back last week upon treacle. Beer, in small
glass jars, is also recommended. I trust that if you ladies see me
issuing from the Three Pilchards to-morrow with a jug of beer, you
will make it your business to protect my character. The purchase
will not escape your knowledge, I feel sure. . . . But we were
talking of Nanjivell. I have some reason to believe that he is a
God-fearing man, though his religion does not take a--er--
congregational turn. Moreover, he is a sick man."

"H'mph!" Miss Oliver sniffed.

"The amount of disease disseminated by house-flies is, I am told,
incalculable," pursued Mr Hambly. "Yes--as I was saying, or about to
say--it's a pity that, in a small town like Polpier, two ministers of
religion cannot between them keep a general shop to suit all tastes,
like Mrs Pengelly." Mr Hambly's voice dropped as he wound up.
"Ah, if--like Mrs Pengelly--we kept bull's-eyes for the children!"

"And for another year we have to sit under a man like that!" said Mrs
Polsue to Miss Oliver on their way homeward.

Nicky-Nan had one thing in his favour. He came of an old Polpier
stock. It had decayed, to be sure, and woefully come down in the
world: but the town, though its tongue may wag, has ever a soft heart
towards its own. And the Nanjivells had been of good "haveage"
(lineage) in their time. They had counted in the family a real
Admiral, of whom Nicky-Nan had inherited a portrait in oil-colours.
It hung in the parlour-kitchen underneath his bedroom, between two
marine paintings of Vesuvius erupting by day and Vesuvius erupting by
night: and the Penhaligon children stood in terrible awe of it
because the eyes followed you all round the room, no matter what
corner you took.

In neighbourliness, then, and for the sake of his haveage,
Nicky-Nan's first welcome home had been kindly enough. His savings
were few, but they bought him a small share in a fishing-boat,
besides enabling him to rent the tenement in the Doctor's House, and
to make it habitable with a few sticks of furniture. Also he rented
a potato-patch, beyond the coastguard's hut, around the eastward
cliff, and tilled it assiduously. Being a man who could do with a
very little sleep, he would often be found hard at work there by nine
in the morning, after a long night's fishing.

Thus, though always on the edge of poverty, he had managed his
affairs--until four years ago, when the trouble began with his leg.

At first he paid little