ife of the bailiff--a dear, quaint, serene old soul
with cheeks like a rosy, withered apple, and an unbounded love of
Pasiance--showed me the very document.

"I kape it," she said. "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be proud
tu. 'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery, Pasiance, or
Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old as they
apple-trees."

Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm up
to its thatched roof. John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go on
living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were both
killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago. Old Ford's financial
smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here with Pasiance. I
fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so restless, and
irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have been happy enough
here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but the two strains
struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest. You'll think this a
far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the true one. She'll stand
with lips pressed together, her arms folded tight across her narrow
chest, staring as if she could see beyond the things round her; then
something catches her attention, her eyes will grow laughing, soft, or
scornful all in a minute! She's eighteen, perfectly fearless in a boat,
but you can't get her to mount a horse--a sore subject with her
grandfather, who spends most of his day on a lean, half-bred pony, that
carries him like a feather, for all his weight.

They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an arrangement of
L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background. They aren't at all well
off; this is the largest farm about, but it doesn't bring them in much.
To look at John Ford, it seems incredible he should be short of
money--he's too large.

We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom for
writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers. At midday one
forages for oneself. On Sundays, two miles to church twice, or you get
into John Ford's black books.... Dan Treffry himself is staying at
Kingswear. He says he's made his pile; it suits him down here--like a
sleep after years of being too wide-awake; he had a rough time in New
Zealand, until that mine made his fortune. You'd hardly remember him; he
reminds me of his uncle, old Nicholas