ong, that
it was in 1755, and when I asked him why he put it then, he held up his
left hand with his fingers and thumb spread out, which was always his
way, and then pointing with the first finger of his right, he said:

"It was in 1755, because that was the year when the French war broke
out."

Then he pushed down his thumb, and went on:

"And because that was the year we had a bonfire in June, because Doctor
Stacey was married for the third time, and we burned all the birches."

Then he pushed down his first finger.

"And because that was the year we had an extra week's holiday."

Down went his second finger.

"And because that was the year the Spanish galleon was wrecked on Jagger
Rock."

Down went the third finger.

"And because that was the year your father bought the whole of Slatey
Gap."

Down went the fourth finger, so that his open hand had become a clenched
fist held up, and then in his regular old pugnacious way he looked round
the room as if he wanted to hit somebody as he snarled out:

"Now, who says I'm wrong?"

I could have said so, but what's the use of quarrelling with a fellow
who can't help being obstinate. It was in his nature, and no end of
times I've known that when my old school-fellow was snaggy and nasty and
quarrelsome with me, he'd have fought like a Trojan on my side against
half the school.

But that fourth finger of Bob Chowne's settled it as to the time, for it
was not in 1755 but in 1752, for there's the date on the old parchment,
which sets forth how the whole of the Gap from the foreshore right up
the little river for five hundred yards inland, and the whole of the
steep cliff slope and precipice, each side, to the very top, was
conveyed to my father, Arthur John Duncan, of Oak Cottage, Wistabay,
lieutenant and commander in the Royal Navy of His Most Gracious Majesty
King George the Second.

It doesn't matter in the least when it was, only I may as well say when,
any more than it does that everybody who knew my father, including
Doctor Chowne of Ripplemouth, said he must be mad to go and buy, at the
sale of Squire Allworth's estate, a wild chasm of a place, all slaty
rock and limestone crag and rift and hollow, with a patch of scraggy
oak-trees here, some furze and heath there, and barely enough grass to
feed half a dozen sheep, and that, even if it was cheap, because no one
else would buy it, he was throwing good money away.

But I didn't think so that hot midsumme