so you started them? And then, I suppose, you couldn't stop for laughin'?"

"Something like that, ma'am, as you say," Mr Widger confessed.

"And what sort o' speech will you make, down to County Council, when I send in my bill for damages?—you that complained to me, only this mornin', how the rates were goin' up by leaps and bounds! . . . As for these gentlemen," said Mrs Bosenna, turning on Cai and 'Bias with just a twinkle of mischief in her eyes, "I shall be at home to-morrow morning if they choose to call and make me an offer—unless, o' course, they prefer to do so by letter."

At this, Dinah put up her hand suddenly to cover her mouth. But Cai and
'Bias were in no state of mind to catch the double innuendo.

Having thus reduced the judges to contrition, and having proceeded to call forward the local secretary and to extort from him a long and painful apology, Mrs Bosenna wound up with a threat to bundle the whole Demonstration out of her field if she heard of any further nonsense, and, taking Dinah's arm, sailed off (so to speak) with all the trophies of war.

Cai and 'Bias walked away shamefacedly to seek out their bottleholders and collect each his hat, coat, and waistcoat.

"But which of ee's won?" demanded their backers.

"Damn who's won!" was 'Bias's answer; and he looked too dangerous to be pressed further.

A wager is a wager, however; and the judges' decision was clamoured for, with threats that, until it was given, the Agricultural Demonstration would not be suffered to proceed. Mr Sam Nicholls consulted hastily with Mr Widger, and announced the award as follows:—

"We consider Captain Hunken's ploughin' to be the very worst ploughin' we've ever seen. But we award him the prize all the same, because we don't consider Captain Hocken's ploughin' to be any ploughin' at all."

Solvuntur risu tabulae—They can laugh, too, at Troy!

CHAPTER XIX.

ROSES AND THREE-PER-CENTS.

Although in her rose-garden—the rose-garden proper—Mrs Bosenna grew all varieties of "Hybrid Perpetuals" (these ranked first with her, as best suited to the Cornish soil and climate), with such "Teas" and "Hybrid Teas" as took her fancy, and while she pruned these plants hard in spring, to produce exhibition blooms, sentiment or good taste had forbidden her to disturb the old border favourites that lined the pathway in front of the house, or covered its walls and even pushed past the eaves to its chimneys. Some of these had beautified Rilla year by year for generations: the Provence cabbage-roses, for instance, in the border, the Crimson Damask and striped Commandant Beaurepaire; the moss-roses, pink and white, the China rose that bloomed on into January by the porch. These, with the Marechal Niel by her bedroom window, the scented white Banksian that smothered the southern wall, and the climbing Devoniensis that nothing would stop or stay until its flag was planted on the very roof-ridge, had greeted her, an old man's bride, on her first home-coming. They had, in the mysterious way of flowers, soothed some rebellion of young blood and helped to reconcile her to a lot which, for a shrewd and practical damsel, was, after all, not unenviable. She had no romance in her, and was quite unaware that the roses had helped; but she took a sensuous delight in them, and this had started her upon her hobby. A success or two in local flower-shows had done the rest.

Now with a rampant climber such as Rosa Devoniensis it is advisable to cut out each autumn, and clean remove some of the old wood; and this is no easy job when early neglect has allowed the plant to riot up and over the root-thatch. Mrs Bosenna had a particular fondness for this rose, and for the gipsy flush which separates it from other white roses as an unmistakable brunette. Yet she was sometimes minded to cut it down and uproot it, for the perverse thing would persist on flowering at its summit, and William Skin, sent aloft on ladders—whether in autumn or spring to prune this riot, or in summer to reap blooms by the armful— invariably did damage to the thatch.

Mrs Bosenna, then, gloved and armed with a pair of secateurs, stood next morning by the base of the Devoniensis holding debate with herself.

The issue—that she would decide to spare the offender for yet another year—was in truth determined; for already William Skin had planted one ladder against the house-wall and had shuffled off to the barn for another, to be hoisted on to the slope of the thatch, and there belayed with a rope around the chimney-stack. But she yet played with the resolve, taken last year, to be stern and order execution. She was still toying with it when the garden-gate clicked, and looking up, she perceived Captain Cai.

"Ah! . . . Good morning, Captain Hocken!"

Cai advanced along the pathway and gravely doffed his hat.
"Good morning, ma'am—if I don't intrude?"

"Not at all. In fact I was expecting you."

"Er—on which errand, ma'am?"

"—Which?" echoed Mrs Bosenna, as if she did not understand.

"Shall we take the more painful business first?" suggested Cai humbly. "If indeed it has not—er—wiped out the other. The damage done yesterday to your field, ma'am—"

"Have you brought Captain Hunken along with you?" asked Mrs Bosenna, interrupting him.

"No, ma'am. He will be here in half an hour, sharp." Cai consulted his watch.

"You have stolen a march on him then?" she smiled.

Cai flushed. "No, again, ma'am. Er—in point of fact we tossed up which should call first."

"Then," said she calmly, "we'll leave that part of the business until he arrives; though, since it concerns you both, I can't see why you did not bring him along with you. Do you know," she added with admirable simplicity, "it has struck me once or twice of late that you and Captain Hunken are not the friends you were?"

Still Cai stared, his face mantling with confusion. This woman was an enigma to him. Surely she must understand? Surely she must have received that brace of letters to which she evaded all allusion? And here was she just as blithely postponing all allusion to yesterday's offence!

But no; not quite, it seemed; for she continued—

"I cannot think why you two should challenge one another as you did yesterday, and make sillies of yourselves before a lot of farmers. It—it humiliates you."

"We were a pair of fools," conceded Cai.

"What men cannot see somehow," she went on angrily, "is that it doesn't end there. That kind of thing humiliates a woman; especially when—when she happens to be cast on her own resources and it is everything to her to find a man she can trust."

Mrs Bosenna threw into these words so much feeling that Cai in a moment forgot self. His awkwardness fell from him as a garment.

"You may trust me, ma'am. Truly you may. Tell me only what I can do."

At this moment William Skin—a crab-apple of a man, whose infirmity of deafness had long since reduced all the world for him to a vain tolerable show, in which so much went unexplained that nothing caused surprise—came stumbling around the corner of the house with a waggon-rope and a second ladder, which he proceeded to rest alongside the first one; showing the while no recognition of Cai's presence, even by a nod.

"I want you," said Mrs Bosenna, "to invest a hundred pounds for me. Oh!"—as Cai gave a start and glanced at Skin—"we may talk before him: he's as deaf as a haddock."

"A hundred pounds?" queried Cai, still in astonishment.

"Yes; it's a sum I happen to have lyin' idle. At this moment it's in the Bank, on deposit, where they give you something like two-and-a-half only: and in the ordinary way I should put it into Egyptian three per cents, or perhaps railways. My poor dear Samuel always had a great opinion of Egypt, for some reason. He used to say how pleasant it was in church to hear the parson readin' about Moses and the bulrushes, and the plague of frogs and suchlike, and think he had money invested in that very place, and how different it was in these days. Almost in his last breath he was beggin' me to promise to stick to Egyptians, or at any rate to something at three per cent and gilt-edged: because, you see, he'd always managed all the business and couldn't believe that women had any real sense in money affairs. . . . I didn't make any promise, really; though in a sort of respect to his memory I've kept on puttin' loose sums into that sort of thing. Three per cent is a silly rate of interest, when all is said and done: but of course the poor dear thought he was leavin' me all alone in the world, with no friend to advise. . . ."

"I see," said Cai, his heart beginning to beat fast. "And it's different now?"

"I—I was hopin' so," said Mrs Bosenna softly.

Cai glanced at the back of William Skin, who had started to hum—or rather to croon—a tuneless song while knotting a rope to the second ladder. No: it was impossible to say what he wished to say in the presence of William Skin, confound him! Skin's deafness, Skin's imperturbability, might have limits. . . .

"You wish me to advise you?" he controlled himself to ask.

"No, I don't. I wish you—if you'll do me the favour—just to take the money and invest it without consultin' me. It's—well, it's like the master in the Bible—the man who gave out the talents. . . . Only don't wrap it in a napkin!" She laughed. "I don't even want to be told what you do with the money. I'd rather not be told, in fact. I want to trust you."

"Why?"

She laughed again, this time more shyly. "'Trust is proof,'" she answered, quoting the rustic adage. "You have given me some right to make that proof, I think?"

Ah—to be sure—the letters! She must, of course, have received his letter, along with 'Bias's, though this was her first allusion to it. . . . Cai's brain worked in a whirl for some moments. She was offering him a test; she was yielding upon honest and prudent conditions; she was as good as inviting him to win her. . . . To do him justice, he had never—never, at any rate, consciously—based his wooing on her wealth. For aught he cared, she might continue to administer all she possessed. The comforts of Rilla Farm may have helped to attract him, but herself had been from the first the true spell.

He did not profess any knowledge of finance. A return of four per cent on his own modest investments contented him, and he left these to Mr Rogers.

"Ah!"

His mind had caught, of a sudden, at a really brilliant idea.

"I accept," said he firmly, looking Mrs Bosenna hard in the eyes, and her eyes sank under his gaze.

"Hi! Heads!" sang out a voice, and simultaneously the ladder which William Skin had been hauling aloft, came crashing down and struck the flagged path scarcely two yards away.

A second later Cai had Mrs Bosenna in his arms. "You are not hurt?" he gasped.

She disengaged herself with a half-hysterical laugh. "Hurt?
Am I? . . . No, of course I am not."

"The damned rope slipped," growled William Skin in explanation, from his perch on the ladder under the eaves.

"Slipped?" Cai ran to the rope and examined it. "Of course it slipped, you lubber!" He stepped back on the pathway and spoke up to Skin as he would have talked on shipboard to a blundering seaman in the cross-trees. "Ain't a slip-knot made to slip? And when a man's fool enough to tie one in place of a hitch—"

He cast off the rope, bent it around the rung with, as it seemed, one turn of the hand, and with a jerk had it firm and true.

"Make way, up there!" he called.

"You're never going to—to risk yourself," protested Mrs Bosenna.

"Risk myself? Lord, ma'am, for what age d'ye take me?" Cai caught up the slack of the rope and hitched it taut over his shoulder. He was rejuvenated. He made a spring for the ladder, and went up it much as twenty years ago he would have swarmed up the ratlines. "Make yourself small," he commanded, as Skin, at imminent risk of falling, drew to one side before his onset. Cai was past him in a jiffy, over the eaves, balancing himself with miraculous ease on the slippery thatch. "Now ease up the ladder!"

He had anchored himself by pure trick of balance, and was pulling with a steady hand almost as soon as Skin, collecting his wits, could reach out to fend the ladder off from crushing the edge of the eaves. Ten seconds later, by seaman's sleight of foot, he had gained a second anchorage half-way up the slope, had gathered up all the slack of the rope into a seaman's coil, and with a circular sweep of the arm had flung it deftly around the chimney. The end, instead of sliding down to his hand, hitched itself among the thorns of the rampant Devoniensis. Did this daunt him? It checked him for an instant only. The next, he had balanced himself for a fresh leap, gained the roof-ridges, and, seated astride of it, was hauling up the ladder, hand over fist, close to the chimney-base.

The marvel was, the close thatch showed no trace of having been trampled or disturbed.

"Darn the feller, he's as ajjile as a cat!" swore William Skin.

"Pass up the clippers, you below!" Cai commanded, forgetting that the man was deaf. "If your mistress'll stand back in the path a bit, I'll pick out the shoots one by one and hold 'em up for her to see, so's she can tell me which to cut away."

"You'll scratch your hands to ribbons," Mrs Bosenna warned him.

"'Tisn't worth while comin' down for a pair of hedgin' gloves. . . . I say, though—I've a better notion! 'Stead of lettin' this fellow run riot here around the chimney-stack, why not have him down and peg him horizontal, more or less, across and along the thatch, where he can be seen?"

"Capital!" she agreed. "He'd put out more than twice the number of blooms too. They do always best when laid lateral."

"He'll come down bodily with a little coaxin'. The question is how to peg him when he's down?"

"Rick-spars," answered Mrs Bosenna promptly. "The small kind. There's dozens in the waggon-house loft." She signalled to William Skin to come down, bawled an order in his ear, and despatched him to fetch a score or so.

"Hullo!" cried Cai, who, being unemployed for the moment, had leisure to look around and enjoy the view from the roof-ridge. "If it isn't 'Bias comin' up the path! . . . Hi! 'Bias!" he hailed boyishly, in the old friendly tone.

'Bias, stooping to unlatch the gate, heard the call which descended, as it were, straight from heaven, and gazed about him stupidly. He was aware of Mrs Bosenna in the pathway, advancing a step or two to make him welcome. She halted and laughed, with a glance up towards the roof. 'Bias's eyes slowly followed hers.

"Lord!" he muttered, "what made ye masthead him up there? . . . Been misbehavin', has he? 'Tis the way I've served 'prentices afore now."

"On the contrary, he has been behaving beautifully—"

"Here, 'Bias!" called down Cai again. "Heft along the tall ladder half a dozen yards to the s'yth'ard, and stand by to help. I'm bringin' down this plaguy rose-bush, and I'll take some catchin' if I slip with it."

"'Who ran and caught him when he fell?' 'His Bias,'" quoted Mrs Bosenna. "He has been doin' wonders up there, Captain Hunken. But if I were you—a man of your weight—"

"I reckon," said 'Bias, stepping forward and seizing the ladder, which he lifted as though it had been constructed of bamboo, "I han't forgot all I learnt o' reefin' off the Horn." He planted the ladder and had mounted it in a jiffy. "Now, then, what's the programme?" he demanded.

"You see this rose? Well, I got to collect it—I've tried the main stem, and it'll bend all right,—and then I got to slide down to you. After that we've to peg it out somewheres above the eaves, as Madam gives orders. See?"

"I see. When you're ready, slide away."

Just then William Skin came hurrying back with an armful of rick-spars: and within ten minutes the two rivals were hotly at work—yet cheerfully, intelligently, as though misunderstanding had never been,— clipping out dead wood from the rose-bush, layering it, pegging it, driving in the spars,—while Mrs Bosenna called directions, and William Skin gazed, with open mouth.

"This is better than ploughin', ma'am?" challenged Cai in his glee.

"So much better," agreed the widow, smiling up, "that I've almost a mind to forgive the pair of you."

"But I won't ask you to stay for dinner to-day," she said later, when the tangled mass of the Devoniensis had been separated, shoot from shoot, and pegged out to the last healthy-looking twig, and the two men stood, flushed but safe, on the pathway beside her. She stole a confidential little glance at Cai. "For I understand from Captain Hocken that you prefer to make your excuses separately. I have already forgiven him: and it's only fair to give Captain Hunken his turn."

Who less suspicious than Cai? Had he been suspicious at all, what better reassurance than the sly pressure of her hand as he bade her good-day? . . . Poor 'Bias!

Once past the gate, and out of sight, Cai felt a strange desire to skip!

"Well, mistress, you are a bold one, I must say!" commented Dinah that night by the kitchen fire, where Mrs Bosenna enjoyed a chat and, at this season of the year, a small glass of hot brandy-and-water, with a slice of lemon in it, before going to bed.

"I don't see where the boldness comes in," said the widow. She was studying the fire, and spoke inattentively.

"Two hundred pounds!"

"Eh? . . . There's no risk in that. You may say what you like of
Captain Hocken or of Captain Hunken: but they're honest as children.
The money's as safe with them as in the bank."

"Well, it do seem to me a dashin' and yet a very cold-blooded way of choosin' a man. Now, if I was taken with one—"

"Well?" prompted Mrs Bosenna, as Dinah paused.

"Call me weak, but I couldn't help it. I should throw myself straight at his head, an' ask him to trample me under his boots!"

"A nice kind of husband you'd make of him then!" said her mistress scornfully.

"I know, I know," agreed Dinah. "I've no power o' resistance at all, an' I daresay the Almighty has saved me a lifetime o' trouble. 'Twould ha' been desperet pleasant at the time though." She sighed.

"But to give two men a hundred pound each, an' choose the one that manages it best—"

"Worst," corrected Mrs Bosenna. "You ninny!" she went on with sovereign contempt. "Do you really suppose I'd marry a man that could handle my money, or was vain enough to suppose he could?"

"O—oh!" gasped Dinah as she took enlightenment. . . . "But two hundred pounds is a terrible sum to spend in findin' out which o' two men is the bigger fool. Why not begin wi' the one you like best, and find out first if he's foolish enough to suit?"

"Because," answered Mrs Bosenna, turning meditative eyes again upon the fire, "I don't happen to know which I like best."

"Then you can't be in love," declared foolish Dinah.

"Sensible women ain't; not until afterwards. . . . Now, which would you advise me to marry?"

"Captain Hunken." Dinah's answer was prompt. "He's that curt. I like a man to be curt; he makes it so hard for 'ee to say no. Besides which, as you might say, that parrot of his did break the ice in a manner of speakin'."

"Dinah, I'm ashamed of you."

"Well, mistress, natur' is natur': and we knows what we can't help knowin'."

"That's true," Mrs Bosenna agreed. It was her turn to sigh.

"Cap'n Hunken's the man," repeated Dinah. She nodded her head on it and paused. "Though, if you ask my opinion, Cap'n Hocken 'd make the better husband."

"It's difficult."

"Ay. . . . For my part I don't know what you want with a husband at all."

"Nor I," said Mrs Bosenna, still gazing into the fire.

"At the best 'tis a risk."

Mrs Bosenna sighed again. "If it weren't, where'd be the fun?"

CHAPTER XX.

A NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH.

Mr Rogers enjoyed his newspaper. To speak more accurately, he enjoyed several: and one of Fancy's duties—by no means the least pleasant or the least onerous—was to read to him daily the main contents of 'The Western Morning News,' 'The Western Daily Mercury,' and 'The Shipping Gazette': and on Thursdays from cover to cover—at a special afternoon seance—'The Troy Herald,' with its weekly bulletin of more local news.

"What's the items this week?" asked Mr Rogers, puffing at a freshly lit pipe and settling himself down to listen.

Fancy opened the paper at its middle sheet, folded it back and scanned it.

"Here we are. 'If you want corsets, go to—' no, that's an advertisement. 'Troy Christian Endeavour. Under the auspices of the above-named flourishing society—'"

"Skip the Christian Endeavour."

"Very well. The next is 'Wesley Guild. A goodly company met this week to hear the Rev. J. Bates Handcock on "Gambling: its Cause and Cure." The reverend gentleman is always a favourite at Troy—'"

"He's none of mine, anyway. Skip the Wesley Guild."

"Right-o! 'On Wednesday last, in spite of counter attractions, much interest was testified by those who assembled in the Institute Hall to hear Mr Trudgeon, lately returned from the United States, on the Great Canyon of Colorado, illustrated with lantern slides. The lecturer in a genial manner, after personally conducting his audience across the Great Continent—'"

"Damn," said Mr Rogers. "Get on to the drunks. Ain't there any?"

"Seems not. How will this do?"

'Report says that Monday's Agricultural Demonstration —a full report of which will be found in another column—was not without its comic relief, beloved of dramatists. On dit that—'"

"On what?"

"Dit. Misprint, perhaps."

'On dit that two highly respected sons of the brine, recently settled in our midst, and one of whom has recently been elected to teach our young ideas how to shoot, were so fired with emulation by the ploughing in Class C as to challenge one another then and there to a trial of prowess, much to the entertainment of our agricultural friends. The stakes were for a considerable amount, and the two heroes who had elected to plough something more solid than the waves, quickly found themselves the observed of all observers. Rumour, that lying jade, hints at a lady in the case. Certain it is that the pair, whose names have of late been syn—been sy-nonymous—with,'—

"—O Lor'! here's a heap of it, master!"

"Skip the long syllables an' get on."

"H'm—m—"

'—acquitted themselves to the astonishment of the judges, and of everybody else in the field. Search out the lady, as our Gallic neighbours say.'

—"Where's Gallic?"

"Don't know. Ask Shake Benny. He supplies the Troy Notes to the
'Herald.'"

"Oh, does he?"

"Yes: he gets his gossip off Philp; and dresses it up. That's how it's done. Philp has a nose like a ferret's: but he was unfort'nit in his education. You may trust Philp to get at the facts—leastways you can trust him for gossip: but he can't dress anything up. . . . Why, what's the matter with the child?"

Fancy Tabb never laughed: and this was the queerer because she had a sense of humour beyond her years. Though by no means a gleeful child she could express glee naturally enough: but a joke merely affected her with silent convulsive twitchings, as though the risible faculties struggled somewhere within her but could not bring the laugh to birth.

These spasms of mirth, whatever had provoked them, were cut short—and her explanation too—by a heavy footstep on the stairs.

"Cap'n Hunken!" she announced, and went to open the door. "Most like he wants to talk business with you same as Cap'n Hocken did this morning, and I'd better make myself scarce. That's the silly way they've taken to behave, 'stead of callin' together."

"Ay, you're sharp, missy," said her master. "But 'twon't be the same arrand this time, as it happens: so you're wrong for once."

Fancy, if she heard, did not answer, for 'Bias by this time had reached the landing without. She opened to him. "Good afternoon, sir."

"Afternoon, missy. I saw your father in the shop, and he told me to walk up. Mr Rogers disengaged?"

"Ay, Cap'n—walk in, walk in!" said Mr Rogers from his chair.
What is it to-day? Business? or just a pipe and a chat?"

"Well, it's business," allowed 'Bias with a glance at the girl.
"But I'll light a pipe over it, if you don't mind."

"And I'll fit and make tea for you both," said Fancy. "It's near about time."

She vanished and closed the door behind her. 'Bias found a chair, seated himself, and filled his pipe very slowly and thoughtfully. Mr Rogers waited.

"The business that brings me—" 'Bias paused, struck a match and lit up—"ain't quite the ordinary business."

"No?"

"No." For a few seconds 'Bias appeared to be musing. "In fact you might call it a—a sort o' flutter. That's the word—ain't it?—when you take a bit o' money and play venturesome with it, against your usual habits."

"Ay?" Mr Rogers looked at him sharply. "When I say venturesome," continued 'Bias, "you'll understand I don't mean foolhardy. . . . Nothin' o' the sort. I want to hear o' something tolerably safe, into which a man might put a small sum he happened to have lyin' about."

"What sort of investment?"

"Ay, that's just what I want you to tell me. Ten per cent, we'll say, an' no more'n a moderate risk. . . . I reckoned as a man like you might know, maybe, o' half a dozen things o' the sort."

"What's the amount?" Mr Rogers's eyes, that had opened wide for a moment, narrowed themselves upon him in a curiosity that hid some humour.

"Put it at a hundred pound."

"Oh!—er—I mean, is that all?"

"You see," exclaimed 'Bias. "You mustn' run away wi' the notion that I ain't satisfied as things are. Four and five per cent—and that's what you get for me—does best in the main. I can live within the income and sleep o' nights. But once in a way—"

"Ay," interrupted Mr Rogers, "and more especially when it's to oblige a friend."

'Bias withdrew the pipe from his mouth and stared. "You're a clever one, too! . . . Well, and I don't mind you're knowin'. 'Tis a relief, in a way: for now you know I'm pleased enough with your dealins' on my own account."

"Thank 'ee. I'm not askin' no names."

"As to that, I'd rather not mention the name, either. But I'd be very glad o' your advice: for 'tis important to me, in a way o' speakin'!"

Mr Rogers nodded. "If that's so," said he, "you must give me a little time to think. There's mortgages, o' course: and there's deals to be done in shipping: and there's money-lendin,—though you'd object to that, maybe. . . . Anyway, you come to me to-morrow, and I may have something to propose."

"Thank 'ee. I take that as friendly."

"Right." Mr Rogers let drop a trembling half-paralysed hand towards the newspaper which lay on the floor beside his chair. "Would ye mind—"

'Bias stepped forward and picked it up for him.

"Thank 'ee. No: I want you to keep it. . . . I'm goin' to do a thing that's friendlier yet: though it be a risk. Open the paper at the middle sheet—right-hand side, an' look out a column headed 'Troy News.' . . . Got it?"

"Half a moment—Yes,' Troy News'—Here we are!"

"Now cast your eye down the column till you come 'pon a part about last
Monday's Agricultural Demonstration."

"The devil!" swore 'Bias. "You don't mean to say—"

"'Course I do. Everything gets into the papers nowadays. . . .
You'll find it spicy."

'Bias found the paragraph and started to read, with knitted brows.
Its journalistic style held him puzzled for fully half a minute.
Then he ejaculated "Ha!" and snorted. After another ten seconds he
snorted again and exploded some bad words—some very bad words indeed.

"Thought I'd warn you to be careful," said Mr Rogers. "You don't take it amiss, I hope? In a little place like this there's eyes about all the time—an' tongues."

"I'd like to find the joker who wrote it?" breathed 'Bias, the paper trembling between his hands.

"I can't tell you who wrote it," said the ship-chandler; "but I can give a pretty close guess who's responsible for it: and that's Philp."

"Philp?"

"Mind ye, I say 'tis but a guess."

"I'll Philp him!"

"Well, he's no fav'rite o' mine," said Mr Rogers grinning. "He's too suspicious for me, and I hate a man to be suspicious. . . . But he's the man I suspect."

"Where does he live?"

"Union Place—two flights o' steps below John Peter Nanjulian's— left-hand side as you go up. But you can't have it out with him on suspicion only."

"Can't I?" said 'Bias grimly. "I'll ask him plain 'yes' or 'no.'
If he says 'yes,' I'll know what to do, and you may lay I'll do it."

"But if he says 'no'?"

"Then I'll call him a liar," promised 'Bias without a moment's indecision. "That'll touch him up, I should hope. . . . Where did you say he lives?"

At this moment there came a knock at the door and Fancy entered with the tea-tray.

"If you'd really like a talk with him," said Mr Rogers, blinking,
"maybe you'd best let the child here take you to his house. . . .
Eh, missy? Cap'n Hunken tells me as how he'd like to pay a call 'pon Mr
Philp, up in Union Place."

"Now?" asked Fancy.

"The sooner the better," answered 'Bias, crushing 'The Troy Herald' between his hands.

Fancy's hands, disencumbered of the tea-tray, began to twitch violently. "Very well, master," was all she said, however; and with that she left the room to fetch her hat and small cloak.

"I'd advise you to tackle Philp gently," was Mr Rogers's warning as soon as the pair were alone. "Not that I've any likin' for the man: but the point is, you've no evidence. He'll tell you—and, likely enough, with truth—as he never act'ally wrote what's printed."

"You leave him to me," answered 'Bias grimly, gulping his tea and preparing to sally forth.

"An' you might remember to leave the child outside. If a lady's name is to be handled in the discussion, you understand. . . . Besides which, witnesses are apt to be awk'ard. Two's the safe number when there's a delicate point to be cleared up."

Fancy reappeared and announced herself ready. 'Bias caught up his hat.
. . . Left to himself, Mr Rogers lay back in his chair and chuckled.
He did not care two straws for Mr Philp, or for what might happen to
him. His mind was off on quite another train of thought.

"I wonder what the woman's game is? 'A hundred pound lyin' idle'—and Hocken around with the same tale this forenoon. . . . Ten per cent, and at a moderate risk. . . . She's shrewd, too, by all accounts. . . . Damme, if this isn't a queer cross-runnin' world! A woman like that, if I'd had the luck to meet her a three-four year ago—before this happened!" . . . He eyed his palsied hand as it reached out, shaking, for the tea-cup.

"When we get to the door," said 'Bias heavily, as he and Fancy turned out of the street into the narrow entry of Union Place, "you're to step back and run away home."

"No fear," she assured him. "I'm doin' you a favour, an' don't you forget it."

"But you can't come inside with me."

"That's all right. Nobody said as I wanted to, in my hearin'. I can see all I want to see. There's a flight o' steps runnin' up close outside the window."

She pointed it out and quite candidly indicated the point at which she proposed to perch herself. "And there's another window at the back," she added: "so's you can see all that's happenin' inside."

"Better fit you ran away home," he repeated.

"You can't make me," retorted Fancy. "Unless, o' course, you choose to use force, here in broad daylight. As a friend of mine said, only the other day," she went on, snatching at a purple patch from 'Pickerley,' "the man as would lift his hand against a woman deserves whatever can be said of him. Public opinion will condemn him in this life, and, in the next, worms are his portion. So there!"

"I dunno what you're talkin' about," said 'Bias, preoccupied with the thought of coming vengeance.

"Who's meanin' to lift his hand against a woman?"

"Well, mind you don't, that's all!"

She left him standing on the doorstep, and skipped away up the steps. Having reached a point which commanded a view over the blinds of Mr Philp's front window, she gave a glance into the room, and at once her arms and legs started to twitch as though in the opening movement of some barbaric war-dance.

'Bias, still inattentive, took no heed of these contortions. After a moment's pause he rapped sharply on the door with the knob of his walking-stick, then boldly lifted the latch and strode into the passage.

On his right the door of the front parlour stood ajar. He thrust it wide open and entered. And, as he entered, a female figure arose from a chair on the far side of the room.

"I—I beg your pardon, ma'am!" stammered 'Bias, falling back a pace.

"Polly wants a kiss!" screamed a voice. It did not seem to proceed from the lady. . . . Somehow, too, it was strangely familiar. . . . 'Bias stared wildly about him.

At the same moment, and just as his eyes fell on the parrot-cage on the table, the lady—But was it a lady? Heavens! what did it resemble—this figure in female attire?

"Drat your bird! He won't say no worse! And this is the third mornin'
I've sat temptin' him!"

Mr Philp—yes, it was Mr Philp—in black merino frock, Paisley shawl and ribboned cap on which a few puce-coloured poppies nodded—Mr Philp, with a handful of knitting, and a ball of worsted trailing at his feet— But it is impossible to construct a sentence which would do justice to Mr Philp as he loomed up and swam into ken through 'Bias's awed surmise; and the effort shall be abandoned.

Mr Philp slowly unwound the woollen wrap that had swathed his beard out of sight.

"Clever things, birds," said Mr Philp, and his voice seemed to regain its identity as the folds of the bandage dropped from him. "I wonder whether shavin' would help! . . . I don't like to be beat."

'Bias, who had come with that very intent, lifted a hand—but let it fall again. No, he could not!

"Good Lord!" he ejaculated, and fled from the house.

Outside, Fancy—who had seen all—was executing a fandango on the step.

"Help!" she called, taunting him. "Who talked o' liftin' a hand against a woman?"

CHAPTER XXI.

THE AUCTION.

One result of the paragraph in 'The Troy Herald' was to harden the two friends' estrangement just at the moment when it promised to melt. Troy with its many amenities has a deplorable appetite for gossip; and to this appetite the contention of Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken for Mrs Bosenna's hand gave meat and drink. (There was, of course, no difficulty in guessing what Mr Shake Benny would have called "the inamorata's identity.") Malicious folk, after their nature, assumed the pair to be in quest of her money. The sporting ones laid bets. Every one discussed the item with that frankness which is so characteristic of the little town, and so engaging when you arrive at knowing us, though it not infrequently disconcerts the newcomer. Barber Toy—having Cai at his mercy next morning, with a razor close to his throat—heartily wished him success.

"Not," added Mr Toy, "that I bear any ill-will to Cap'n Hunken. But I back a shaved chin on principle, for the credit of the trade."

A sardonic and travelled seaman, waiting his turn in the corner, hereupon asked how he managed when it came to the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race.

"I'll tell you," answered Mr Toy. "I wasn't at Oxford myself—nor at Cambridge; and for years I'd back one or 'nother, 'cordin' to the newspapers. But that isn't a satisfactory way. When you're dealin' with an honest event—honest, mind you—as goes on year after year between two parties both ekally set on winnin', the only way to get real satisfaction is to pick your fancy an' go on backin' it. That gives ye a different interest altogether, like with Liberal or Conservative at a General Election. If you don't win this time, you look forward to next. . . . Well, one day Mr Philp here came into the shop wearin' a dark blue tie, and says I, 'You're Oxford.' 'Am I?' says he—'It's the first I've heard tell of it.' 'You're Oxford,' says I: 'and I'm Cambridge, for half-a-crown.' Odd enough, Cambridge won that year by eight lengths."

"I wonder you have the face to tell this story," put in Mr Philp.

The barber grinned. "Well, I thought as we'd both settled 'pon our fancy, in a neighbourly way. But be dashed if, soon after the followin' Christmas, Mr Philp didn't send his tie to the wash, and it came back any blue you pleased. 'Make it one or t'other—I don't care,' said I: and he weighed the choice so long, bein' a cautious man, that we missed to make up any bet at all. If you'll believe me, that year they rowed a dead heat."

"Very curious," commented Cai.

"But that isn' the end," continued the barber. "Next year he'd washed his necktie again, and that 'twas Cambridge he couldn' dispute. So we put on another half-crown, and Oxford won by two lengths. . . . 'Twas a pity I could never induce him to bet again, for his tie went on getting Cambridger and Cambridger, while Oxford won four years out o' five."

"If you believe there was any honesty in it!" said Mr Philp.
"'Twas only my suspicious natur' as saved me."

The whole town, indeed, was watching the rivals, and with an open interest very difficult to resent. Nay, since it was impossible to tell every second man in the street to mind his own business, Cai and 'Bias accepted the publicity perforce and turned their resentment upon one another.

They continued, of course, to live apart, and Mrs Bowldler soon learned to avoid playing the intermediary, even to the extent of suggesting (say) some concerted action over the coal supplies. After the first fortnight no messages passed between them—

"They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs that had been rent asunder."

If they met, in shop or roadway, they nodded, but exchanged no other greeting. They never met at Rilla Farm. How it was agreed I know not, though Mrs Bosenna must have contrived it somehow; but they now prosecuted their wooing openly on alternate days. Sunday she reserved for what Sunday ought to be—a day of rest.

"The artfulness!" exclaimed Mrs Bowldler on making discovery of this arrangement. "But the men are no match for us, my dear"—this to Fancy—"an' the oftener they marry us the cleverer they leave us."

"Then 'tis a good job Henry the Eighth wasn' a woman," commented Fancy.

"There was some such case in the Scriptures, if you'll remember; and it says that last of all the woman died also. If she did, you may be sure as 'twasn't till she chose."

"I heard Mr Rogers say t'other day, 'Never marry a widow unless her first husband was hanged.'"

"Pray let us change the subjeck," said Mrs Bowldler hastily.

"Why? . . . What did Mr Bowldler die of? I've often meant to ask," said Fancy, "and then again I've wondered sometimes if there ever was any such person."

"There was such a person." Mrs Bowldler half-closed her eyes in dreamy reminiscence. "Further than that I would not like to commit myself."

"He's dead, then?"

"He was a fitter in a ladies' tailorin', and naturally gay by temperament. It led to misunderstandin's. . . . Dead? No, not that I am aware of. For all I know he's still starrin' it somewhere in the provinces."

She protested that for the moment she must drop the subject, which invariably affected her with palpitations; but promised to return to it in confidence when she felt stronger.

Throughout these days, however, and for many days to come, she discoursed at large on the diplomacy of widows; warning Palmerston to shape his course in avoidance of them. And that budding author—who had already learnt to take his good things where he found them—boldly transferred her warnings to the pages of 'Pickerley,' which thereby arrived at resembling 'Pickwick' in one respect if in no other.

From these generalities she would hark back, at shortest notice, to the practical present.

"It behoves us—seein' as how a tempory cloud has descended between these two establishments—it behoves us, I say, to watch out for its silver lining in one form or another. Which talking of silver reminds me of electro, and I'll ask you, Palmerston, if that's the way to leave a mustard-pot and call yourself an indoor male?"

Their estrangement had endured some three months before the rivals came again into public collision.

The beginning of it happened through a very excusable misunderstanding.

Is Christmas Day to be reckoned as an ordinary day of the week, or as a
Sunday, or as a dies non? The reader must decide.

Christmas Day that year fell on a Friday—one of the three week-days tacitly allotted to Cai, who may therefore be forgiven that he chose to reckon it as coming within the ordinary routine. He did so, and at about three o'clock in the afternoon (which was bright and sunny) he reached the small gate of Rilla, to be aware of 'Bias striding up the pathway ahead of him.

He gave chase in no small choler.

"Look here," he protested, panting; "haven't you made some mistake?
This is Friday."

"Christmas Day," answered 'Bias, wheeling about.

"I can't help that. 'Tis Friday."

"An' next year 'twill be Saturday," retorted 'Bias with a sour grin; "it that'll content you, when it comes. None of us can't help it. Th' almanack says 'tis Christmas Day, and ord'nary days o' the week don't count. Besides, 'tis quarter-day, and I've brought my rent."

"I've brought mine, too," replied Cai. "Well, we'll leave it to Mrs
Bosenna to settle."

They walked up to the house in silence. Dinah, who answered the bell, appeared to be somewhat upset at sight of the two on the doorstep together. (Yet we know that Dinah never opened the front door without a precautionary survey.) She admitted them to the front parlour, and opining that her mistress was somewhere's about the premises, departed in search of her.

'Bias took up a position with his back to the fire and his legs a-straddle. Cai stuck his hands in his pockets and stared gloomily out of window. For some three minutes neither spoke, then Cai, of a sudden, gave a start.

"There's that Middlecoat!" he exclaimed.

"Hey?" 'Bias hurried to the window, but the young farmer had already passed out of sight.

"Look here," suggested Cai, "it's just an well we turned up, one or both. That man's a perfect bully, so she tells me."

"She've told me the same, more than once."

"Always pickin' some excuse for a quarrel. It ain't right for a woman to live alongside such a neighbour unprotected."

"So I've told her."

"Well, he's in the devil of a rage just now,—to judge by the look of him, an' the way he was smackin' his leg with an ash-plant as he went by."

"Was he now?" 'Bias considered for a moment. "You may depend he took advantage, not expectin' either of us to turn up to-day. . . . I shouldn't wonder if the maid properly scared him with news we were here."

Sure enough Dinah returned in a moment to report that her mistress was in her rose-garden; and following her thither, they found Mrs Bosenna, flushed of face and evidently mastering an extreme discomposure.

"I,—I hardly expected you," she began.

"It's Friday," said Cai.

"It's Christmas Day," said 'Bias. "I reckon he counted on that,—that
Middlecoat, I mean."

"Eh? . . . Mr Middlecoat—"

"Saw him takin' his leave, not above three minutes ago."

"You,—you saw him taking his leave?"

"Stridin' down the hill, angry as a bull," Cai assured her.

"He's a dreadful man to have for a neighbour," confessed Mrs Bosenna, recovering grip on her composure. "The way he threatens and bullies!"

"I'll Middlecoat him, if he gives me but half a chance!" swore 'Bias.

"If I'd known either of you was in hail. . . . But I reckoned you'd both be countin' this for a Sunday."

"Christmas Day isn't Sunday, not more'n once in seven years," objected
'Bias.

"It's Friday this year," said Cai, with simple conviction.

"Fiddlestick!" retorted 'Bias. "You can't make it out to be like an ordinary Friday—I defy you. There's a—a feelin' about the day."

"It feels like Friday to me," maintained Cai.

But here Mrs Bosenna interposed. "'Twon't feel like Christmas to me then if you two start arguin'. 'Peace and goodwill' was the motto, as I thought; but I don't see much of either abroad this afternoon."

The pair started guiltily and avoided each other's eyes. Many a time in distant ports they had talked together of Christmas in England and of Christmas fare—the goose, the plum-pudding. They had promised themselves a rare dinner to celebrate their first Christmas in England, and it had come to—what? To a dull meal eaten apart, served by a Mrs Bowldler on the verge of tears, and by a Palmerston frankly ravaged by woe. It had happened—happened past recall, and as Mrs Bowldler had more than once observed in the course of the morning, the worst was not over yet. "For," as she said, "out of two cold geese and two cold puddings I'll trouble you this next week for your entrays and what-not."

"What was Middlecoat's business, ma'am?—makin' so bold," inquired
'Bias.

"Oh!" she answered quickly, "he's a terrible young man! Wants his own way in everything, like most farmers, and turns violent when he can't get it. . . . He came about next week's sale, among other things."

"What sale, ma'am?"

"Why, surely you must have seen? The bills have been out for days. Squire Willyams is gettin' rid of his land this side of the stream, right down from here to the railway station. Fifty acres you may call it; the most of it waste or else coppice,—and coppice don't pay for cuttin'. You've almost to go down on your knees before anybody will cart it away."

"I did hear some word of it down in Toy's shop, now I come to think," said Cai. "But if the land's worthless—"

"It's worth little enough to any one but me and Mr Middlecoat. You see, it marches right alongside our two farms, between them and the Railway Company's strip along the waterside, and—well, Rilla's freehold and Middlecoat's is freehold, and it's nature, I suppose, to be jealous of any third party interlopin'. But I don't want the land, and so I've told him; nor I won't bid against him and run up the price,—though that's what they're aimin' at by an auction."

"Then what in thunder does the fellow want?" demanded 'Bias.

"If you'll climb 'pon the hedge yonder—that's my boundary—you'll see a little strip of a field, not fifty yards wide, runnin' down this side of the plantation. It widens a bit, higher up the hill, but 'tis scarcely more than a couple acres, even so. Barton's Orchard, they call it."

"But what about it?" asked Cai, craning his neck over to examine the plot.

"Why, to be sure I want to take it in for my roses. It lies rather too near the trees, to be sure; but one could trench along the far side and fill the trench with concrete, to check their roots from spreadin' this way; and all the soil is good along this side of the valley."

"Then why not buy it, ma'am, since 'tis for sale? Though for my part," added Cai, looking round upon the beds which, just now, were unsightly enough, with stiff leafless shoots protruding above their winter mulch, "I can't think what you want with more roses than you have already."

"One can never have too many roses," declared Mrs Bosenna. "Let be that there's new ones comin' out every year, faster than you can keep count with them. Folks'll never persuade me that the old H.P.'s don't do best for Cornwall; but when you go in for exhibition there's the judges and their fads to be considered, and the rage nowadays is all for Teas and high centres. . . . When first I heard as that parcel of ground was likely to come in the market, I sat down and planned how I'd lay it out with three long beds for the very best Teas, and fence off the top with a rose hedge—Wichurianas or Penzance sweet briars—and call it my Jubilee Garden; next year bein' the Diamond Jubilee, you know. All the plants could be in before the end of February, and I'll promise myself that by June, when the Queen's day came round, there shouldn't be a loyaller-bloomin' garden in the land."

"Well," allowed Cai, "that's sensibler anyway than puttin' up arches and mottoes. But what's to prevent ye?"

"'Tis that nasty disagreeable Mr Middlecoat," answered Mrs Bosenna pettishly. "He comes and tells me now as that strip has always been the apple of his eye. . . . It's my belief he wants to grow roses against me; and what's more, it's my belief he'd swallow up all Rilla if he could; which is better land than his own, acre for acre. It angers him to live alongside a woman and be beaten by her at every point o' farmin'."

"But you've the longer purse, ma'am, as I understand," suggested 'Bias. "Talkin' o' which—" He fumbled in his breast-pocket and produced an envelope.

"My rent, ma'am."

"Ay, to be sure: and mine, ma'am," Cai likewise produced his rent.

"You are the most punctual of tenants!" laughed Mrs Bosenna, taking the two envelopes. "But after all, they say, short reckonin's make long friends."

She divided a glance between them, to be shared as they would.

"But as I was suggestin' ma'am—why not attend the sale and outbid the fellow?"

"So I can, of course: and so I will, perhaps. Still it's not pleasant to live by a neighbour who thinks he can walk in and hector you, just because you're a woman."

"You want protection: that's what you want," observed 'Bias fatuously.

"In your place," said Cai with more tact, "I should forbid him the premises."

For some reason Mrs Bosenna omitted to invite them to stay and drink tea: and after a while they took their leave together. At the foot of the descent, as they gained the highroad, Cai faced about and asked, "Which way?"

"I was thinkin' to stretch my legs around Four Turnin's," answered 'Bias, although as a matter of fact the intention had that instant occurred to him.

"Well, so long!" Cai nodded and turned towards the town. "Compliments of the season," he added.

"Same to you."

They walked off in opposite directions.

On his way home through the town Cai took occasion to study the Bill of Auction on one of the hoardings. It advertised the property in separate small lots, of which Barton's Orchard figured as No. 9. The bill gave its measurement as 1 acre, 1 rood, 15 perches. The sale would take place at the Ship Hotel, Troy, on Monday, January 4,1897, at 2.30 P.M. Messrs Dewy and Moss, Auctioneers.

In the course of the next week he made one or two attempts to sound Mrs Bosenna and assure himself that she meant to attend the sale and secure Lot 9; but she spoke of it with an irritating carelessness. Almost it might have persuaded him—had he been less practised in her wayward moods—that she had dismissed the affair from her mind. But on Friday (New Year's Day) as he took leave of her, she recurred to it. "Dear me," said she meditatively, "I shall not be seeing you for several days, shall I?"

"Eh? Why not?"

"To-morrow's Saturday; then Sunday's our day of rest, as Dinah calls it.
On Monday's the auction—"

"Ah, to be sure!" Cai had forgotten this consequence of it, and was dashed in spirits for the moment. "But I shall see you there?"

"Perhaps," she answered negligently. "Shall you be attendin'?
Really, now!"

With an accent of reproach he asked how she could imagine that a business so nearly concerning her could find him other than watchful. On leaving he repeated his good wishes for the twelvemonth to come, and with a warmth of intention which she perversely chose to ignore.

To be sure he meant to attend the sale. Nor was he surprised on entering the Ship Inn next Monday, some ten minutes ahead of the advertised time, to find 'Bias in the bar with a glass of hot brandy and water at his elbow. Cai ordered a rum hot.

"Where's the auction to be held?" he inquired of Mr Oke, the landlord.

"Long Room as usual." Mr Oke jerked a thumb towards the stairs; and
Cai, having drained his glass, went up.

In the Long Room, which is a handsome apartment with waggon roof and curious Jacobean mouldings dating from the time when The Ship was built to serve as "town house" for one of Troy's great local families, Cai found a sparse company waiting for the sale to open, and noted with momentary dismay that Mrs Bosenna had not yet arrived. But after all, he reflected, there was no need for extreme punctuality, it would take the auctioneer some time to reach Lot 9.

The company included young Mr Middlecoat, of course; and, equally of course, Mr Philp, who had no interest in the sale beyond that of curiosity; some three or four farmers from the back-country, who had apparently come for no purpose but to lend Mr Middlecoat their moral support, since, as it turned out, not one of them made a serious bid; Squire Willyams' steward, Mr Baker,—a tall, clean-shaven man with a watchful non-committal face; one or two frequenters of The Ship's bar-parlour; and the Quaymaster, by whom (as Barber Toy remarked) any new way of neglecting his duties was hailed as a godsend.

Mr Dewy, the auctioneer, sat with his clerk at the end of the table, arranging his papers and unrolling his map of the property. He was a fussy little man, and made a great pother because the map as soon as unrolled started to roll itself up again. He weighted one corner with the inkpot, and for a second weight reached out a hand for one of three hyacinth vases which decorated the centre of the table. The bulb toppled over and, sousing into the inkpot, sent up a jet d'encre, splashes of which distributed themselves over the map, over the clerk, over Mr Baker's neat pepper-and-salt suit, and over Mr. Dewy's own fancy waistcoat. Much blotting-paper was called into use, and many apologies were hastily offered to Mr Baker; in the midst of which commotion 'Bias strolled into the room, and took a seat near the door.

Having mopped the worst of the damage on the map and offered his handkerchief to Mr Baker (who declined it), Mr Dewy picked up a small ivory hammer, stained his fingers with an unnoticed splash of ink on its handle, licked them, wiped them carefully with his handkerchief, picked up the hammer again, and announced that the sale had begun.

"Lot I.—All that Oak Coppice known as Higher Penpyll. Eighteen acres, one rood, eleven perches. Aspect south and south-west. . . . But there, gentlemen, you are all acquainted with the property, I make no doubt. . . . Any one present not possessed of the sale catalogue? Yes, I see a gentleman over there without one. Mr Chivers, would you oblige?"

The clerk, still attempting to remove some traces of ink from his person, distributed half a dozen copies of the printed catalogue. He gave one to Cai. 'Bias, too, held out a hand and received one.

"Lot I.," resumed Mr Dewy. "All that desirable woodland (oak coppice) known as Higher Penpyll. Eighteen acres and a trifle over. Now, what shall we say, gentlemen?"

"Fifty pounds," said Mr Middlecoat promptly.

The auctioneer glanced at Mr Baker, who frowned.

"Now, Mr Middlecoat! Now really, sir! . . . This is serious business, and you offer me less than three pounds an acre! The coppice is good coppice, too."

"'Twill hardly pay to clear," answered Mr Middlecoat. "But why can't ye lump this lot in with the two next? . . . That's my suggestion. If Mr Baker is agreeable? They all run in one stretch, so to speak; and, in biddin' for the whole, a man would know where he's to."

Mr Dewy, speaking in whispers behind his palm, held consultation with Mr
Baker.

"Very well," he announced at length. "Mr Baker, actin' on behalf of Squire Willyams, consents to the three lots bein' put up together— ong block, as the French would say. No objection? Very well, then. Lot 1, Higher Penpyll, eighteen acres, one rood, eleven perches: Lot 2, Lower Penpyll, forty-two acres, three perches—forty-two almost exact: Lot 3, Wooda Wood, forty acres, one rood, one perch; all in oak coppice, two to five years' growth. What offers, gentlemen, for this very desirable timbered estate?"

"Three-fifty!"

"Come, Mr Middlecoat!" protested the auctioneer, after another glance at Mr Baker. "Indeed, sir, you will not drive me to believe as you're jokin'?"

Mr Middlecoat, whose gaze had rested on Mr Baker, faced about, and, looking down the table, caught the eye of one of his supporters, who nodded.

"Three-seven-five!" called out the supporter.

"Four hundred!" Mr Middlecoat promptly capped the bid.

"That's a little better, gentlemen," Mr Dewy encouraged them.

Apparently, too, it was the best. For some three minutes he exhorted and rebuked them, but could evoke no further bid. There was a prolonged pause. The auctioneer glanced again at Mr Baker, who, while seemingly unaware of the appeal, slightly inclined his head. Mr Middlecoat's eyes had rested on Mr Baker all the while.

"One hundred acres, as you may say, at less than four pounds the acre! Well, if any man had prophesied this to me on the day when I entered business—" Mr Dewy checked himself, and let fall the hammer. "Mr Middlecoat, sir, you're a lucky man." He announced, "Lot 4—Two arable fields, known as Willaparc Veor and Willapark Vear respectively: the one of six acres, one rood, and six perches; the other of three and a half acres."

As the auction proceeded, even the guileless Cai could not help detecting an air of unreality about it. Mr Middlecoat bid for everything. Now and again, if Mr Middlecoat miscalculated, a friend helped and raised the price by a very few pounds for Mr Middlecoat to try again: which Mr Middlecoat duly did. It became obvious that Mr Middlecoat had somehow possessed himself of a pretty close guess at what price Squire Willyams would part with each lot instead of "buying in"; that Mr Baker knew it; that the auctioneer knew it; that everyone in the room knew they knew; and that nobody in the room was disposed to prevent Mr Middlecoat's acquiring whatever was offered.

Under these conditions the sale proceeded swiftly, pleasantly, and without a hitch. Cai cast frequent glances back at the door. But the minutes sped on, and still Mrs Bosenna did not appear.

"Lot 9—A field known as Barton's Orchard. Two perches only short of two acres—"

"Say twenty-five," said Mr Middlecoat carelessly.

Again Cai glanced back. The farm land had been fetching on an average some twenty to twenty-five pounds an acre. . . . Why was Mrs Bosenna not here?

On an impulse—annoyed, perhaps, by the young farmer's take-it-for-granted tone—he called out "Thirty!"

The auctioneer and Mr Baker—who had just signified, by a slight frown, that he could not accept the young farmer's bid—glanced up incuriously. Mr Middlecoat, too, turned about, not recognising the voice of his new "bonnet,"—to use a term not unfamiliar in auctioneering.

But Cai did catch their glances: for at the same moment he, too, wheeled about at the sound of a deep voice by the door.

"Forty!"

"Eh?" murmured Mr Dewy and Mr Baker, together taken by surprise. And "Hullo, what the dev—" began Mr Middlecoat, when Cai promptly chimed "Fifty!"

For the new bidder was 'Bias, of course: and well, in a flash, Cai guessed his game. Since Mrs Bosenna chose to tarry, 'Bias was bidding against him. It was a duel. Should 'Bias win and present her with these coveted two acres? Never!

"Sixty!"

"Here, I say!" Mr Middlecoat was heard to gasp in protest. But he too began to suspect a game. "Sixty-five!" The duel had become triangular.

"Seventy!"

"Eighty!" intoned 'Bias.

"A hundred!" Cai's jaw was set.

By this time all heads were turned to the new competitors. Two or three of the farmers were whispering, asking if by any chance there was mineral in dispute. One had heard—or so he alleged—that "manganese" had been discovered somewhere up the valley—before his time—but he could remember his father telling of it.

Mr Middlecoat stepped to the window and glanced out in to the square for a moment. He returned, and nervously bid "Ten more!"

"Excuse me," the auctioneer corrected him blandly; "the gentleman at the far end of the room—I didn't catch his name—"

"Hunken," said 'Bias.

"Captain Hunken," prompted Mr Philp.

"Er—excuse me, Mr Middlecoat, but Captain Hunken has just offered a hundred-and-twenty."

"And thirty!" chimed Cai.

"Fifty!" intoned back the voice by the door.

Mr Middlecoat passed a hand over his brow. "Another ten," he murmured to the auctioneer. "Is there a boy handy? I—I want to send out a message?"

"Certainly, Mr Middlecoat," agreed the accommodating but bewildered auctioneer, and turned to his clerk.

"Mr Chivers, would you oblige?"

The young farmer scribbled a word or two on a piece of paper, which he
folded and gave to Mr Chivers with some hurried instruction; and Mr
Chivers steered his way out with agility. But meanwhile the bidding for
Barton's Orchard had risen to two hundred.

"Say another ten, to keep it going," proposed Mr Middlecoat, wiping his brow although the weather was chilly. To gain time, he suggested that maybe there was some mistake; that the gentlemen, maybe, had not examined the map of the property and might be bidding for some other lot under a misapprehension.

Mr Baker objected to this. The description of the lots on the catalogue was precise and definite. The two gentlemen obviously knew what they were about. The field was a small field, but the soil was undeniably of the best, and in the interests of the vendor—

"Two hundred and thirty!" interrupted 'Bias.

"—and fifty!" bid Cai.

There was a pause. Mr Dewy looked at Mr Middlecoat, who under his gaze admitted himself willing to stake two hundred and sixty. "Though 'tis the price of building land!"

"Apparently you are willing to give it rather than let the purchase go," observed Mr Baker drily. "For aught you know both these gentlemen may be desiring it for a building site. Did I hear one of them say two-seventy-five? Captain—er—Hunken, if I caught the name?"

"Two-eighty," persisted Cai.

"Two-ninety!"

"Well, make it three hundred, and I've done!" groaned Mr Middlecoat collapsing.

"Three—"

"What's all this?" interrupted a voice, very sweet and cool in the doorway.

"Mrs Bosenna?—Your servant, ma'am!" Mr Dewy rose halfway in his seat and made obeisance. "We are dealing with a lot which may concern you, ma'am; for it runs "—he consulted his map—"Yes—I thought so—right alongside your property at Rilla. A trifle over two acres, ma'am, and Mr Middlecoat has just bid three hundred for it."

"And"—began Cai: but Mrs Bosenna (taken though she must have been by surprise) was quick and frowned him to silence.

"And a deal more than its value, as Captain Hocken was about to say.
Will any fool bid more for such a patch?"

Cai and 'Bias stared together, interrogating her. But there was no further bid, and Mr Dewy knocked down the lot at 300 pounds.

"Which," said Mrs Bosenna meditatively to Dinah that night, "you may call two hundred and fifty clean thrown into the sea. And the worst is that though Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken are a pair of fools and Mr Middlecoat a bigger fool than either—as it turns out, I'm the biggest fool of all."

"How, mistress?"

"Why, you ninny! They were buying, one against the other, to make me a present, and I stepped in and saved young Middlecoat's face. Yet," she mused, "I don't see what else he could have done. . . . Well, thank the Lord! he'll be humble now, which the others were and he wasn't."

"He's young, anyway," urged Dinah.

"That's something," her mistress conceded. "It gives the more time to rub in his foolishness, and he'll never hear the last of it."

"Three hundred pounds, too!" ejaculated Dinah. "The very sound of it frightens me. A terrible sum to throw to waste!"

"I wouldn't say that altogether. . . . Yes, you may unlace me.
What fools men are!"

CHAPTER XXII.

THE LAST CHALLENGE.

Next Lady-day, which fell on a Thursday, 'Bias called upon Mrs Bosenna with his rent and with the pleasing announcement that in a week or so he proposed to pay her a further sum of seven pounds eight shillings and fourpence; this being the ascertained half-year's dividend earned by the hundred pounds she had entrusted to his stewardship.

She warmly commended him. "Close upon fifteen per cent! I wonder— But there! I suppose you won't tell me how it's done, not if I ask ever so?"

'Bias looked knowing and reminded her that to ask no questions was a part of her bargain. As a matter of fact it was also a part of his bargain with Mr Rogers, and he could not have told had he wished to tell.

"I suppose you've heard the latest news?" said he. "They've chosen me on the Harbour Board—Ship-owners' representative."

"I didn't even know there had been an election."

"No more there hasn't. Rogers made the vacancy, and managed it for me; retired in my favour, as you might say."

"Seems to me Mr Rogers must be weakenin' in his head."

"Oh no, he's not!" 'Bias assured her with a chuckle. "But he's pretty frail in the body. At his time o' life and with his infirmity a man may be excused, surely?"

"I reckon," said Mrs Bosenna, "there's few would have wept if Mr Rogers had superannuated himself years ago. Now if you'd told me he was turned out—"

"You're hard on Rogers!" he protested, tasting the joke of it.

"Well, I don't think he took on these jobs for his health, as they say;
and so it comes hard to believe as he goes out o' them for that reason.
But there! he may be an honester man than I take him for. . . .
Well, and so you're becomin' a public man too! I congratulate you."

"I wouldn' call myself that," said 'Bias modestly. "But one or two have suggested that a fellow like me, with plenty of time on his hands, might look after a few small things and the way public money's spent on 'em." He might have claimed that at any rate he knew more of harbour affairs than Cai could possibly know of education: but he did not. To their honour, neither he nor Cai—though they ruffled when face to face before folks—ever spoke an ill word behind the other's back. "There's the dredgin', for one thing; and, for another, the way they're allowed to lade down foreign-goin' ships is a scandal."

"Is it the Harbour's business to stop that?"

"It ought to be somebody's business."

"You'll get nicely thanked," she promised, "if you interfere—and as a ship-owners' representative too!"

"There's another matter," confessed 'Bias. "They've asked me to put up for the Parish Council next month. There's a notion that, with this here Diamond Jubilee comin' on, the town ought to rise to the occasion."

"And you're the man to give it the lift!" said Mrs Bosenna gaily.
"Is Captain Hocken standin' too?"

"They say so."

"Then I'll plump for both of you. Wait, though—I won't promise: or when the canvass starts you'll both be neglectin' me."

The next day Cai called in turn with his rent. "And there's another little matter," said he after handing it to her. "You remember that hundred pounds? Well there's a half-year's dividend declared and due on it, and the cheque's to arrive some time next week. What's the amount, d'ye guess?"

"Satisfactory?"

"Seven pounds eight shillings and fourpence. . . . Eh? I thought it might astonish you."

"It's—it's such an odd amount," she murmured.

"It's close upon fifteen per cent."

"Yes. You took my breath away for the moment. I wonder at the way you men—I mean, I wonder how you do it—turnin' money to such good account? 'Tis a gift I suppose; and you couldn' teach me, even if you would."

Cai received the compliment with a somewhat guilty smile.

"They tell me too," she continued, "that you are standin' for the Parish
Council next month."

"Who told you?"

"Oh . . . a little bird!"

Cai did not guess at 'Bias under this description. "Well, you see, with this here Diamond Jubilee in the offing, there's a feelin' abroad that the town ought to sit up, as the sayin' is—"

"And you're the man to make it sit up!" said Mrs Bosenna gaily.

"Well now, I want you to help me."

Mrs Bosenna started, alert at once and on her guard; for the game of fence she had chosen to play with these two demanded a constant wariness.

But it seemed that for the moment Cai had no design to press his suit— or no direct design.

"It's this way," he explained. "You know the stevedores, down at the jetties, are givin' their usual Whit-Monday regatta—Passage Regatta, as some call it? Well, they've made me President this year."

"More honours?"

"And I've offered a Cup; which seemed the proper thing to do, under the circumstances. 'A silver cup, value 5 pounds, presented by the President, Caius Hocken, Esquire': it'll look fine 'pon the bills, and it's to go with the first prize of two guineas for sailin' boats not exceedin' fourteen feet over-all. There's what they call a one-design Class o' these in the harbour: which is good sport and worth encouragin'. There's no handicap in it either: the first past the line takes the prize—always the prettiest kind o' race to watch. Now the favour I ask is that, when the time comes, you'll hand the Cup to the winner."

"It—it'll look rather marked, won't it?" hesitated Mrs Bosenna. She had as small a disinclination as any woman to find herself the central figure in a show, and Cai (had he known it) was attacking one of the weakest points in her siege-defences. But to accept this offer—or (if you prefer it) to grant the favour—meant a move on the board which might too easily lead to a trap. "Besides," she objected, "you can't do that sort o' thing without a few words, and I've never made a public speech in my life."

"You leave the speechifyin' to me," said Cai reassuringly: but it did not reassure her at all. ("Good gracious!" she thought. "He's not the sort to take advantage of it—but if he did! . . . You can never trust men.")

Cai, misinterpreting the frown on her brow, went on to assure her further that he could manage a speech all right; at any rate, he would be able by Whit-Monday. He had—he would tell her in confidence—been taking some lessons in elocution of (or, as he put it, "off") Mr Peter Benny.

"Did you ever hear tell of a man called Burke?" he asked.

"'Course I did," answered Mrs Bosenna, albeit the question startled her. "My old nurse told me about him often. He used to go about snatchin' bodies."

Cai considered a moment, and shook his head. "I don't think mine can be the same, or Benny wouldn't have recommended him so highly. There was another fellow that learned to be a speaker by practisin' with his mouth full of pebbles, which struck me as too thoroughgoin' altogether, and 'specially when you're aimin' no higher than a Parish Council. To be sure," he confessed, "I did make a start with a brace of peppermint bull's-eyes, and pretty nigh choked myself. But Benny says that, for English public speakin', there's no such master as this Burke, and so I've sent for him."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs Bosenna. "Won't he charge a terrible lot?— with travellin' expenses too!"

"His works, I mean. The man's dead, and they're in six volumes."

"You'll never get through 'em then, between this and Whitsuntide.
If I was you, I'd keep on at the peppermints."

Although the six volumes of Edmund Burke duly arrived, and Cai made a bold attempt upon their opening tractate, "A Vindication of Natural Society,"—thereby hopelessly bemusing himself, since he accepted its ironical arguments with entire seriousness—in the end he took a shorter way and procured Mr Benny to write his speeches for him.

These he got by heart in the course of long morning rambles; these he rehearsed with their accomplished author; these he declaimed in the solitude of his bed-chamber—until, one day, Mrs Bowldler (whom terror arresting, had held spellbound for some minutes on the landing) knocked in to know if Palmerston should run for the doctor.

By dint (or in spite) of them at the election of Parish Councillors Cai headed the poll with a total of 411 votes. 'Bias, who received 366, came fourth on the list of elected: but this was no disgrace—a triumph rather—for one who had omitted to be born in the town. By general consent the honours stood easy; though, on the strength of his poll, the new Council began by choosing Cai for its chairman. On him Troy laid thereby the chief responsibility for the Jubilee festivities now but two months ahead.

At this first Council meeting, and at the meetings of many committees subsequently called to make preparation for the great day, 'Bias said very little. Those—and they were many—who had looked for "ructions" between the two rivals, and had taken glee of the prospect, suffered complete disappointment.

"You see," he explained to Mr Rogers, "I don't hold by several things Cai Hocken and the Committee are doin'. But they be doin' 'em in the Queen's honour, after their lights: and 'tisn't fitly to use the occasion for quarrellin'. There's only one way o' forcin' a quarrel on me where Queen Victoria's consarned, and that is by speakin' ill of her."

"That's right," agreed Mr Rogers. "You've common ground in the
Widow-woman."

"The—?"

"The Widow at Windsor, as they call her."

"Oh! I thought for a moment—"

"There's widows and widows," Mr Rogers blinked mischievously. "But look here—what's this I'm told about your interferin' down at the Harbour Board, tryin' to get the Commissioners to regylate the ladin' o' vessels?"

"Well, and why not?" asked 'Bias.

"Why not? For one thing you bet it isn' the Commissioners' business."

"It ought to be somebody's business to stop what's goin' on.
Say 'tis mine, if you like."

"Look 'ee here, Cap'n Hunken," said Mr Rogers, showing his teeth.
"If that's your game, better fit you was kickin' up a rumpus on the
Parish Council than puttin' a spoke into honest trade. I didn' make
room 'pon the Board for you to behave in that style."

"I don't care whether you did or you didn'," retorted 'Bias sturdily. "And 'honest trade' d'ye call it? robbin' the underwriters and puttin' seamen's lives in danger."

"Eh? . . . You're a nice man to talk, I must say! Come to me, you do, and want me to get you anything up to twenty per cent without risk. How d'ee think that's done in these days, with every one cuttin' freights? I gave you credit for havin' more sense."

'Bias stared. "See here," he said slowly, "if I'd known that hundred pound was to be put into any such wickedness, I'd have seen you further before trustin' you with it. As 'tis, I'll trouble you—"

"Hold hard, there!" Mr Rogers interrupted. "You're in a tarnation hurry every way, 'twould seem. Who told you as I'd put that hundred into any vessel below Plimsoll mark?"

"I thought you hinted as much."

"Then you thought a long sight too fast. If you must know, your money's in the old Saltypool, and old as she is, that steamship might be my child, the way I watch over her."

"The Saltypool! Why, she's the most scand'lous case as has gone out of harbour these three months!"

"Eh?"

"I saw her with my own eyes alongside No. 3 jetty, the evenin' before she sailed. A calm night it was too; and she with her Plimsoll well under and a whole line o' trucks waitin' to be shot into her. She went out before daybreak, if you remember, and God knows how low she was by that time."

Mr Rogers's jaw dropped.

"The idiots!" he muttered. "When I told 'em—" He broke off.
"I say, you're not pullin' my leg?"

"Saw her with my own eyes, I tell you," 'Bias assured him, wondering a little; for the old sinner's dismay was clearly honest.

"Then all I say is, you can call Fancy and tell her to fetch me a Bible, if there's one in the house, an' I'll swear to you I never knew it, an' I never seen it. What's more, I'll sack the captain, an' I'll sack the mate. What's more, I'll cable dismissal out to Philadelphy. What's more—"

"There, there!" interposed 'Bias. "You didn' know, and enough said! I don't want any man thrown out of employ. 'Tis the system I'm out to spoil."

"Skippers are a trouble-without-end in these days," Mr Rogers muttered on, staring gloomily at the fire in the grate; "specially to a man crippled like me. . . . You spend years sarchin' for a fool, an' you no sooner get the treasure, as you think—one you can trust for a plain ord'nary fool in all weathers—than he turns out a dam fool!"

On his way from the ship-chandler's 'Bias ran against Mr Philp, who paused in the roadway and eyed him, chewing a piece of news and chuckling.

"That friend o' yours is a wonnur!" preluded Mr Philp.

"Meanin' Caius Hocken?"

"Who else? . . . He's goin' a great pace in these days; but you won't tell me he has flown out o' that range? Yes, 'tis Cap'n Hocken I mean; our Mayor, as you may call him; and there's some as looks to see a silver cradle yet in his mayoralty."

"What's the latest?" 'Bias could not help putting the question, yet despised himself for it.

"He's President of the Stevedores' Regatta this year."

"Get along with your news—I heard it ten days ago."

"So you did, for I told you myself. But he's giving a silver cup for the fourteen-foot race."

"And I heard that, too."

"Ay: but what you don't know, maybe, is that he's been up to Rilla Farm tryin' to persuade Mrs Bosenna to attend on the Committee-ship an' hand the cup—his cup—to the winner."

"She's never consented?"

"Now I call that a master-stroke. That's the bold way to win a woman. 'Come along o' me, my dear, an' find yourself the lady patroness, life-size. . . . Madam, you'll excuse the liberty,—but may I have the igstreme honour to request you to take my arm in the full view of all this here assembled rabble?' So arm-in-arm it is, up the deck, and 'Ladies an' Gentlemen'—meanin' 'Attention, pray, all you scum o' the earth'—'I'll trouble you to observe strick silence while this lady, with whom you are all familiar—'"

"Steady on!"

"Well, 'familiar' is too strong a word, as you say. 'While this lady, with whom you're all acquainted, presents the gallant winner with a cup, value Five Pounds, which you may have reckoned as an igstravagance when you heard I was the donor, 'but will now reckernise as a sprat to catch a whale—that is, unless you're even bigger fools than I take ye for. 'Twas with the greatest difficulty I indooced Mrs Bosenna—'"

"She never would!" swore 'Bias.

"Well, as a matter o' fact, she hasn't. But you'll allow the trick was clever, and nothin' more left for the woman, if she'd yielded, but to be carried straight off to the altar. 'Twould have been expected of her, and no less."

"What has she done?"

"Taken a wise an' womanly course, as I hear. 'No,' says she, 'I'll go to bottomless brimstone before lendin' myself to such a dodge'—or words to that effect. 'But I'll tell 'ee what I will do,' says she, 'I'll offer this here silver cup on my own account, an' give it with my own hands to the winner. And you can stand by,' says she, 'an' look as pompous as you please.' Either that, or that in so many words. I'm givin' you the gist of it, as it reached me."

"Thank 'ee," said 'Bias, perpending and digging up the roadway with the point of his stick. "'Tis to be her own prize, you say?"

"Yes, an' presented with her own hands. If I was you—bein' a trifle late as you are on the handicap—I'd sail in an' collar that prize. 'Twould be a facer for him."

"No time."

"Whit-Monday's not till the seventh o' June. Four clear weeks: an' Boatbuilder Wyatt could knock you up a shell in half that time. He gets cleverer with every boat of the class; and with a boat built to race once only he could make pretty well sure."

Later that afternoon Mr Philp, who never lost an occasion to advertise himself, paid a call on Mr Wyatt, boatbuilder.

"I found a new customer for you this afternoon," he announced, winking mysteriously. "If Cap'n Hunken should call along you'll know what I mean."

On his homeward road the industrious man had a stroke of good luck.
He espied Captain Hocken, and made haste to overtake him.

"Good evenin', Cap'n Cai!"

"Ah—Mr Philp? Good evenin' to 'ee."

"It's like a providence my meetin' you; for as it chances you was the last man in my mind. I happened down to Wyatt's yard just now, and—if you'll believe me—there's reason to believe he'll get an order to-morrow for another 14-footer,"

"Ay? . . . What for?"

"Why, to enter for the cup you're givin' on Whit-Monday."

"You're mistaken," said Cai. "'Tis Mrs Bosenna that's givin' the cup, not I."

"What? With her own hands?"

"To be sure. Why not?"

"Then that accounts for it," said Mr Philp gleefully, rubbing his hands. "He's a deep one, is your friend Hunken! It did strike me as odd, too— his givin' an order to Wyatt in all this hurry: but now I understand."

"Drat the man! what is it you understand?"

"Why, as you know, Wyatt can knock him a shell together that'll win the race under everybody's nose. 'Tis a child's play, if you don't mind castin' the boat next day an' content yourself with scantlin' like a packin' case. At least, 'twould be child's play to any one but Wyatt, who can't help buildin' solid, to save his life. If the man had consulted me, I'd have recommended Mitchell. Mitchell never had a length o' seasoned wood in his store: he can't afford the capital. But to my mind he can—take him as a workman—shape a boat better than Wyatt ever did yet."

"And to mine," Cai agreed.

"The cunning of it, too! He to take the prize from her under your nose and you standin' by and lookin' foolish. For, let alone the craft, they say Cap'n Hunken can handle a small boat to beat any man in this harbour. He cleared a whole prize-list out in Barbadoes, I've heard."

"What, 'Bias? Don't you be afraid. He can't steer a small boat for nuts."

"Dear me! Then I must have been misinformed, indeed."

"You have been," Cai assured him. "I reckon Mitchell can knock up a boat to give fits to anything of Wyatt's; and if 'Bias—if Cap'n Hunken is countin' on Wyatt to help him put the fool on me, it may happen he'll learn better."

CHAPTER XXIII.

PASSAGE REGATTA.

"'Tis good to wear a bit of colour again," said Mrs Bosenna on Regatta morning, as she stood before her glass pinning to her bodice a huge bow of red, white, and blue ribbons. "Black never did become me."

"It becomes ye well enough, mistress, and ye know it," contradicted
Dinah.

"'Tis monotonous, anyway. I can't see why we poor widow-women should be condemned to wear it for life."

"You bain't," Dinah contradicted again, and added slily, "d'ye wish me to fetch witnesses?"

Her mistress, tittivating the ribbons, ignored the question.
"I do think we might be allowed to wear colours now and again—say on
Sundays. As it is, I dare say many will be pickin' holes in my
character, even for this little outbreak."

"There's a notion, now! Why, 'tis Queen Victory's Year—and a pretty business if one widow mayn't pay her respects to another!"

"It do always seem strange to me," Mrs Bosenna mused.

"What?"

"Why, that the Queen should be a widow, same as any one else."

"Low fever," said Dinah. "And I've always heard as the Prince Consort had a delicate constitution."

"It happened before I was born," said Mrs Bosenna vaguely. "Think o' that, now! . . . And yet 'twasn't the widowin' I meant so much as the marryin'. I can't manage to connect it in my mind with folks so high up in the world as Kings and Queens. 'Tis so intimate."

"You may bet Providence tempers it to 'em somehow," opined Dinah.
"If they didn' have families, what'd become o' English history?"

If any tongues wagged against Mrs Bosenna for wearing the patriotic colours that day, they were not heard in the holiday crowd at the Passage Slip when, with nicely calculated unpunctuality, she arrived, at 11.32 (the time appointed having been 11.15), to be conveyed on board the Committee vessel. (It should be explained here that the aquatic half of Troy's Passage Regatta is compressed within the forenoon: at midday Troy dines, and even on holidays observes Greenwich time for that event. Moreover, the afternoon sports of bicycle racing, steeplechasing, polo-bending, &c., were preluded in those days—before an electric-power station worked the haulage on the jetties—by a procession of huge horses, highly groomed and bedecked with ribbons: and this procession, starting at 1 P.M., allowed the avid holiday-keeper small margin for dallying over his meal.)

Mrs Bosenna reached the slip to find Cai waiting below in a four-oared boat which he had borrowed from the Clerk of the Course. A large red ensign drooped from a staff and trailed in the water astern: the crew wore scarlet stocking-caps: bright cushion disposed in the stern-sheet added a touch of luxury to this pomp and circumstance. It might not rival the barge of Cleopatra upon Cydnus; but the shore-crowd, under whose eyes it had been waiting for close upon twenty minutes, voted it to be a very creditable turn out; and Cai, watch in hand, was at least as impatient as Mark Antony. Off the Committee Ship, a cable's length up the river, the penultimate race (ran-dan pulling-boats) was finishing amid banging of guns and bursts of music from the "Troy Town Band," saluting the winner with "See the Conquering Hero Comes," the second boat with strains consecrated to first and second prize-winners in Troy harbour since days beyond the span of living memory, even as all races start to the less classical but none the less immemorial air of "Off She goes to Wallop the Cat."

The crowd parted and made passage for Mrs Bosenna to descend the slip-way: for Troy is always polite. Its politeness, however, seldom takes the form of reticence; and as she descended she drew a double broadside of neighbourly good-days and congratulations, with audible comments from the back rows on her personal appearance.

"Mornin', Mrs Bosenna—an' a brave breast-knot you're wearin'!"

"Han'some, id'n-a?"

"Handsome, sure 'nough!"

"Fresh coloured as the day she was wed. . . . Good mornin' ma'am! Good mornin', Mrs Bosenna—an' a proper Queen o' Sheba you be, all glorious within."

"What a thing 'tis to have money!" remarked a meditative voice deep in the throng.

"Eh, Billy, my son, it cures half the ills o' life," responded another.

"'Tis a mysterious thing," hazarded a woman—"a dispensation you may call it, how black suits some complexions while others can't look at it."

"An' 'tis your sex's perversity," spoke up a male, "that them it don't suit be apt to wear it longest"—whereat several laughed, for where everybody is good-humoured the feeblest witticism will pass.

Mrs Bosenna heard these comments, but acknowledged them only by a scarcely perceptible heightening of colour. She went down the slip-way royally, with Dinah in close attendance: and Cai, catching sight of her and pocketing his watch, snatched up a boat-hook to draw the boat's quarter alongside the slip, while with his disengaged hand he lifted the brim of a new and glossy top-hat.

"Am I disgracefully late?" Without waiting for his answer, as he handed her aboard she exclaimed:

"Oh! and what a crowd of boats! . . . I never felt so nervous in all my life."

"There's no need," said Cai—who himself, two minutes before, had been desperately nervous. He seated himself beside her and took the tiller. "Push her out, port-oars! Ready?—Give way, all! . . . There's no need," he assured her, sinking his voice; "I never saw ye look a properer sight. Maybe 'tis the bunch o' ribbon sets 'ee off—'Tis the first time ye've worn colour to my recollection."

"Dead black never suited me."

"I wouldn' say that. . . . But," added Cai upon a happy thought, "if that's so, you know where to find excuse to leave off wearin' it."

"Hush!" she commanded. "How can you talk so with all these hundreds of eyes upon us?"

"I don't care." Cai's voice rose recklessly.

"Oh, hush! or the crew'll hear us?"

"I don't care, I tell you."

"But I do—I care very much. . . . You don't pay me compliments when we're alone," she protested, changing the subject slightly.

"I mean 'em all the time."

"Well, since compliments are flyin' to-day, that's a fine new hat you're wearin'. And I like the badge in your buttonhole: red with gold letters—it gives ye quite a smart appearance. What's the writin' on it?"

"'President.' 'Tis the only red-and-gold badge in the show.
Smart? I tell 'ee I'm feelin' smart."

It was indeed Cai's day—his hour, rather—of triumph. He had played a winning stroke, boldly, under the public eye: and a hundred comments of the sightseers, as he steered through the press of boats to the Committee Ship, testified to his success. Though he could not hear, he felt them.

—"Well!"

—"Proper cuttin'-out expedition, as you might call it."

—"And she with a great bunch o' ribbons pinned on her, that no-one shan't miss the meanin' of it."

—"Well, I always favoured Cap'n Hocken's chance, for my part. An', come to think, 'tis more fitty 't should happen so. When all's said an' done, t'other's a foreigner, as you might say, from the far side o' the Duchy: an' if old Bosenna's money is to go anywhere, why then, bein' Troy-earned, let it go to a Troy man."

—"But 'tis a facer for Cap'n Hunken, all the same. Poor chap, look at 'en."

—"Where? . . . I don't see 'en."

—"Why, forward there, on the Committee Ship: leanin' up against the bulwarks an' lookin' as if he'd swallowed a dog."

—"There, there! . . . And some plucky of the man to stand up to it, 'stead of walkin' off an' drownin' hisself. I like a man as can take a knock-down blow standing up. 'Tis a rare occurrence in these days."

Mrs Bosenna, too, whose wealth (pleasant enough for the comforts it procured, pleasanter, perhaps, for an attendant sense of security, pleasantest of all, it may be, for a further sense of power and importance, secretly enjoyed) had, as yet, of public acknowledgment taken little toll beyond the deference of tradesmen when she went shopping, felt herself of a sudden caught up to an eminence the very giddiness of which was ecstasy. It is possible that, had Cai claimed her there and then, before the crowd, she would have yielded with but a faint protest. You must not think that she lost her head for a moment. On the contrary during her triumphal convoy she saw everything with remarkable distinctness. She knew well enough that some scores of women, all around, were envying her, yet admiring in spite of their envy. Without hearing them, she could almost tell what comments were uttered in boat after boat as she passed. But what mattered their envy, so long as they admired? Nay, what mattered their envy, so long as they envied? The tonic north wind, the sunshine, the sparkle of the water, the gay lines of bunting flickering from stem to stern of the Committee Ship, the invigorating blare of the Troy Town Band, now throwing its soul into "Champagne Charlie," the propulsion of the oars that seemed to snatch her and sweep her forward past wondering faces to high destiny— all these were wings, and lifted her spirit with them. She began to under stand what it must feel like to be a Queen, or (at least) a Prime Minister's wife.

"Ea-sy all! In oars! . . . Bow, stand by to check her!"

Cai called his orders clearly, sharply, in the tone of a master of men. A score of boats hampered approach to the accommodation ladder; but those that had occupants were obediently thrust wide to make way, and easily as in a barge of state Mrs Bosenna was brought alongside. A dozen hands checked the way of the boat, now abruptly. Other hands were stretched to help her up the ladder, which she ascended with smiling and graceful agility. On the deck, at the head of it, stood the Hon. Secretary, with the silver cup ready, nursed in the crook of his arm. It was a handsome cup, and it flashed in the sunlight. The Hon. Secretary doffed his yachting cap. A dozen men close behind him doffed their caps at the signal. They were the successful competitors of the dinghy race, mixed up with committee-men: they had come to receive their prizes. The competing boats, their sails lowered, had been brought alongside, and lay tethered, trailing off from the ship's quarter, rubbing shoulders in a huddle.

Cai, mounting to the deck close behind Dinah, who had followed her mistress, was met by the Hon. Secretary with the announcement that everything had been ready these ten minutes.

Almost before she could catch her breath, Mrs Bosenna found the cup thrust into her hands; the band in the fore part of the vessel ceased— or, to speak more accurately, smothered—"Champagne Charlie"; the group before her fell back to form a semicircle and urged forward the abashed first-prize winner, who stood rubbing one ankle against another and awkwardly touching his forelock, while a silence fell, broken only by voices from the boats around calling "Order! Or-der for the speech!"

Mrs Bosenna, recognising the champion in spite of his blushes, collected her courage, smiled, and said—

"Why, 'tis Walter Sobey!"

"Servant, ma'am!" Mr Sobey touched his forelock again and grinned, as who should add, "You and me, ma'am, meets in strange places."

"Well, I never! . . . How things do turn out!" It crossed Mrs Bosenna's mind that on the last occasion of her addressing a word to Walter Sobey he had been employed by her to cart manure for her roses: and across this recollection floated a sense of money wasted—for to what service could Walter Sobey, inhabitant of a three-roomed cottage, put a two-handled loving-cup embossed in silver?

There was no time, however, for hesitation. . . . With the most gracious of smiles she took the cup in both hands, and presented it to the champion.

"'Tis good, anyhow, to feel it goes to a neighbour: and—and if the worst comes to the worst, Walter, you can always take it back to the shop and change it for something useful."

"Thank 'ee, ma'am," said Mr Sobey, taking the cup respectfully. He backed a pace or two, gazed around, and caught the eye of the Hon. Secretary. "There's a money prize, too, attached to it—ain't there?" he was heard to ask. "Leastways, 'twas so said 'pon the bills." Mr Sobey was proud of his victory; the prouder because he had built the winning boat with his own hands. (Very luckily for him, at the last moment Captain Hocken had judged it beneath the dignity of a Regatta President to compete; and Captain Hunken, missing his rival at the starting-line, had likewise withdrawn from the contest.)

"Certainly," agreed the Hon. Secretary. "Two guineas. Hi, there, aft!
Where's Mr Willett?"

Other voices carried back the call, and presently the Treasurer, Mr Willett—a pursey little man with enormous side-whiskers,—came hurrying forward from the after-companion, where he had been engaged in hearing a protest from an excited disputant—a competitor in the 16-foot class— who had in fact come in last, even on his handicap, but with a clear notion in his own mind, and an array of arguments to convince others, that he was entitled to the prize. Such misunderstandings were frequent enough at Passage Regatta, and mainly because .Mr Willett, whom nobody cared to cashier—he had been Treasurer for so many years,—had as a rule imbibed so much beer in the course of the forenoon that any one argument appeared to him as cogent as any other. He seemed, in fact, to delight in hearing a case from every point of view; and by consequence it could be securely predicted of any given race in Passage Regatta that "You had never lost till you'd won."

Now, on Cai's secret recommendation the Committee had engaged the boy Palmerston—who was quick at sums—to stand by Mr Willett during the forenoon and count out the cash for him. The Treasurer (it was argued) would be suspicious of help from a grown man; whereas he could order a boy about, and even cuff his head on emergency. So Palmerston, seated by the after-companion, had spent a great part of the morning in listening to disputes, and counting out money as soon as the disputes were settled. Nor was objection taken—as it might have been at more genteel fixtures—to a part of the prize being produced from Palmerston's mouth, in which he had a knack of storing petty cash, for convenience of access—and for safety too, to-day, since he had discovered a hole in one of his pockets.

Mr Willett then, rising and cutting short an altercation between two late competitors in the 16-foot race, came hurrying forward with Palmerston, ever loyal, in his wake. For the boy, without blaming anyone, anxious only to fulfil a responsibility that weighed on him, was aware that Mr Willett—whether considered as a man or as a treasurer— had taken in overmuch beer, and might need support in either capacity or in both.

But while Mr Willett advanced, in a series of hasty plunges,—as though the Committee vessel were ploughing the deep with all sail set,—voices around Mrs Bosenna had already begun to call for a speech; and the cry was quickly taken up from the many boats overside, now gathered in a close throng.

"A speech! a speech!"

Mrs Bosenna laughed, and turned about prettily.

"I did not bargain for any speech," she protested. "I—in fact I never made a speech in my life. If—if Captain Hocken would say a few words—"

"Ay, Cap'n," exhorted a voice, "speak up for her, like a man now!
Seems to us she've given you the right."

There was a general laugh, and it brought a heightened flush to Mrs Bosenna's cheek. Cai, not noting it, cleared his throat and doffed his tall hat. "Here, hold this," said he, catching sight of Palmerston, and cleared his throat again.

"Friends and naybours," said he, and this opening evoked loud applause.
As it died down, he continued, "Friends and naybours, this here has been
a most successful regatta. Of which, as a fitting conclusion, the
Brave has received his reward at the hands of the Fair."

"Lord! he means hisself!" interrupted a giggling voice from one of the boats.

This interruption called forth a storm of applause. Oars were rattled on rowlocks and feet began stamping on bottom boards.

"By the Brave," continued Cai, pitching his voice higher, "I mean, of course, our respected fellow-citizen, Mr Walter Sobey, whose handling of his frail craft—"

("Hear! Hear!")

"—Whose handling of his frail craft to-day was of a natur' to surprise and delight all beholders."

At this point Mr Willett, the Treasurer, who had for some seconds been staring at the speaker with glazed uncertain eye, interrupted in a voice thick with liquor—

"The question is, Who wants me?"

"Nobody, you d—d old fool!" snapped the Hon. Secretary. "Can't you see
Cap'n Hocken is makin' a speech?"

"I see," answered Mr Willett with drunken deliberation, "and, what's more, I don't think much of it. . . . Gentlemen over there 'pears t' agree with me," he added: for from the rear of the group a scornful laugh had endorsed his criticism.

"Any one can tell what hasn't agreed with you this mornin'," retorted the Hon. Secretary, still more angrily. "Go home, and—"

But Cai had lifted a hand. "No quarrelling, please!" he commanded, and resumed, "As I was sayin', ladies and gentlemen—or as I was about to say—the handlin' of a small boat demands certain gifts or, er, qualities; and these gifts and, er, qualities bein' the gifts and h'm qualities what made England such as we see her to-day,—a sea-farin' nation an' foremost at that,—it follows that we cannot despise them if we wish her to occupy the same position in the futur'—which to my mind is education in a nutshell."

Again the scornful laugh echoed from the back of the crowd, and this time Cai knew the voice. It stung him the more sharply, as in a flash he recollected that the phrase "education in a nutshell" belonged properly to a later paragraph, and in his flurry he had dragged it in prematurely. His audience applauded, but Cai swung about in wrath.

"My remarks," said he, "don't seem to commend themselves to one o' my hearers. But I'm talkin' now on a subjec' about which I know som'at,— not about ploughin'."

The thrust was admirably delivered,—the more adroitly in that, on the edge of delivering it, he had paused with a self-depreciatory smile. Its point was taken up on the instant. The audience on deck sent up a roar of laughter: and the roar spread and travelled away from the ship in a widening circle as from boat to boat the shrewd hit was reported. Distant explosions of mirth were still greeting it, when Cai, finding voice again, and wisely cutting out his prepared peroration, concluded as follows:—

"Any way, friends and naybours, I can wind up with something as'll
commend itself to everybody: and that is by wishin' success to Passage
Regatta, and askin' ye to give three cheers for Mrs Bosenna.
Hip—hip—"

"Hoo-ray! hoo-ray! hoo-ray!" The cheers were given with a will and passed down the river in rolling echoes. But before the last echo died away—while Mrs Bosenna smiled her acknowledgment—as the band formed up for "God Save the Queen"—as they lifted their instruments and the bandmaster tapped the music-stand with his baton,—at the top of his voice 'Bias delivered his counter-stroke.

"And one more for Peter Benny!"

There was a momentary hush, and then—for Troy's sense of humour is impartial, and everyone knew from what source Captain Hocken derived his public eloquence—the air was rent with shout upon shout of merriment. Even the band caught the contagion. The drummer drew a long applausive rattle from his side-drum; the trombone player sawing the air with his instrument, as with a fret-saw, evoked noises not to be described.

In the midst of this general mirth—while Cai stood his ground, red to the ears, and Mrs Bosenna plucked nervously at the tassel of her sunshade—'Bias came thrusting forward, shouldering his way through the press. But 'Bias's face reflected none of the mirth he had awakened.

"I mayn't know much about ploughin', Cai Hocken—" he began.

"Ah? Good day, Captain Hunken!" interposed Mrs Bosenna.

"Good-day to you, ma'am." He raised his hat without answering her smile. Then, with a gesture that dismissed the tactful interruption, "I mayn't know much about ploughin', though it sticks in my mind that as between us the judges handed me the stakes, even at that. But at handlin' a boat—one o' these here dingheys if you will, an' if you care to make good your words—"

"What was my words?"

"Oh, I beg pardon." 'Bias corrected himself with a snort of contempt. "'Peter Benny's words,' maybe I should have said: but 'education in a nutshell' was the expression."

"I'll take you up—when and where you please, and for any money,"
Cai challenged, white to the lips and shaking with rage.

"A five-pound note, if you will."

"As you please. . . . I haven't five pound here, upon me."

"Nor I, as it happens. But here's a sovereign for earnest."

"Here's another to cover it, anyway. Who'll hold the stakes? . . .
Will you, ma'am?" Cai appealed to Mrs Bosenna.

"Certainly not," she answered, tapping the deck angrily with the ferrule of her sunshade. "And I wonder how you two can behave so foolish, before folks."

But for the moment they were past her control.

"Here . . . Pam! Pam will do, eh?"

"Well as another."

"Right. Here Pam, take hold o' this sovereign and keep it careful!"

"Mine too. . . . That makes the wager, eh?"

"For five pounds?"

"Five pounds. Right.

"Boats?"

"I don't care. Our own two, or draw lots for any two here, as you please."

"But—gentlemen!" interposed the Hon. Secretary.

"Now, don't you start interferin'"—Bias turned on him sullenly.
"Else you might chance to get what you don't like."

"Oh, they're mad!" wailed Mrs Bosenna, and Dinah was heard to murmur, "You've pushed' em too far, mistress: an' don't say as I didn' warn you!"

"I—I was only goin' to suggest, gentlemen," urged the Hon. Secretary, "it bein' already ten minutes past noon, and everybody waitin' for 'God Save the Queen.'"

"Hullo!" hailed a voice alongside, at the foot of the accommodation table; and Mr Philp's top hat, Mr Philp's deceptively jovial face, Mr Philp's body clad in mourning weeds, climbed successively into view. "There, naybours!" he announced. "I'm in the nick of time, after all, it seems,—though when I heard the church clock strike twelve it sent my heart into my mouth." He stood and panted.

"Ah! good-day, Mr Philp!" Mrs Bosenna turned, hailing his intervention, and advanced to shake hands.

"Good-day to you, ma'am. Been enjoy in' yourself, I hope?" said Mr
Philp, somewhat taken aback by the warmth of her greeting.

"A most successful Regatta . . . don't you agree?"

"I might, ma'am," answered Mr Philp solemnly. "I don't doubt it, ma'am.
But as a matter of fact I have just come from a funeral."

"Oh! . . . I—I beg your pardon—I didn't know—"

"There's no call to apologise, ma'am. . . . The deceased was not a relative. A farm-servant, ma'am—female—at the far end of the parish: Tuckworthy's farm, to be precise: and the woman, Sarah Jane Collins by name. Probably you didn't know her. No more did I except by sight: but a very respectable woman—a case of Bright's disease. In the midst of life we are in death, and, much as I enjoy Passage Regatta—"

"You have missed it then?"

"The woman had saved money, ma'am. There was a walled grave, by request." Mr Philp sighed over this remembered consolation. "She could not help it clashin', poor soul."

"No, indeed!"

"And you may or may not have noticed it, ma'am, but when a man sets duty before pleasure, often as not he gets rewarded. Comin' back along the town before the streets filled, I picked up a piece o' news, and hurried along with it. I reckoned it might be of interest if I could reach here ahead of 'God Save the Queen.'"

"Gracious! What has happened?" Mrs Bosenna clasped her hands. Indeed Mr Philp, big with his news and important, had somehow contrived to overawe everyone on deck.

"The news is," he announced slowly, "that the Saltypool has gone down, within fifty miles of Philadelphia. Crew saved in the boats. Cable reached Mr Rogers at eleven o'clock, and"—he paused impressively, "there and then Rogers had a second stroke. Point o' death, they say."

Above the sympathetic murmur of Mr Philp's audience there broke, on the instant, a gasping cry—followed by a yet more terrible sound, as of one in the last agony of strangulation.

All turned, as Palmerston—dashing forward between the music-stands of the band and scattering them to right and left—flung himself between Cai and 'Bias at their very feet.

"Masters—masters! I've a-swallowed the stakes!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

FANCY BRINGS NEWS.

"Which," Mrs Bowldler reported to Fancy, who had left her master's sick-bed to pay a fleeting visit to Palmerston's, "the treatment was drastic for a growin' child. First of all Mrs Bosenna, that never had a child of her own, sent down to the cabin for the mustard that had been left over from the Sailin' Committee's sangwidges, and mixed up a drink with it and a little cold water. Which the results was nil; that is to say, pecuniarily speakin'. Then somebody fetched along Mr Clogg the vet. from Tregarrick, that had come over for the day to judge the horses, and he said as plain salt-and-water was worth all the mustard in the world, so they made the poor boy swallow the best part of a pint, and he brought up eighteenpence."

"Saints alive! But I thought you told me—"

"So I did: two solid golden sufferins. And that," said Mrs Bowldler, "was for some time the most astonishin' part of the business. Two solid golden sufferins: and low!—as the sayin' is—low and behold, eighteen pence in small silver!"

"Little enough too, for a miracle!" mused Fancy.

"It encouraged 'em to go on. Captain Hocken—he's a humane gentleman, too, and never graspin'—no, never in his life!—but I suppose he'd begun to get interested,—Captain Hocken ups and suggests as they were wastin' time, mixin' table-salt and water when there was the wide ocean itself overside, to be had for the dippin'. So they tried sea-water."

"My poor Pammy.'"

"Don't you start a-pityin' me," gasped a voice, faint but defiant, from the bed. "If I die, I die. But I got the account to balance."

"I disremember what sum—er—resulted that time," confessed Mrs
Bowldler; "my memory not bein' what it was."

"Ninepence; an' two threepennies with the soap—total two-and-nine, which was correct. If I die, I die," moaned Palmerston.

"'Ero!" murmured Fancy, stepping to the bedside and arranging his pillow.

"You take my advice and lie quiet," counselled Mrs Bowldler. "You're not a-goin' to die this time. But there's been a shock to the system, you may make up your mind," she went on, turning to Fancy. "I'd most forgotten about the soap. That was Philp's suggestion, as I heard. They found a cake of Monkey Brand in the ship's fo'c'sle, and by the time Doctor Higgs arrived with his stomach-pump—"

"They'd sent for him? What, for two pounds?"

"Less two-an'-nine, by this—as they thought. But, of course, there was the child's health to be considered . . . I ought to mention that before Dr Higgs came Captain Hunken remembered how he'd treated a seaman once, that had swallowed carbolic by mistake. He recommended tar: but there wasn't any tar to be found—which seems strange, aboard a ship."

"It was lucky, anyhow."

"There was a plenty of hard pitch about, and one or two reckoned the marine glue in the deck-seams might be a passable substitute. They were diggin' some out with their penknives when Doctor Higgs arrived with his pump."

"And did he use it?"

"He did not. He asked what First Aid they had been applyin', an' when they told him, his language was not to be repeated. 'D'ye think,' said he, 'as I'd finish the child for—'well, he named the balance, whatever 'twas."

"One-seventeen-three," said the voice from the bed.

"That's so. And 'Monkey Brand?' says he. 'Why, you've scoured his little stummick so, you might put it on the chimbly-piece and see your face in it! Fit an' wrap what's left of him in a blanket,' says Doctor Higgs; 'an' take him home an' put him to bed,' says he—which they done so," concluded Mrs Bowldler, "an' if you'll believe it, when I come to put him to bed an' fold his trowsers across the chair, out trickles the two sufferins!"

"You don't say!"

"He's been absent-minded of late. It they'd only turned his pockets out instead of—well, we won't go into details: but the two pounds was there all the time. 'Twas the petty cash he'd swallowed, in the shock at hearin' about Mr Rogers. . . . And how's he, by the way?"

"Bad," answered Fancy, "dreadful bad. I don't think he's goin' to die, not just yet-awhile: but he can't speak, and his mind's troubled."

"Reason enough why, if all's truth that they tell of him."

"But it isn't."

"He brought your own father to beggary."

"Well, you may put it that way if you choose. It's the way they all put it that felt for Dad without allowin' their feelin's to take 'em further. Not that he'd any claim to more'n their pity. He speckilated with Mr Rogers, and Mr Rogers did him in the eye, that's all. And I'm very fond of Dad," continued the wise child; "but the longer I live the more I don't see as one man can bring another to beggary unless the other man helps. The point is, Mr Rogers didn' leave him there. . . . We've enough to eat."

"Ho! If that contents you—" Mrs Bowldler shrugged her shoulders.

"Who said it did? We don't ezackly make Gawds of our bellies, Dad and I; but there's a difference between that and goin' empty. Ask Pammy!" she added, with a twitch and a grin.

"I've heard you say, anyway, that you was afraid Mr Rogers'd go to the naughty place. A dozen times I've heard you say it."

"Rats!—you never did. What you heard me say was that he'd go to hell, and I was sure of it. . . . And you may call it weak, but I can't bear it," the child broke out with a cry of distress, intertwisting her fingers and wringing them. "It's dreadful—dreadful!—to sit by and watch him lyin' there, with his mind workin' and no power to speak. All the time he's wantin' to say something to me, and—and—Where's Cap'n Hocken?"

"In his parlour. I heard his step in the passage, ten minutes ago, an' the door close."

"I'm goin' down to him, if you'll excuse me," said Fancy, rising from the bedroom chair into which she had dropped in her sudden access of grief.

"Why?"

"I dunno. . . . He's a good man, for one thing. You haven't noticed any difference in him?"

"Since when?" The question obviously took Mrs Bowldler by surprise.

"Since he heard—yesterday—"

"Me bein' single-handed, with Palmerston on his back, so to speak, I hev' not taken particular observation," said Mrs Bowldler. "Last night, as I removed the cloth after supper, he passed the remark that it had been a very tirin' day, that this was sad news about Mr Rogers, but we'd hope for the best, and when I mentioned scrambled eggs for breakfast, he left it to me. Captain Hunken on the other hand chose haddock: he did mention—come to think of it and when I happened to say that a second stroke was mostly fatal—he did go so far as to say that all flesh was grass and that Palmerston would require feedin' up after what he'd gone through."

"He—Cap'n Hunken—didn' seem worried in mind, either?"

"Nothing to notice. Of course," added Mrs Bowldler, "you understand that our appetites are not what they were: that there has been a distink droppin' off since—you know what. They both eats, in a fashion, but where's the pleasure in pleasin' 'em? Heart-renderin', I call it, when a devilled kidney might be a plain boiled cabbage for all the heed taken, and you knowin' all the while that a woman's at the bottom of it."

Fancy moved to the door. "Well," said she, "I'm sorry for the cause of it: but duty's duty, and I reckon I've news to make 'em sit up."

She went downstairs resolutely and knocked at Cai's parlour door.

"Come in! . . . Eh, so it's you, missy? No worse news of the invalid, I hope?"

"He isn' goin' to die to-day, nor yet to-morrow, if that's what you mean. May I take a chair?"

"Why, to be sure."

"Thank you." Fancy seated herself. "If you please, Cap'n Hocken, I got a very funny question to ask."

"Well?"

"You mustn't think I'm inquisitive—"

"Go on."

"If you please, Cap'n Hocken, are you very fond indeed of Mrs Bosenna?"

Cai turned about to the hearth and stooped for the tongs, as if to place a lump of coal on the fire. Then he seemed to realise that, the season being early summer, there was no fire and the tongs and coal-scuttle had been removed. He straightened himself up slowly and faced about again, very red and confused (but the flush may have come from his stooping).

"So we're not inquisitive, aren't we? Well, missy, appearances are deceptive sometimes—that's all I say."

"But I'm not askin' out o' curiosity—really an' truly. And please don't turn me out an' warn me to mind my own business; for it is my business, in a way. . . . I'll explain it all, later on, if only you'll tell."

"I admire Mrs Bosenna very much indeed," said Cai slowly. "There now,— will that satisfy you?"

Fancy shook her head. "Not quite," she confessed, "I want to know, Are you so fond of her that you wouldn' give her up, not on any account?"

Cai flushed again. "Well, missy, since you put it that way, we'll make it so."

Still the answer did not appear to satisfy the child. She fidgetted in her chair a little, but without offering to go.

"Not for no one in the wide world?" she asked at length.

"Why, see here,"—Cai met her gaze shyly—"isn't that the right way to feel when you want to make a woman your wife?"

"Ye-es—I suppose so," admitted Fancy with a sigh. "But it makes things so awkward—" She paused and knit her brows, as one considering a hard problem.

"What's awkward?"

Her response to this, delayed for a few seconds, was evasive when it came.

"I used to think you an' Cap'n Hunken was such friends there was nothin' in the world you wouldn' do for him."

"Ah!" Cai glanced at her with sharp suspicion. "So that's the latest game, is it? He's been gettin' at you—a mere child like you!—and sends you off here to work on my feelin's! . . . I thought better of 'Bias: upon my soul, I did."

"An' you'd better go on thinkin' better," retorted Fancy with spirit. "Cap'n Hunken sent me? What next? . . . Why, he never spoke a word to me!"

"Then I don't see—"

"Why I'm here? No, you don't; but you needn't take up with guesses o' that sort."

"I'm sorry if I mistook ye, missy."

"You ought to be. Mistook me?—O' course you did. And as for Cap'n Hunken's sendin' me, he don't even know yet that he's lost his money: and if he did he'd be too proud, as you ought to know."

"Lost his money?" echoed Cai. "What money?"

"Well, to start with, you don't suppose Mr Rogers got his stroke for nothin'? 'Twas the news about the Saltypool that bowled him out: an' between you an' me, in a few days there's goin' to be a dreadful mess. He always was a speckilator. The more money he made—and he made a lot, back-along—the more he'd risk it: and the last year or two his luck has been cruel. In the end, as he had to tell me—for I did all his writin', except when he employed Peter Benny,—he rode to one anchor, and that was the Saltypool. He ran her uninsured."

"Uninsured?" Cai gave a low whistle. "But all the same," said he, "an' sorry as I am for Rogers, I don't see how that affects—"

"I'm a-breakin' it gently," said Fancy, not without a small air of importance. "Cap'n Hunken had a small sum in the Saltypool—a hundred pounds only."

"I wonder he had a penny. 'Tisn't like 'Bias to put anything into an uninsured ship."

"Mr Rogers did it without consultin' him. Cap'n Hunken didn' know, and I didn' know, for the money didn' pass by cheque. Some time back in last autumn—I've forgot the date, but the books'll tell it—the old man handed me two hundred pound in notes, not tellin' me where they came from, with orders to pay it into his account: which I took it straight across to the bank—"

"Belay there a moment," interrupted Cai. "A moment since you mentioned one hundred."

"So I did, because we're talkin' of Cap'n Hunken. Two hundred there were, and all in bank notes: but only one hundred belonged to him—and I only found that out the other day, when he heard that Mr Rogers had put it into the Saltypool, and there was a row. As for the other— Lawks, you don't tell me 'twas yours!" exclaimed Fancy, catching at the sudden surmise written on Cai's face.

"Why not? . . . If he treated 'Bias that way? Sure enough," said Cai.
"I took him a hundred pounds to invest for me, about that time."

"Did he pay you a dividend this last half-year?"

"To be sure—seven pound, eight-an'-four."

"That was on the Saltypool," Fancy nodded. "And oh! Cap'n Hocken, I am so sorry! but that hundred pound o' yours is at the bottom of the sea."

"Well, my dear," said Cai after a pause, pulling a wry face, "to do your master justice, he warned me 'twas a risk. There's naught to do but pay up un' look pleasant, I reckon. 'Twon't break me."

"Cut the loss, you mean. The shares was paid up in full, and there can't be no call."

"You're knowledgeable, missy: and yet you're wrong this time, as it happens. For (I may tell you privately) the money didn' belong to me, but to Mrs Bosenna, who asked me to invest it for her."

"Oh!—and Cap'n Hunken's hundred too?"

Cai reached a hand to the mantelpiece for the tobacco-jar, filled a pipe very deliberately, lit it, and drawing a chair up to the table, seated himself in face of her.

"I shouldn't wonder," said he, resting both arms on the table and eyeing her across a cloud of tobacco-smoke. "Though I don't understand what she—I mean, I don't understand what the game was."

"Me either," agreed the child, musing. "No hurry, though: I'll be a widow some day, please God—which is mor'n you can hope. But now we get to the point: an' the point is, you can pay the woman up. Cap'n Hunken can't."

"Why not?"

"He don't know it yet, but he can't."

"So you said: an' Why not? I ask. Within a thousand pound 'Bias owns as much as I do."

The child stood up, pulled her chair across to the table, and reseating herself, gazed steadily across at him through the tobacco-smoke.

"Where d'ye keep your bonds an' such like?" she asked.

"In my strong box, for the most part: two or three in the skivet of my sea-chest."

"You got 'em all?"

"All. That's to say all except the paper for this hundred pounds, which 'twas agreed Rogers should keep."

"You're a lucky man. . . . Where did Cap'n Hunken keep his?"

"Darn'd if I know. Somewheres about. He was always a bit careless over his securities—and so I've told him a dozen times,"

"When did you tell him last?"

This was a facer, and it made Cai blink. "We haven't discussed these things much—not of late," he answered lamely.

"I reckoned not. He don't keep 'em in his strong-box?"

"He hasn't one."

"In his chest?"

"Maybe."

"But he don't. He's left 'em with Mr Rogers from the first, or I'm mistaken. I used to see the two bundles, his and yours, lyin' side by side on the upper shelf o' the safe when the old man sent me to unlock it an' fetch something he wanted—which wasn't often. Then, about six months back, I noticed as one was gone. I mentioned it to him, and he said as 'twas all his scrip—that was his word—made up in a parcel an' docketed by you, and that some time afterwards you'd taken it away."

"Quite correct, missy. And t'other one is 'Bias's, as I know. I had 'em in my hands together when I opened the safe as Mr Rogers told me to do, givin' me the key. I took out the two, not knowing t'other from which, made sure, docketed mine careful—to take away—and put 'Bias's back in the safe afore lockin' it. That would be back sometime in October last."

Fancy nodded. "That's what he told me: and up to this mornin' I reckoned Cap'n Hunken's bonds was still there, though it must be a month since I opened the safe. This mornin' I had a talk with Dad—he doesn't know the half about the master's affairs, nor how they've been these two years, and I didn' let on: but I allowed as we ought to look into things and call in Peter Benny—knowin' that Peter Benny was made execlator, if anything happened. So we agreed, and called him in: and I told Peter Benny enough to let him see that things were serious. In the end I fetched the keys, and he unlocked the safe. There was a good few papers in it, which he overhauled. But there wasn' no parcel 'pon the top shelf where I'd seen it last."

"Then you may depend he'd given it to 'Bias unbeknown to you, same as he handed mine over to me. Wasn' that Benny's opinion?"

"Oh, you make me tired!" exclaimed the wise child frankly. "As if I'd no more sense than to go there an' then an' frighten him—an' him with all those papers to look over!"

"Then if you're so shy about worriting Benny—and I don't blame you—why be in such a hurry to worrit yourself? 'Bias has the papers—that you may lay to."

Fancy tapped her small foot on the floor, which it just reached. "As if I should be wastin' time, botherin' you! On my way here I ran against Cap'n Hunken, and of course he wanted to hear the latest of master—said he was on his way to inquire. So I told him that matters was bad enough but while there was life there was hope—the sort o' thing you have to say: and I went on that the business would be all in a mess for some time to come, and I hoped he'd got all his papers at home, which would save trouble. 'Papers?' said he. 'Not I!'—and I wonder I didn' drop: you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'Papers?' said he. 'I haven't seen 'em for months. I don't trouble about papers! But you'll find 'em in the safe all right, though I haven't seen 'em for months.' Those were the very words he used: and nothin' would interest him but to hear how the invalid was doin'. He went off, cheerful as a chaffinch. It's plain to me," Fancy wound up, "that he hasn't the papers. He trusted you, to start with, and he's gone on trustin' you and the master. Didn' you intejuce him?"

"Sure enough I did," Cai allowed. "But—confound it, you know!—'Bias
Hunken isn't a child."

"Oh! if that contents you—" But well she knew it did not.

"Mr Rogers never would—"

"I've told you," said Fancy, "more'n ever I ought to have told. There's no knowin', they say, what a man'll do when he's in Queer Street: and the papers have gone: and Cap'n Hunken thinks they're in the safe, where they ain't: and I come to you first, as used to be his friend."

"Good Lord '" Cai stood erect. "If—if—"

"That's so," assented Fancy, seated and nodding. "If—"

"But it can't be!"

"But if it is?" She slipped from her chair and stood, still facing him.

He stared at her blankly. "Poor old 'Bias!" he murmured. "But it can't be."

"Right O! if you will have it so. But, you see, I didn' put the question out o' curiosity altogether."

"The question? What question?"

"Why, about Mrs Bosenna."

"What has Mrs Bosenna to do with—Oh, ay, to be sure! You're meanin' that hundred pounds." His wits were not very clear for the moment.

"No, I'm not," said Fancy, moving to the door. In the act of opening it she paused. "'Twas through you, I reckon, he first trusted master with his money."

"I—I never suggested it," stammered Cai.

"I'm not sayin' you did," the girl answered back coldly. "But he went to master for your sake, because you was his friend and he had such a belief in you. Just you think that out."

With a nod of the head she was gone.

Before leaving the house she visited the kitchen, to bid good-night to
Mrs Bowldler. But Mrs Bowldler was not in the kitchen.

She mounted the stairs and tapped at the door of Palmerston's attic chamber.

"Hullo!" said she looking in, "what's become of Geraldine?" (Mrs Bowldler's Christian name was Sarah, but the two children vied in inventing others more suitable to her gentility).

"If by Geraldine you mean Herm-Intrude," said Palmerston, sitting up in bed and grinning, "she's out in the grounds, picking—"

"Culling," corrected Fancy. "Her own word."

"Well then—culling lamb mint."

"I should ha' thought sage-an'-onions was the stuffin' relied on by this establishment."

"Seasonin'," corrected Palmerston. "But what have you been doin' all this time?"

"My dear, don't ask!" Fancy seated herself at the foot of the bed.
"If you must know, I've been playin' Meddlesome Matty life-size. . . .
These grown-ups are all so helpless—the men especially! . . .
Feelin' better?"

"Heaps. 'Tis foolishness, keepin' me in bed like this, and I wish you'd tell her so. I'm all right—'xcept in my mind."

"What's wrong with your mind?"

"'Shamed o' myself: that's all—but it's bad enough."

"There's no call to be ashamed. You did it in absence o' mind, and all the best authors have suffered from that. It's well known."

"To go through what I did," said Palmerston bitterly, "just to bring up two-an'-nine! 'Tis such a waste of material!"

"That's one way of puttin' it, to be sure."

"I mean, for a book—for' Pickerley.' I s'pose there's not one man in a thousand—not one liter'y man, anyhow—has suffered anything like it. And I can't put it into the book!"

"No," agreed Fancy meditatively. "I don't suppose you could: not in 'Pickerley' anyhow. You couldn' make your 'ero swallow anything under a di'mund tiyara, and that's not easy."

"I'll have to write the next one about low life," said Palmerston. "If only I knew a bit more about it! Mrs Bowldler says it can be rendered quite amusin', and I wouldn' mind makin' myself the 'ero."

"Wouldn't you? Well, I should, and don't you let me catch you at it! The man as I marry'll have to keep his head up and show a proper respect for his-self."

Poor Palmerston stared. The best women in the world will never understand an artist.

CHAPTER XXV.

CAI RENOUNCES.

If this thing had happened—?

After Fancy left him Cai dropped into his armchair, and sat for a long while staring at the paper ornament with which Mrs Bowldler had decorated his summer hearth. It consisted of a cascade of paper shavings with a frontage of paper roses and tinsel foliage, and was remarkable not only for its own sake but because Mrs Bowldler had chosen to display the roses upside down. But though Cai stared at it hard, he observed it not.

For some minutes his mind refused to work beyond the catastrophe.
"If it had happened—if 'Bias had indeed lost all his money. . . ."

He arose, lit a pipe, and dropped back into his chair.

It may be that the tobacco clarified his brain. . . . Of a sudden the child's words recurred and wrote themselves upon it, and stood out, as if traced in fire—"He went to master for your sake, because you was his friend and he had such a belief in you."

Ay, that was true, and in a flash it lit up a new pathway, down which he followed the thought in the child's mind only to lose it and stand aghast at his own reflections.

''Bias went to Rogers through his belief in me.'

—'I did not encourage him. On the other hand, I said nothing to hinder him.'

—'Yet, afterwards and in practice, I did encourage him, going to Rogers with him and discussing our investments together.'

—'In a dozen investments we acted as partners.'

—'He was my friend, and in those days entirely open with me. He let me read all his character. I knew him to be strict in paying his debts, uneasy if he owed a sixpence, yet careless in details of business, and trustful as a child.'

—'Then this quarrel sprang up between us, and I let him go his way. I had no right to do that, having led him so far. In a sense, he has gone on trusting me; that is, he has gone on trusting Rogers for my sake. To be quit of responsibility, I should have given him fair warning.

—'I ought to have gone to him and said, "Look here; Rogers is a friend of mine, and known to me from childhood. There's honesty in him, but 'tis like streaks in bacon; and for some reason or another he chooses that all his dealin's with me shall keep to the honest streak. If you ask me how I know this, 'twouldn't be easy to answer: I do know it, and I trust him as I'd trust myself, a'most. But Rogers isn't a man for everyone's money, and there's many as don't scruple to call him a knave. He hasn't known you from a child, and you haven't known him. You'll be safe in putting it that what he's done honest for you he's done as my friend—"'

Here Cai was seized by a new apprehension.

—'Ay, and—the devil take it!—I've let Rogers see, lately, that 'Bias and I had dissolved partnership and burnt the papers! 'Twouldn't take more than that to persuade Rogers he was quit of the old obligation towards 'Bias—himself in difficulties too, and 'Bias's money under his hand.'

—'Good Lord! . . . Suppose the fellow even allowed to himself that he was helping me! If Mrs Bosenna—?'

At this point Cai came to a full stop, appalled. Be it repeated that neither he nor 'Bias had wooed Mrs Bosenna for her wealth; nor until now had her wealth presented itself to either save in comfortable after-thought.

Cai sat very still for a while. Then drawing quickly at his pipe, he found that it was smoked out. He arose to tap the bowl upon the bars of the grate. But they were masked and muffled by Mrs Bowldler's screen of shavings, and he wandered to the open window to knock out the ashes upon the slate ledge. Returning to the fireplace, he reached out a hand for the tobacco-jar, but arrested it, and laying his pipe down on the table, did something clean contrary to habit.

He went to the cupboard, fetched out decanter, water-jug, and glass, and mixed himself a stiff brandy-and-water.

"Hullo!" said a voice outside the window. "I didn' know as you indulged between meals."

It was Mr Philp, staring in.

"I heard you tappin' on the window-ledge, and I thought maybe you had caught sight o' me," suggested Mr Philp.

"But I hadn't," said Cai, somewhat confused.

"I said to myself, 'He's beckonin' me in for a chat': and no wonder if 'tis true what they're tellin' down in the town."

"Well, I wasn't," said Cai, gulping his brandy-and-water hardily.
"But what are they tellin'?"

"There's some," mused Mr Philp, "as don't approve of solitary drinkin'. Narrow-minded bodies I call 'em. When a man is in luck's way, who's to blame his fillin' a glass to it—though some o' course prefers to call in their naybours; an' that's a good old custom too."

Cai ignored the hint. "What are they tellin' down in the town?"

"All sorts o' things, from mirth to mournin'. They say, for instance, as you and the Widow have fixed it all up to be married this side o' Jubilee."

"That's a lie, anyway."

"And others will have it as the engagement's broken off by reason of your losin' all your money in Johnny Rogers's smash?"

"And that," said Cai, "is just as true as the other. But who says that
Rogers has gone smash?"

"Everyone. I tackled Tabb upon the subject this mornin', and he couldn' deny it. The man's clean scat. He's been speckilatin' for years: I always looked for this to be the end, and when they told me the Saltypool wasn't insured, why, I drew my conclusions. As I was sayin' to Cap'n Hunken just now—"

"Eh? . . . Where is he?"

"Who?"

"'Bias Hunken. You said as you been speakin' with him—"

"Ay, to be sure, over his garden wall. I looked over and saw him weedin' among the rose-bushes, an' pulled up to give him the time o' day."

"You didn' tell him about the Saltypool?"

"As it happens, that's just what I did. He'd heard she was lost, but he'd no notion Rogers hadn't taken out an insurance on her, and he seemed quite fetched aback over it."

"The devil!"

"I'm sorry you feel like that about him. As I was tellin' him, when I heard your tap here at the window—"

"But I don't—and I wasn' tappin' for you, either."

"Appears not," said Mr Philp, with a glance at the empty glass in Cai's hand.

"Where is he? Still in the garden, d'ye say?"

"Ay: somewheres down by the summer-house. Says I, when I heard you tappin', 'That's Cap'n Hocken,' says I, 'signallin' me to come an wish him joy, an' maybe to join him in a drink over his luck. And why not?' says I. 'Stranger things have happened.'"

"You'll excuse me. . . . If he's in his garden, I want a chat with him."
Cai hurried out to the front door.

"Maybe you'd like me to go with you," suggested Mr Philp, ready for him.

"Maybe I'd like nothin' of the sort," snapped Cai. "Why should I?"

"Well, if you ask me, he didn' seem in the best o' tempers, and it might come handy to take along a witness."

"No, thank'ee," said Cai with some asperity. "You just run along and annoy somebody else."

He descended the garden, to find 'Bias at the door of his summer-house, seated, and puffing great clouds of tobacco-smoke.

"Good evenin'!"

"Good evenin'," responded 'Bias in a tone none too hospitable.

"You don't mind my havin' a word with you?"

"Not if you'll make it short."

"I've just come from Philp. He's been tellin' you about the Saltypool, it seems."

"Well?"

"She was uninsured."

"And on top o' that, the fools overloaded her."

"And 'tis a serious thing for Rogers."

"Ruination, Philp tells me—that's if you choose to believe Philp."

"I've better information than Philp's, I'm sorry to say."

"Whose?"

"Fancy Tabb's."

"She didn' tell me so when I saw her to-day."—(And good reason for why, thought Cai.)—"Still, if she told you, you may lay there's some truth in it. That child don't speak at random. I don't see, though, as it makes much difference, up or down?"

"No difference?"

"I didn' say 'no difference.' I said 'not much.' Ruination's not much to a man already down with a stroke."

"Oh, . . . him?" said Cai. "To tell the truth, I wasn't thinkin' about Rogers, not at this moment."

"No?" queried 'Bias sourly. "Then maybe I'm doin' you an injustice. I thought you might be pushin' your way in here to suggest our doin' something for the poor chap." Before Cai had well recovered from this, 'Bias went on, "And if so, I'd have answered you that I didn' intend to be any such fool."

"I—I'm afraid," owned Cai, "my thought wasn' anything like so unselfish. It concerned you and me, rather."

"Thinkin' of me, was you?" 'Bias stuffed down the tobacco in his pipe with his forefinger. "I reckon that's no game, Caius Hocken, to be takin' up again after all these months; and I warn you to drop it, for 'tis dangerous."

Whatever his faults, Cai did not lack courage. "I don't care a cuss for threats, as you might know by this time. What I owe I pay,—and there's my trouble. I introduced you to Rogers, didn't I?"

"That's true," agreed 'Bias slowly. "What of it?"

"Why, that I'm in a way responsible that you took your affairs to him."

"Not a bit."

"But it follows. Surely you must see—"

"No, I don't. I ain't a child, and I'll trouble you not to hang about here suggestin' it. I didn' trust Rogers till I saw for myself he was a good man o' business and the very sort I wanted. He sarved me, well enough; and, well or ill, I don't complain to you."

"See here, 'Bias," said Cai desperately. "You may take this tone with me if you choose. But you don't choke me off by it, and you'll have to drop it sooner or later. I was your friend, back along—let's start with that."

"And a nice friend you proved!"

"Let's start with that, then," pursued Cai eagerly—so eagerly that 'Bias stared willy-nilly, lifting his eye-brows. "Put it, if you please, that I was your friend and misled you to trust in Rogers, that you lost money by it—"

"Who said so?"

"I say so. Put it at the lowest—that you sunk a hundred pound' in the Saltypool—"

"Eh?"

"In the Saltypool—" Cai met his stare and nodded. "And not your own money, neither. Mrs Bosenna—"

'Bias started and laid down his pipe. "Drop that!" he interjected with a growl.

"Nay, you don't frighten me," answered Cai valiantly. "We're goin' to talk a lot of Mrs Bosenna, afore we've done. Present point is, she gave you a hundred pound, to invest for her. She gave me the like."

"What!" 'Bias clutched both arms of his chair in the act of rising.
But Cai held up a hand.

"Steady! She gave me the like. . . . You handed the money over to Rogers, and close on fifteen per cent he was makin' on it—in the Saltypool."

"Who—who told you?"

"Wait! I did the like. . . . Seven pounds eight-and-four was my dividend, whatever yours may have been—eh? You may call it a—a coincidence, 'Bias Hunken: but some would say as our minds worked on the same lines even when—even when—" Cai seemed to swallow something in his throat. "Anyhow, the money's gone, and we'll have to make it good."

"Well, I should hope so!"

"I'll see to that, 'Bias—whatever happens."

"So will I, o' course." 'Bias turned to refill his pipe.

Cai was watching him narrowly. "Happen that mightn't be none too easy," he suggested.

"Why so?"

"Heark'n to me now: I got something more serious to tell. The Lord send we may be mistaken, but—supposin' as Rogers has played the rogue?"

'Bias, not at all discomposed, went on filling his pipe. "I see what you're drivin' at," said he. "'Tis the same tale Philp was chantin' just now, over the wall; how that Rogers had lost his own money and ours as well, and 'twas in everybody's mouth. Which I say to you what I said to him: ''Tis the old story,' I says, 'let a man be down on his back, and every cur'll fly at him.'"

"But suppose 'twas true? . . . Did Rogers ever show the bonds and papers for your money?"

"'Course he did. Showed me every one as they came in, and seemed to make a point of it. 'Made me count 'em over, some time back. 'Wouldn' let me off 'till I'd checked 'em, tied 'em up in a parcel, docketed 'em, sealed 'em, and the Lord knows what beside. Very dry work. I claimed a glass o' grog after it."

"And then you took 'em away?" asked Cai with a sudden hope.

"Not I. For one thing, they're vallyble, and I don't keep a safe.
I put 'em back in the old man's—top shelf—alongside o' yours."

Cai groaned. "They're missin' then!"

"Who told you?"

"The child—Fancy Tabb."

'Bias looked serious. "Why didn' she come to me, I wonder?"

"I reckon—knowing what friends we'd been—she left it to me to break the news."

"I won't believe it," declared 'Bias slowly. But he sat staring straight at the horizon, and after each puff at the pipe Cai could hear him breathing hard.

"The child's not given to lyin'. And yet I don't see—Rogers bein' helpless to open the safe on his own account. At the worst 'tis a bad job for ye, 'Bias."

"Eh? . . . 'Means sellin' up an' startin' afresh: that's all—always supposin' there's jobs to be found, at our age. I don't know as there wouldn't be consolations. This here life ashore isn't all I fancied it."

Now Cai had in mind a great renunciation: but unfortunately he could not for the moment discover any way to broach it. He played to gain time, therefore, awaiting opportunity.

"As for getting a job," he suggested, "there's no need to be downcast; no need at all. If the worst came to the worst, there's the Hannah Hoo, f'r instance, and a providence she never found a buyer."

"Ay, to be sure—I'd forgot the bark'nteen."

"Come!" said Cai with a quick smile, playing up towards his grand coup. "What would you say to shippin' aboard the Hannah Hoo?"

"What?—as mate under you? . . . I'd say," answered 'Bias slowly, "as I'd see you damned first."

"But"—Cai stared at him in bewilderment—"who was proposin' any such thing? As skipper I thought o' you—what elst? Leastways—"

"And you?"

"Me? . . . But why? There's no call for me goin' to sea again."

"Ah, to be sure," said 'Bias bitterly, "I was forgettin'. You'll stay ashore and make up your losses by marryin'!"

"But I haven't had any losses!" stammered Cai. "Not beyond the hundred pound in the Saltypool. . . . Didn't I make that plain?"

"No, you didn't." 'Bias laid down his pipe. "Are you standin' there and tellin' me that your papers are all right and safe?"

"To be sure they are. Rogers handed 'em over to me, and I took 'em home and locked 'em in my strong-box—it may be four months ago."

"Ay, that would be about the time. . . . Well, I congratulate you," said 'Bias, with deepening bitterness of accent. "The luck's yours, every way, and that there's no denyin'."

"Wait a bit, though. You haven't heard me finish."

"Well?"

"Since this news came I've been thinkin' pretty hard over one or two things . . . over our difference, f'r instance, an' the cause of it. To be plain, I want a word with you about—well, about Mrs Bosenna."

"Stow that," growled 'Bias. "If you've come here to crow—"

"The Lord knows I've not come here to crow. . . . I've come to tell you, as man to man, that I don't hold 'twas a pretty trick she played us over them two hundreds. You may see it different, and I hope you do. I don't bear her no grudge, you understand? . . . But if you've still a mind to her, and she've a mind to you, I stand out from this moment, and wish 'ee luck!"

'Bias stood up, stiff with wrath.

"And the Lord knows, Cai Hocken, how at this moment I keep my hands off you! . . . Wasn't it bad enough before, but you must stand patronisin' there, offerin' me what you don't want? First I'm to ship in your sarvice, eh? When that won't do, I'm to marry the woman you've no use for? And there was a time I called 'ee friend! Hell! if you must poison this garden, poison it by yourself! Let me get out o' this. Stand aside, please, ere I say worse to 'ee!"

He strode by, and up the garden path in the gathering twilight.

Poor 'Bias!

Poor Cai, too! His renunciation had cost him no small struggle, and he had meant it nobly; but for certain he had bungled it woefully.

His heart was sore for his friend: the sorer because there was now no way left to help. The one door to help—reconcilement—was closed and bolted! closed through his own clumsiness.

It had cost him much, a while ago—an hour or two ago, no more—to resign his pretensions to Mrs Bosenna's hand. The queer thing was how little—the resolutions once taken—Mrs Bosenna counted. It was 'Bias he had lost.

As he sat and smoked, that night, in face of Mrs Bowldler's fire-screen, staring at its absurd decorations, it was after 'Bias that his thoughts harked—always back, and after 'Bias—retracing old friendship faithfully as a hound seeking back to his master.

'Bias would never think well of him again. As a friend, 'Bias was lost, had gone out of his life. . . . So be it! Yet there remained a 'Bias in need of help, though stubborn to reject it: a 'Bias to be saved somehow, in spite of himself, an unforgiving 'Bias, yet still to be rescued. Cai smoked six pipes that night, pondering the problem. He was aroused by the sound of the clock in the hall striking eleven. Before retiring to bed he had a mind to run through his parcel of bonds and securities on the chance—since he and 'Bias had made many small investments by consent and in common—of finding some hint of possible salvage.

His strong-box stood in a recess by the chimnney-breast. A stuffed gannet in a glass case surmounted it—a present from 'Bias, who had shot the bird. The bird's life-like eye (of yellow glass) seemed to watch him as he thrust the key into the lock.

He took out the parcel, laid it on the table under the lamp, and—with scarcely a glance at the docket as he untied the tape—spread out the papers with his palm much as a card-player spreads wide a pack of cards before cutting. . . . He picked up a bond, opened it, ran his eye over the superscription and tossed it aside.

So he did with a second—a third—a fourth.

On a sudden, as he took up the fifth and, before opening it, glanced at the writing on the outside, his gaze stiffened. He sat upright.

After a moment or two he unfolded the paper. His eyes sought and found two words—the name "Tobias Hunken."

He turned the papers over again. Still the name not his—"Tobias
Hunken!"

He pushed the paper from him, and timorously, as a man possessed by superstitious awe, put out his fingers and drew forward under the lamplight the four documents already cast aside.

The name on each was the same. The bonds belonged to 'Bias. By mistake, those months ago, he had carried them off and locked them up for his own.

Should he arouse 'Bias to-night and tell him of the good news? He gathered up the bonds in his hand, went to the front door, unbarred it, and stepped out into the roadway. Not a light showed anywhere in the next house.

Cai stepped back, barred the door, and sought his chamber, after putting out the lamp. He slept as soundly as a child.

CHAPTER XXVI.

'BIAS RENOUNCES.

"Is Cap'n Hunken upstairs?"

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Mr Tabb from behind his pile of biscuit tins and soapboxes. The pile had grown—or so it seemed to Cai—and blocked out more of the daylight than ever. "Won't you step up? You'll be kindly welcome."

"I was told I should find him here." Cai, on requesting Mrs Bowldler that morning to inform him how soon Captain Hunken would be finishing breakfast, had been met with the information that Captain Hunken had breakfasted an hour before, and gone out. ("Which," said Mrs Bowldler, "it becomes not one in my position to carry tales between one establishment and another: but he bent his steps in the direction of the town. I beg, sir, however, that you will consider this to be strickly between you and me and the gatepost, as the saying is.") Cai at once surmised the reason of this early sallying forth, and, following in chase, ran against the Quaymaster, from whom he learnt that 'Bias had entered the ship-chandler's shop half an hour ago. "He has not since emerged," added the Quaymaster Bussa darkly, as doubtful that in the interim Captain Hunken might have suffered forcible conversion into one of the obscurer "lines" of ship-chandlery, wherein so much purports to be what it is not.

—"I was told I should find him here," said Cai. "But would ye mind fetchin' him down to me? The fact is, I want him on a matter of private business."

Mr Tabb considered for a moment. "If I may advise, sir," he suggested meekly, "you'll find it as private up there as anywhere. The master's past hearin' what you say—or, if he hears, he's past takin' notice: whereas down here, you're liable to be interrupted by customers—let alone that I mustn't leave the shop. And," concluded Mr Tabb, "I would hardly recommend the Quay. Mr Philp's just arrived there."

On recovering from his previous stroke, Mr Rogers had given orders that, if another befell him, his bed was to be fetched downstairs and laid in the great bow-window of the parlour. There Cai found him with Fancy in attendance, and 'Bias seated on a chair by the bedside.

"Good-mornin'," Cai nodded, hushing his voice, and advanced towards the bed almost on tiptoe. "He won't reckernise me, I suppose?"

The invalid reclined in a posture between lying and sitting, his back propped with pillows, his eyes turned with an expressionless stare towards the harbour. Save for its rigidity and a slight drawing down of the muscles on the left side of the mouth, there was nothing to shock or terrify in the aspect of the face, which kept, moreover, its customary high colour.

"He can't show it, if that's what you mean," answered Fancy. "But he knows us, somewhere at the back of his eyes—of that I'm sure. I got to be very clever watchin' his eyes, the last stroke he had, and there was quite a different look in 'em when he was pleased, or when he was troubled or wanted something. If you go over quiet and stand by the window, right where he must see you if he sees at all, maybe you'll notice what I mean."

But Cai, though he obeyed, and stood for a moment in the direct line of their vision, could detect no change in the unwinking eyes.

"Cap'n Hunken will even have it that he hears what's said, or scraps of it. But that I don't believe. . . . I believe 'tis but a buzzin' in his ears, with no sense to it, an' 'twould be jus' the same if we was the band of the R'yal Lifeguards."

"Well, whether he hears or not, I've a piece o' news for 'Bias Hunken, here. . . . P'raps he'd like to step outside an' discuss it?" suggested Cai awkwardly, remembering how he and 'Bias had parted overnight.

"I don't want to hear anything you can say," growled 'Bias.

"Oh, yes, you do! . . . I reckoned as you'd be down here, first thing after breakfast, sarchin' for them papers we talked about."

"Did you, now?"

"And I tried to catch you afore you started; but you'd breakfasted early. . . . Well, the long and short is, they're not lost after all!" Cai produced the bundle triumphantly.

"Eh! Where did you find 'em?" asked Fancy, while 'Bias took the parcel without a word of thanks, glanced at it carelessly, and set it down on the little round table beside the bed.

"In my strong-box. . . . There was two parcels, pretty much alike, on the top shelf of the safe yonder, and I must have taken 'Bias's by mistake. I'm glad, anyway," he went on, turning with moist eyes upon 'Bias, who appeared to have lost interest in the conversation. "I'm glad, anyway, t'have eased your mind so soon, let alone to have cut short your sarchin' which must ha' been painful enough—in a house o' sickness."

"Who was sarchin'?" asked 'Bias curtly. "Not me."

"And that's true enough," corroborated Fancy. "Why, Cap'n Hunken has never mentioned the papers! I guessed as you hadn' told him they was missin'."

"Eh? . . . I thought—I made sure, by his startin' down here so early—"

"Not a word of any papers did he mention," said Fancy. "He just come early to sit an' keep master company, havin' a notion that his poor old mind takes comfort from it somehow. Seven hours he sat here yesterday, an' never so much as a pipe of tobacco the whole time. Doctor said as a bit o' tobacco-smoke wouldn' do any harm in the room: but Cap'n Hunken allows as he'll be on the safe side."

Cai started. . . . For aught 'Bias knew then—as indeed 'Bias had reason to suspect—this husk of a man, helpless on the bed, had robbed him of his all, ruined him, left him no prospect but to begin life over again when late middle-age had sapped his vigour, attenuated the springs of action, left sad experience in the room of hope. And 'Bias's thought, ignoring it all, had been to sit beside this man's calamity, on the merest chance of piercing it with one ray of comfort!

Whereupon, as goodness takes inspiration from goodness, in Cai's heart, too, a miracle happened, He forgot himself, forgot his loss which was 'Bias's gain: forgot that, keeping his surly attitude, 'Bias had uttered neither a "thank you" nor a word of pity. Old affection, old admiration, old faith, and regard came pouring back in a warm tide, thrilling, suffusing his consciousness, drowning all but one thought— one proud thought that stood like a sea-mark above the flood, justifying all—"Even such a man I made my friend!"

For a long time Cai stared. Then, as 'Bias made no sign of lifting his sullen gaze from the strip of carpet by the bed, he turned half-about towards the door.

"'Bias Hunken," said he gently, "you're a good man, an' deserved this luck better'n me. . . . If you can't put away hard thoughts just yet, maybe you'll remember, some day, that I wished 'ee long life to enjoy it."

His hand was on the door. "Here, though—hold hard!" put in Fancy, who had picked up the bundle of papers. "I don't think Cap'n Hunken understands; nor I don't clearly understand myself. Was it both packets you carried home, sir? or only this one?"

"I thought as I'd made it clear enough," answered Cai. His eyes were still on his friend, and there was weariness as well as pain in his voice. "There's only one packet—'Bias's—what you have in your hand. I must have carried it home by mistake."

"Then your's is missin'?"

"That's so," said the broken man quietly.

The child turned and walked to the window. On her way she halted a moment and peered earnestly into the invalid's eyes, as if the riddle might possibly be read there. But they were vacant and answered her nothing. Then for some twenty seconds, almost pressing her forehead to the window-pane, she stood and gazed out upon the glancing waters of the harbour.

"There's only one thing to be done—" She wheeled about sharply. "Why, wherever is the man? . . . You don't mean to tell me," she demanded of 'Bias indignantly, "that you sat there an' let him go!"

"I couldn' help his goin', could I?" muttered 'Bias, but his eyes were uneasy under the wrath in hers.

"You couldn' help it?" she echoed in scorn, and pointed to the figure on the bed. "Here you come playin' the Early Christian over a man that, for aught you knew, had robbed you to a stair: and when 'tis your tried friend fetchin' back riches to you—fairly bringin' you back to life at the cost o' bein' a beggar hisself—you let him go without so much as a thank'ee!"

"Cai Hocken don't want my thanks."

"Didn't even want politeness, I suppose—after runnin' here hot foot with the news that made you rich an' him a poor man! Oh, you're past all patience! . . . Who should know what he wanted an' didn't get— I, that had my eyes on his face, or you, that sat like a stuck pig, glowerin' at the carpet?"

"Gently, missy! . . . There—there didn' seem anything to say."

"There was one thing to say," answered the girl sternly, "and there's one thing to be done."

"What's that?"

"It mayn't be an easy thing, altogether. But you'll be glad of it afterwards, and you may as well make up your mind to it."

"Out with it!"

"Mrs Bosenna—Why, what's the matter?"—for 'Bias had interrupted with a short laugh.

"I'd forgot Mrs Bosenna for the moment."

"Right. Then go on forgettin' her, an' give her up. When you come to think it over," urged Fancy with the air of a nurse who administers medicine to a child, "you'll find 'tis the only fit an' proper thing to do."

Again 'Bias laughed, and this time his laugh was even shorter and grimmer than before.

"Well and good—but wait one moment, missy! D'ye know what Cai Hocken said to me, last night in the garden, when he reckoned as I'd lost my money? No, you don't. 'Look here,' he said, 'if you've still a mind to that woman and she've a mind to you, I'll stand aside.' That's what he said: and d'ye know what I answered? I told him to go to hell."

"I see." Fancy stood musing.

"Makes it a bit awkward, eh?—Cai bein' a man of spirit, with all his faults."

"Well," she decided, "unless we can find his money for him, he'll have to marry her, whether or no. 'Faults,' indeed? I believe," went on the wise child, "you two be more to one another than that woman ever was to either, or ever will be."

"We won't discuss that," said 'Bias, "now that Cai's got to marry her."

Cai retired to bed early that night, wearied in all his limbs with much and aimless walking. If, as he trudged highroad or lane in the early summer heat, any thought of Mrs Bosenna arose for a moment and conquered the anodyne of bodily exercise, it was not a thought of grudging her to 'Bias. By the turn of Fortune's wheel 'Bias would win her now. To him, at all events, she was lost. Cai had never courted her for her money: but he had courted without distrust, on the strength of his own security in a competence. At the back of his mind there may have lurked a suspicion that Mrs Bosenna, as a business woman, was not in the least likely to bestow her hand on a penniless sailor: but there was no reason why he should allow this suspicion to obtrude itself, since self-respect would have forbidden him, being penniless, to pursue the courtship.

No; if he thought of Mrs Bosenna at all, it was in a sort of dull rage against her sex: not specially against her, who happened to be her sex's delegate to work this particular piece of mischief, but generally against womankind, that with a word or two, a look or two, it could rob a man of a friend—and of such a friend as 'Bias!

'Bias was undemonstrative, Cai had always prided himself on recognising a worth in him which did not leap to the eyes of other men—which hid itself rather, and shunned the light. It had added to his sense of possession that he constantly detected what others overlooked. In this matter of his behaviour to Rogers, 'Bias had eclipsed all previous records. It was (view it how you would) magnificent in 'Bias—a high Christian action—to tend, as he had tended, upon a man who presumably had robbed him of his all.

And at the same moment 'Bias could behave so callously to a once-dear friend—to a friend bringing glad tidings—to a friend, moreover, rejoicing to bring them, though they meant his own undoing! It was almost inconceivable. It was quite unintelligible unless you supposed the man's nature to be perverted, and by this woman.

Cai's heart was bruised. It ached with a dull insistent pain that must be deadened at all costs, even though his own wrecked prospects called out to be faced promptly, resolutely, and with a practical mind. He would face them to-morrow. To-day he would tire himself out: to-night he would sleep.

And he slept, almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. His sleep was dreamless too.

"Dame, get out and bake your pies—bake your pies—bake your pies—"

"Whoo-oo-sh!"

He sat up in bed with a jerk. . . . What on earth was it? A squall of hail on the window? Or a rocket?—a ship in distress, perhaps, outside the harbour? . . .

"Dame, get out and bake your pies—" piped a high childish voice. Some one was unbarring a door below. A voice—'Bias's voice—spoke out gruffly, demanding what was the matter?

Was the house on fire? . . . No: outside the half-open window lay spread the moonlight, pale and tranquil. The night wind entering, scarcely stirred the thin dimity curtains. This was no weather for sudden hail-storms or for shipwreck. Cai flung back the bedclothes, jumped out—and uttered a sharp cry of pain. His naked foot had trodden on a gritty pebble, small but sharp.

Someone had flung a handful of gravel at the window.

He picked his way cautiously across the floor, and looked out. . . . In the moonlit roadway, right beneath, a girl—Fancy Tabb—was dancing a fandango, the while in her lifted hand she waved a white parcel.

"Ah, there you be!" she hailed, catching sight of him. "I've found 'em!"

"Found what?"

"Your papers! . . . I couldn' sleep till I told you: and I had to fetch
Mr Benny along—here he is!"

"Good evening, Captain," spoke up Mr Peter Benny, stepping out into the roadway from the doorway where he had been explaining to 'Bias. "It's all right, sir. Your papers are found."

"Good evening, Benny! Tis kind of you, surely,"—Cai's voice trembled a little. "What's the hour?" he asked.

"Scarce midnight yet. I reckoned maybe you might be sittin' up, frettin' over this—'Twas the child here, though, that found it out and insisted on bringing me."

"After we'd locked up," broke in Fancy, "and just as I was packin' Dad off to bed, it came into my head to ask him—'I suppose you don't know,' said I, 'of anyone's havin' been to master's safe without my bein' told?' He thought a bit, and 'No,' says he; 'nobody 'cept myself, an' that but once. 'You?' says I, 'and whoever sent you there?' 'Why, the master hisself,' says Dad.—Who else?' 'But what for?' I asks, feelin' as you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'I meant to ha' told you,' says Dad, 'but it slipped my mind. 'Twas one afternoon, when you was out on your walk. I heard Master's stick tap on the plankin' overhead so I went up, thinkin' as he might be wantin' his tea in a hurry. He told me to open the safe an' take out a packet o' papers from the top shelf; which I did.' 'What papers?' said I 'How should I know?' says Dad: 'I don't meddle with his business—I've seen too much of it in my life. I didn' even glance at 'em, but locked the safe again, an' put 'em where he told me—which was in the japanned box by his chair!' 'Why,' says I,' that's his Insurance Box as he called it—the same as I handed to Mr Benny only yesterday, to take away and sort through!' . . . After that, as you may guess, I was like a mad person till we'd taken down the bolts again and I'd run to Mr Benny's."

"Ay," chimed in Mr Benny, "I was upstairs and half-undressed: but she had me dressed again an' down as if 'twas a matter of life and death. . . . And when we got out the box, there the papers were, sure enough. After that—for I saw their value to you—no one with a human heart could help running along with her, to bear the news. . . . So here we are."

"'Bias!" called Cai softly. "Didn' I hear 'Bias's voice below there, a while since?"

"Ay, here I be."—It was 'Bias's turn to step out from the shadow of his doorway into the broad moonlight. "And glad enough to hear this news."

"Would ye do me a favour? . . . Dressed, are you?"

"Ay—been sittin' up latish to-night."

"Well, I'm not azackly in a condition to step down—not for a minute or two; and I doubt Mrs Bowldler, if I called her, wouldn' be in no condition either. . . . 'Twould be friendly of you to ask Mr Benny in and offer him a drink; and as for missy—"

"No thank 'ee, Cap'n," interposed Mr Benny. "Bringin' you this peace o' mind has been cordial enough for me—and for the child too, I reckon, Good-night, gentlemen!"

"Cap'n Hunken," said Fancy, "will you take the papers up to him?
Then we'll go."

"May I bring the papers to 'ee?" asked 'Bias, lifting his face to the window.

"Ay, do—if they won't come in. . . . I'll step down and unbar the door."

He lit a candle and hurried downstairs, his heart in his mouth. By the time he had unbarred and opened, Mr Benny and Fancy had taken their departure; but their "good-nights" rang back to him, up the moonlit road, and his friend stood on the threshold.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MRS BOSENNA GIVES THE ROSE.

"It's a delicate thing to say to a woman," suggested Cai; "'specially when she happens to be your land-lady."

"You do the talkin', of course," said 'Bias hurriedly.

"Must I? Why?"

"Well, to begin with, you knew her first."

"I don't see as that signifies."

"No? Well, you used to make quite a point of it, as I remember.
But anyway you're a speaker, and it'll need some gift, as you say."

They had reached the small gate at the foot of the path. The day was hot, the highroad dusty. Cai halted and removed his hat; drew out a handkerchief and wiped his brow; wiped the lining of the hat; wiped his neck inside the collar.

"There's another way of lookin' at it," he ventured. "Some might say as 'twas more tactful to let your feelin's cool off by degrees."

"That's no way for me," said 'Bias positively. "Short and sharp's our motto."

"'Tis the best, no doubt," Cai agreed. "But there's the trouble of puttin' it into words. . . . I wish, now, I'd thought of consultin' Peter Benny. There'd be no harm, after all, in steppin' back and askin' his advice."

"No, you don't," said 'Bias shortly. "In my belief, if we hadn't made so free wi' consultin' Peter Benny in the past, we shouldn't be where we be at this moment."

If Cai's thought might be read in his face, he would not have greatly minded that, just now.

"In the matter of these letters for instance—"

"I wonder if she ever got 'em?"

"You bet she did. She's been playin' us off, one against t'other, ever since."

"We let our feelin's carry us away."

"We let Peter Benny's feelin's carry us away," 'Bias corrected him. "That's the worst of these writin' chaps. Before you know where you are they'll harrow you up with feelin's you wasn't aware you entertained. Now I don't mind confessin' that, afore Benny had started to make out a fair copy I found myself over head an' ears in love with the woman."

"Me too," agreed Cai, musing.

"You're sure you're not any longer?"

"Eh? . . . Of course I am sure. I was only thinkin' how queer it was he should have pumped it out of us, so to say, with the same letters— almost to a syllable."

"There's two ways o' lookin' at that," said 'Bias thoughtfully. "You may put it that marryin's as common as dirt. Nine out o' ten indulges in it; and, that bein' so, the same form o' words'll do for everybody, more or less, in proposin' it; just as (when you come to think) the same Marriage Service does for all when they come to the scratch. If all men meant different to all women, there wouldn't be enough dictionary to go round."

Cai shook his head. "I'm the better of it now," he confessed; "but I got to own that, at the moment, though Benny did well enough, there didn't seem enough dictionary to go round."

"I felt something of a rarity myself at the time," owned 'Bias. "But there's another explanation I like better, though you'll think it far-fetched. . . . You and me—until this happened, there was never a cross word atween us, nor a cross thought?"

"That's so, 'Bias."

"Well, and that bein' so, if Benny hit the note for one, how could it help bein' the note for both? . . . I've had pretty rash thoughts about Benny: but—put it in that way—who's to blame the man? Or the woman, for that matter?"

"I like that explanation better," said Cai.

"—Or the woman? She can't help bein' a two-headed nightingale."

"To be sure she can't. . . . We might leave it at that and say no more about it. She'd be sure to understand in time."

"The agreement was, last night," insisted 'Bias with great firmness, "to put it to her straight and get it over."

They resumed their walk and mounted the pathway over which—from the first angle of the outbuildings to the garden-gate—Banksian roses hung from the wall in heavy honey-coloured clusters of bloom. These were scentless and already past their prime; but by the gate at the south-east end of the house the white Banksian, throwing far wider shoots, saluted them with a scent as of violets belated. And within the gate the old roses were coming on with a rush—Provence and climbing China; Moschata alba, pouring over an arch in a cascade of bloom that hid all its green as with shell-pink foam; crimson and striped Damask along the border; with Paul Neyron eclipsing all in size, moss-roses bursting their gummy shells, Gloire de Dijon climbing and asserting itself above the falsely named "pink Gloire"; Reine Marie Henriette— which, grown by everybody, is perhaps the worst rose in the world. Gloire de Dijon rampant smothered the pretender and covered the most of its mildewing buds from sight; to be conquered in its turn by the sheer beauty of Marechal Niel, whose every yellow star, bold on its stalk as greenhouses can grow it, shamed all feebler yellows. Devoniensis flung its sprays down from the thatch. La France and Ulrich Brunner competed—silver rose against cherry rose—on either side of the porch. Yet the fragrance of all these roses had to yield to that of the Cottage flowers, mignonette, Sweet-William, lemon verbena, Brompton stocks— annuals, biennials, perennials, intermixed—that lined the border, with blue delphiniums and white Madonna lilies breaking into flower above them.

Dinah, answering their ring at the bell after the usual delay for reconnaissance, opined that her mistress would probably be found in the new rose-garden. She said it, as they both observed, with a demure, half-mischievous smile.

"Amused to see us in company again, I reckon," said Cai to 'Bias as they went up through the old rose-garden, where the June-flowering H.P.'s ran riot in masses of colour from palest pink to deepest crimson.

"Ay," assented 'Bias, "we'll have to get used to folks smilin', these next few days. . . . Between ourselves, I never fancied that woman, though I couldn' give you any particular reason for it."

"Sly," suggested Cai.

"'Tis more than that. Slyness, you may say, belongs to the whole sex, and I've known men say as they found it agreeable, in moderation."

"I never noticed that in her mistress, to do her justice."

'Bias halted. "Look here. . . . You're sure you ain't weakenin'?"

"Sure."

"Because, as I told 'ee last night—and I'll say it again, here, at the last moment—she's yours, and welcome, if so be—"

"—'If so be as I didn' speak my true mind last night, when I said the same to you '—is that what you mean? Here, let's on and get it over!" said Cai, mopping his brow anew.

"'Tis a delicate business to broach, as you mentioned just now," said
'Bias dallying. "We'll have to be very careful how we put it."

"Very. As I told 'ee before, if you like to take it over—"

"Not at all. You're spokesman—only we don't want to put it so's she can round on us with 'nobody axed you.' And you gave me a turn, just then, by sayin' as you never noticed she was sly; because as I reckon, that's the very point we've come to make."

"As how?"

'Bias stared at him in some perturbation. "Why, didn't she put that trick on us over the investment? And ain't we here to give her back her money? And wasn't it agreed as we'd open on her reproachful-like? an' then, one thing leadin' to another—"

"Ay, to be sure—I got all that in my mind really." Cai wiped the back of his neck and pocketed his handkerchief with an air of decision—or of desperation. "What you don't seem to know—though with any experience o' speakin' you'd understand well enough—is that close upon the last moment all your thoughts fly, and specially if folks will keep chatterin': but when you stand up and open your mouth—provided as nobody interrupts you . . ."

"I declare! If it isn't Captain Hocken—and Captain Hunken with him!"

At the creaking of the small gate, as Cai opened it, Mrs Bosenna had looked up and espied them. She dropped the bundle of raffia, with the help of which she had been staking such of her young shoots as were overlong or weighted down by their heavy blooms, and came forward with a smile of welcome.

"Come in—come in, the both of you! What lovely weather! You'll excuse my not taking off my gloves? We are busy, you see, and some of my new beauties have the most dreadful thorns! . . . By the way"—she glanced over her shoulder, following Cai's incredulous stare. "I believe you know Mr Middlecoat? Yes, yes, of course—I remember!" She laughed and beckoned forward the young farmer, who dropped his occupation among the rosebuds and shuffled forward obediently enough, yet wearing an expression none too gracious.

"'Afternoon, gentlemen," mumbled Farmer Middlecoat, and his sulky tone seemed to show that he had not forgotten previous encounters. "Won't offer to shake hands. 'Cos why?" He showed the backs of his own, which were lacerated and bleeding. "Caterpillars," added Mr Middlecoat in explanation.

"There now!" cried Mrs Bosenna in accents of genuine dismay. "I'd no idea you were tearin' yourself like that—and so easy to ask Dinah to fetch out a pair o' gloves!"

"Do you mean to say, sir," asked Cai in his simplicity, "that caterpillars bite?"

"No, I don't," answered Mr Middlecoat. "But you can't get at 'em and avoid these pesky thorns."

Said Mrs Bosenna gaily,—"Mr Middlecoat called on me half an hour ago wi' the purpose to make himself disagreeable as usual—though I forget what his excuse was, this time—and I set him to hunt caterpillars."

"Dang it, look at my hands!" growled the young farmer, holding them out.

"And last month, wi' that spell of east wind, 'twas the green-fly. But I reckon we've mastered the pests by this time. Didn't find many caterpillars, eh?"

"No, I didn'," answered Mr Middlecoat, still sulkily. "But them as I did you bet I scrunched."

"Well, they deserved it, for the last few be the dangerousest. They give over the leaves to eat the buds. But 'tis labour well spent on 'em, and we'll have baskets on baskets now, by Jubilee Day."

"'Tis the Queen's flower—the royal flower—sure enough," said Cai, looking about him in admiration. He had not visited the new garden for some weeks, and on the last visit it had been but an unpromising patch stuck about with stiff, thorny twigs, all leafless, the most of them projecting but a few inches above the soil. The plants were short yet, and the garden itself far from beautiful; but the twigs had thrown up shoots, and on the shoots had opened, or were opening, roses that drew even his inexperienced eye to admire them.

"I'm afraid there's no doubt of it," said Mrs Bosenna. "I love the old H.P.'s: but you must grow the Teas and Hybrid Teas nowadays, if you want to exhibit. Yet I love the old H.P.'s, and I've planted a few, to hold their own and just show as they won't be shamed. See this one now— there's a proper Jubilee rose, and named Her Majesty! Brought out, they tell me, in 'eighty-five: but the Yankees bought up all the stock, and it didn't get back into this country until 'eighty-seven, the last Jubilee year. See the thorns on her, and the stiff pride o' stem, and the pride o' colour—fit for any queen! She's not the best, though. . . . She'll do for last Jubilee—not for this. Wait till you've seen the best of all!"

She led them to a plant—stunted by the secateurs, yet vigorous—which showed, with three or four buds as yet closed and green, one solitary bloom, pure white and of incomparable shape.

"There!" said she proudly. "That's a tea, and the finest yet grown, to my mind. That's the rose for this Diamond Jubilee, and white as a diamond. A proper royal Widow's rose!"

"Is that its name?" asked Cai.

Mrs Bosenna laughed and plucked the bloom.

"On the contrary," said she with a mischievous twitch of the mouth, "'tis called The Bride! There's only one bloom, you see, and I can't offer to part it. Now which of you two 'd like it for a buttonhole?"

She held out the rose, challenging them.

"I—I—" stammered Cai, backing against 'Bias's knuckles which dug him in the back—"I grant ye, ma'am, 'tis a fine rose—a lovely rose—but for my part, a trace o' colour—"

"Bright red," prompted 'Bias.

"Bright red—for both of us—"

"And now I've plucked it," sighed Mrs Bosenna.

"Well, if you won't, perhaps Mr Middlecoat will, rather than waste it."

Mr Middlecoat stepped forward and allowed the enormous bloom to be inserted in his buttonhole, where its pure white threw up a fine contrast to his crimsoning face.

"You won't think me forward, I hope?" said Mrs Bosenna, turning about.
"The fact is—though I don't want it generally known yet—that yesterday
Mr Middlecoat, in his disagreeable way, made me promise to marry him?"

Before the pair could recover, she had moved to another bush.

"Red roses, you prefer? Red is rare amongst the Teas—there's but one, as yet, that can be called red—if this suits you? And, by luck, there are two perfect buttonholes."

She plucked the buds and held them out.

"It's name," said she, "is Liberty."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JUBILEE.

For the best part of a week before the great Day of Jubilee Cai and 'Bias toiled together and toiled with a will, erecting the framework of a triumphal arch to span the roadway. Within-doors, in the intervals of household duty, Mrs Bowldler measured, drew, and cut out a number of capital letters in white linen, to be formed into a motto and sewn upon red Turkey twill, while Palmerston industriously constructed and wired gross upon gross of paper roses—an art in which he had been instructed by Fancy, who had read all about it in a weekly newspaper, 'The Cosy Hearth.' The two friends talked little to one another during those busy June days. Strollers-by—and it had become an evening recreation in Troy to stroll from one end of the town to the other and mark how things were getting along for the 22nd—found Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken ever at work but little disposed to chat; and as everyone knew of the old quarrel, so everyone noted the reconciliation and marvelled how it had come to pass. Even Mr Philp was baffled. Mr Philp, passing and repassing many times a day, never missed to halt and attempt conversation; with small result, however.

"It's a wonder to me," he grumbled at last, "how men of your age can risk scramblin' about on ladders with your mouths constantly full o' nails."

In the evenings they supped together. Mrs Bowldler had made free to suggest this.

"Which," said Mrs Bowldler in magnificent anacoluthon, "if we see it as we ought, this bein' no ordinary occasion, but in a manner of speakin' one of Potentates and Powers and of our feelin's in connection therewith; by which I allude to our beloved Queen, whom Gawd preserve!— Gawd bless her! I say, and He will, too, from what I know of 'im—and therefore deservin' of our yunited efforts; and, that bein' the case, it would distinkly 'elp, from the point of view of the establishment (meanin' Palmerston and me) if we (meanin' you, sir, and Captain Hunken) could make it convenient to have our meals in common. . . . The early Christians were not above it," she added. "Not they! Ho, not,—if I may use the expression—by a long chalk!"

She contrived it so delicately that afterwards neither Cai nor 'Bias could remember precisely at what date—whether on the Wednesday or on the Thursday—they slipped back into the old comfortable groove.

The arch occupied their thoughts. After supper, as they sat and smoked, their talk ran on it: on details of its construction; on the chances (exiguous indeed!) of its being eclipsed by rivals in the town, some in course of construction, a few as yet existent only in the promises of rumour.

Cai would say, "I hear the Dunstans are makin' great preparations in their back-yard. They mean to bring their show out at the last moment, and step it in barrels."

"I don't believe in barrels," 'Bias would respond. "Come a breeze o' wind, where are you? Come a strong breeze, and over you go, endangerin' life. It ought to be forbidden."

"No chance of a breeze, though." Cai had been studying the glass closely all the week.

"Fog, more like. 'Tis the time o' the year for fogs."

Other matters they discussed more desultorily; meetings of the Procession Committee, of the Luncheon Committee (all the parish was to feast together), of the Tree-planting Committee, of the Tea Committee; the cost of the mugs and the medals for the children, the latest returns handed in by Mr Benny, who had undertaken the task of calling on every householder, poor or rich, and collecting donations. But to the arch their talk recurred.

—And rightly: for in the arch they were building better than they knew. In it, though unaware (being simple men), they were rebuilding friendship.

By Saturday evening the scaffolding was complete, firmly planted, firmly nailed, firmly clasped together by rope—in sailors' hitches such as do not slip. They viewed it, approved it, and soberly, having gathered up tools, went in to supper. On Sunday they attended morning service in church, and oh! the glow in their hearts when, in place of the usual voluntary, the organ rolled out the first bars of "God Save the Queen" and all the worshippers sprang to their feet together!

On Monday the town awoke to the rumbling of waggons. They came in from the plantations where since the early June daybreak Squire Willyams's foresters and gardeners had been cutting young larches, firs, laurels, aucubas. The waggons halted at every door and each householder took as much as he required. So, all that day, Cai and 'Bias packed their arch with evergreens; until at five o'clock Mr Philp, happening along, could find no chink anywhere in its solid verdure. He called his congratulations up to them as, high on ladders, they affixed flags to the corner poles and looped the whole with festoons of roses.

And now for the motto to crown the work! Fancy Tabb coming up the roadway and pausing while she conned the structure, shading her eyes against the sun-rays that slanted over it, beheld Mrs Bowldler and Palmerston issue from the doorway in solemn procession, bearing between them a length of Turkey twill. Mrs Bowldler passed one end up to Captain Hocken, high on his ladder: Captain Hunken reached down and took the other end from Palmerston. Between them, as they lifted the broad fillet above the archway, its folds fell apart, and she read:—

MANY DAUGHTERS HAVE DONE VIRTUOUSLY BUT THOU EXCELLEST THEM ALL.

"My! I'd like to be a Queen!"

"If I had my way, you WOULD," whispered Palmerston, who, edging close to her, had overheard.

"Eh? Is that Fancy Tabb?" interrupted Cai. He had happened to glance over his shoulder and spied her from the ladder. "Well, and what d'ee think of it?" he asked, as one sure of the answer.

"I was sayin' as I'd like to be a Queen," said Fancy. "Queen of
England, I mean: none of your second-bests."

"Well, my dear," Cai assured her, bustling down the ladder and staring up at the motto to make sure that it hung straight, "that you won't never be: but you're among the many as have done virtuously, and God bless 'ee for it! Which is pretty good for your age."

"You're not," retorted the uncompromising child.

"Eh?"

"'Tis three days now since you've been near the old man, either one of 'ee. How would you like that, if you was goin' to hell?"

"Hush 'ee now! . . . 'Bias and me had clean forgot—there's so much to do in all these rejoicin's! Run back and tell 'n we'll be down in half-an-hour, soon as we've tidied up here."

On their way down to visit the sick man, Cai and 'Bias had to pause half-a-score of times at least to admire an arch or a decorated house-front. For by this time even the laggards were out and working for the credit of Troy.

But no decorations could compare with their own.

"That's a handsome bunch, missus," called Cai to a very old woman, who, perched on a borrowed step-ladder, was nailing a sheaf of pink valerian (local name, "Pride of Troy") over her door-lintel. "Let me give 'ee a hand wi' that hammer," he offered; for her hand shook pitiably.

"Ne'er a hand shall help me—thank 'ee all the same," the old lady answered. "There, Cap'n! . . . there's for Queen Victoria! an' it's done, if I die to-morrow." She tottered down to firm earth and gazed up at the doorway, her head nodding.

"She've got to be in London to-morrow, of course. . . . But what a pity she can't take a walk through Troy too! Main glad she'd be. . . . Oh, I know! She an' me was born the same year."

Of the doings of next day—the great day; of the feasting, the cheering, the salvo-firing, the marching, the counter-marching, the speechifying, the tea-drinking, the dancing, the illuminations, the bonfires; the tale may not be told here. Were they not chronicled, by this hand, in a book apart? And does not the chronicle repose in the Troy Parish Chest? And may not a photograph of the famous arch constructed by Captains Hocken and Hunken be discovered therein some day by the curious?

To be sure, Queen Victoria herself did not pass beneath that arch. But there passed beneath that arch many daughters who since have grown into women and done virtuously, I hope. If not, I am certain there was no lack of encouragement that day in the honest, smiling faces of Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken as they stood with proprietary mien, one on either side of the roadway, and each with an enormous red rose aglow in his button-hole.

Pulvis et umbra sumus—"The tumult and the shouting dies."—A little before ten o'clock that night Mr Middlecoat and Mrs Bosenna walked up through the dark to Higher Parc to see the bonfires. The summit commanded a view of the coast from Dodman to Rame, and inland to the high moors which form the backbone of the county. Mrs Bosenna counted eighteen fires: her lover could descry sixteen only.

"But what does it matter?" said he. They had started the climb arm-in-arm: but by this time his arm was about her waist.

"My eyes are sharper than yours, then," she challenged.

"Very likely," he allowed. "Sure, they must be: for come to think I reckoned 'em both in my list."

She laughed cosily.

"Shall we go over the ridge?" he suggested. "We may pick up one or two inland from my place."

"No," she answered, and mused for a while. "It's strange to think our two farms are goin' to be one henceforth. . . . The ridge has always seemed to me such a barrier. But I'll not cross it to-night. Good-bye!"

"Nay, but you don't go back alone. I'll see you to the door."

"Why? I'm not afraid of ghosts."

But he insisted: and so, arm linked in arm, they descended to Rilla, where the roses breathed their scent on the night air.

Cai and 'Bias—the long day over—sat in Cai's summer-house, overlooking the placid harbour. Loyal candles yet burned in every window on the far shore and scintillated their little time on the ripple of the tide. Above shone and wheeled in their courses the steady stars, to whom our royalties are less than a pinch of dust in the meanest unseen planet that spins within their range.

The door of the summer-house stood wide to the night. Yet so breathless was the air that the candles within (set by Mrs Bowldler on the table beside the glasses and decanters) carried a flame as unwavering as any star of the firmament. So the two friends sat and smoked, and between their puffed tobacco-smoke penetrated the dewy scents of the garden. Both were out-tired with the day's labours; for both were growing old.

"'Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all,'" murmured Cai. "'Twas a noble text we chose."

"Ay," responded 'Bias, drawing the pipe from his lips. "She've kept a widow just thirty-six years. An unusual time, I should say."

"Very," agreed Cai.

They gazed out into the quiet night, as though it held all their future and they found it good.