n on
machines that come out of the ark, when, by spending a few thousand,
they could have the latest?"

"You've got to balance cost against value," answered the innkeeper. "It
don't do to dash at things. One likes for the new to be tried on its
merits first, and then, if it proves all that's claimed for it, you go
in and keep abreast of the times according; but the old will often be
found as good as the new; and so Mr. Daniel no doubt looks before he
leaps."

"That's cowardly in my opinion," replied Raymond. "You must take the
chances. Of course if you're frightened to back your judgment, then that
shows you're a second class man with a second class sort of mind; but if
you believe in yourself, as everybody does who is any good, then you go
ahead, and if you come a purler now and again, that's nothing, because
you get it back in other ways. I'm not frightened to chance my luck, am
I, Sabina?"

"Never was such a brave one, I'm sure," she said, conscious of their
secret.

"If you haven't got nerve, you're no good," summed up the young man;
"and if you have got nerve, then use it and break out of the beaten
track and welcome your luck and court a few adventures for your soul's
sake."

"All very well for you men," said Mrs. Northover. "You can have
adventures and no great harm done; but us women, if we try for
adventures, we come to a bad end."

"Nobody's more adventurous than you," answered Raymond. "Look at your
gardens and your teas for a bob ahead. Wasn't that an adventure--to give
a better tea than anybody in Bridport?"

"I believe women have quite as many adventures as men," declared Sarah
Northover, who was waiting for her aunt, "only we're quieter about 'em."

"We've got to be," answered Mrs. Northover. "Now come on to your
mother's, Sarah. There's Mr. Roberts waiting for us outside."

In the silent and empty mill Raymond dawdled for a few minutes with
Sabina, talked love and won a caress. Then she put on her sunbonnet and
he walked with her to the door of her home, left her at 'The Magnolias'
and went his way with Estelle's fruit basket.

A great expedition had been planned by the lovers for a forthcoming
public holiday. They were going to rise in the dawn, before the rest of
the world was awake, and tramp out through West Haven to Golden Cap--the
supreme eminence of the south coast, that towers with bright,
sponge-coloured precipices above the sea, nigh Lyme.

CHAPTER XI

THE OLD STORE-HOUSE