h my own eyes,' he repeats.
'I see'd 'en drop a sovereign in gold, up by that 'taty-patch of his
where the Company's runnin' a trench: an' later on, as I started
clearin' his crop, I came on two more in the soil, just where he'd
been standin'. 'Hullo!' thinks I, 'this ben't the same story, but
another one altogether.' I didn't say that aloud, though. What I
said aloud was, 'You mustn't take notice of everything you see
Nicky-Nan do. 'Tis only his tricks.' 'Tricks?' says the Corporal.
'If a man behaved like that down to Penryn we should call 'en an
eccentric.' That's the tale, ma'am: an' the best part o' last night,
what with puttin' two an' two together an' makin' neither head nor
tail of it, I scarce closed an eye in my head."

"I saw the man,"--Mrs Polsue, after a sharp intake of breath, said it
slowly in a hushed tone of surmise. "On Sunday, on my way home from
service, I saw him hand the money over. I wasn't near enough to
catch all that passed in the way of conversation. But the soldiers
were delivering a quantity of potatoes they had dug up in the man's
patch, and I concluded that Government, in its wasteful way, was
paying him some sort of compensation over and above saving his crop
for him. I remember saying to Miss Oliver that somebody ought to
write to the War Office about it. . . . A man that already takes the
taxpayers' money for pretending to be a Reservist, and then, when war
breaks out, prefers to skulk at home in open sin or next door to it!"

"I wouldn't go so far as all that, ma'am," said Mr Latter. "In fact,
I b'lieve you're under some mistake about Mrs Penhaligon, who is
reckoned as vartuous a woman as any in the parish; while 'tis known
that no doctor'd pass Nanjivell for service. But if you ask me, I've
a great idea the man has come into a legacy, or else struck a store
of gold--"

The landlord checked his tongue abruptly. Some phrase about a
'taty-patch floated across his memory. Had the phrase been his own,
or Nicky-Nan's? He must give himself time to think this out, for it
might well be the clue. The Corporal had spoken of finding two of
the three sovereigns under the soil. . . . While Mr Latter's brain
worked, he cast a quick glance at Mrs Polsue, in fear that he had
gone too far.

But, although she had heard him, it happened that Mrs Polsue's mind
was working on a widely divergent scent. She also was preoccupied
with something that haunted her memory: a paragraph in that