he
street, why then in the street he would sit, to the scandal of
Polpier. If, on the other hand, Government claimed him for a
deserter, still Government would have to fetch a cart to convey him
to jail: his leg would not allow him to walk. Of wealth and goods
God Almighty had already eased him. _Cantat vacuus_ . . . He slid a
hand under the bed-clothes and rubbed the swelling on his leg,
softly, wondering if condemned men felt as little perturbed--or some
of them--on the eve of execution.

He ceased rubbing and lay still again, staring up at the play of
light on the rafters. Fine old timbers they were . . . solid English
oak. Good old families they had sheltered in their time; men and
women that feared God and honoured the King--now all gone to decay in
churchyard, all as cold as homeless fellows. The Nanjivells had been
such a family, and now--what would his poor old mother think of
_this_ for an end? Yet it was the general fate. Pushing men, your
Pamphletts, rise in the world. Old families go down, . . . it
couldn't be worked else. If he had only been born with _push_, now!
If it could only be started over again, . . . if he had been put to a
trade, instead of being let run to sea--

He broke off to wonder at the different things the old beams had
looked down upon. Marriages, births--and deaths. The Old Doctor
(he knew) had died in the fore-room, for convenience--the room where
the Penhaligons slept: and even so, the family had been forced to
lift the coffin in and out of the window, because of that twist in
the stairs. There wasn't that difficulty with people's coming _into_
the world. No doubt in its time this room must have seen a mort of
births too. . . . And the children? All gone, the same way!
Drizzle o' rain upon churchyard graves. . . . "And you, too,"--with a
flicker of his closing eyelids threatening the flicker on the beams--
"you, too, doomed, my billies! Pamphlett'll take _me_ to-morrow,
_you_ the day after; as in time the Devil'll take him and his!"

Nicky-Nan rolled over on his side and, perceiving the candle to be
burnt down to a short inch, hastily blew it out. Almost in the act
of relaxing the elbow on which he had raised himself for this effort
he dropped asleep to his pillow.

For three hours he lay like a log. Then his troubled brain began to
reassert itself. At about two in the morning he sat bolt upright in
his bed. For twenty minutes or so he had been thinking rather