As he closed the window that night and picked up his watch to resume the winding of it, the Elder felt satisfied that there were depths in Tregenza's craziness which needed sounding. He would pay him a visit to-morrow. He had not exchanged a word with him for two years. Indeed, the old scoundrel seldom or never showed his face in the street.
At eleven o'clock next morning he rapped at the door of Tregenza's hovel, which lay some way up the hill above the harbour, in a nexus of mean alleys and at the back of a tenement known as Ugnot's. His knock appeared to silence a hammering in the rear of the cottage. By and by the door opened—but a very little way—and through the chink old Tregenza peered out at him—gaunt, shaggy, grey of hair and of face, his beard and his very eyebrows powdered with sawdust.
"Kindly welcome," said Tregenza, blinking against the light.
"You won't say that when I've done wi' you," said the Elder to himself.
III.
"Won't you step inside?" asked Tregenza.
"Yes," said the Elder, "I will. I've a-got something serious to talk about."
The sight of Tregenza irritated him more than he had expected, and irritated him the worse because the old man appeared neither confused with shame nor contrite.
"I've a-got something serious to talk about," the Elder repeated in the kitchen; "though, as between you and me, any talk couldn't well be pleasant. No, I won't sit down—not in this house. 'Tis only a sense o' duty brings me to-day, though I daresay you've wondered often enough why I ha'n't been here before an' told you straight what I think o' you."
"No," said Tregenza simply, as the Elder paused for an answer. "I ha'n't wondered at all. I knowed 'ee better."