ers, shy of
the sound of his own voice, but tenacious of purpose and stubborn when
his will was crossed. Except for the few months when he went wooing
after Ruth Cara--in the year after his mother's death--his life, hopes,
purposes, dreams and waking thoughts concentrated themselves upon
Saaron, and from the day he brought his bride home to it the island
became more than ever his sufficing world. He knew a thousand small
things concerning it--secrets of the soil, of the tides, of the sand
drift--voices of the wind, varying colours of the sea, and what weather
they foretold--where this moss grew, that bird nested--in what week the
wild duck arrived, on what wind the geese might be looked for, and what
feeling in the spring air announced that the guillemots were due. He
had learnt these things unconsciously, and was quite unaware of his
knowledge, having never an occasion to review it or put it into words.
Moreover, it was strangely limited. To his ancestors, to the folk who
had lived here before him, he never gave a thought, except to wonder
what their tillage had been or why they had rounded off a hedge at such
and such a corner. Of the history of his own farm-house he could tell
you next to nothing, and nothing at all of the small ruined church he
passed at least twice a day--though this testified that Saaron had been
populous once on a time. How long had the Tregarthens lived on the
Island? How far back beyond the five or six generations attested by the
signatures on old leases hidden away in his strong-box? One might as
well ask how long the sandpipers and oyster-catchers had bred on their
separate grounds under the north slope of the cliffs towards Brefar. On
the summit of the hill stood eleven mounds, and in each mound (so
tradition said) lay the burnt bones of royalty. Was he, perhaps,
descended from these Island kings? Tregarthen would not have given
sixpence to discover. They were dead, and less than names: the place of
their burial belonged to him, and he had to wring a livelihood from it
to support his wife and family. Sometimes, when he thought of his three
youngsters--of the boy especially--the man felt a vague longing which
puzzled him as well by its foolishness as by its strength; a longing to
pass, when his time came, into these barren acres and watch (though
helplessly) while his heir improved what he had painfully won. It was
absurd, of course, to desire any such perpetuity; wicked, perhaps. It
could not