ndeed, the year drew near its
close; and ere another winter should come round Penarrow House would own
a mistress. That to him seemed as inevitable as the season itself.
And yet for all his supreme confidence, for all his patience and the
happiness he culled from it, there were moments when he seemed oppressed
by some elusive sense of overhanging doom, by some subconsciousness of
an evil in the womb of Destiny. Did he challenge his oppression, did he
seek to translate it into terms of reason, he found nothing upon which
his wits could fasten--and he came ever to conclude that it was his very
happiness by its excessiveness that was oppressing him, giving him at
times that sense of premonitory weight about the heart as if to check
its joyous soarings.

One day, a week from Christmas, he had occasion to ride to Helston on
some trifling affair. For half a week a blizzard had whirled about the
coast, and he had been kept chafing indoors what time layer upon layer
of snow was spread upon the countryside. On the fourth day, the storm
being spent, the sun came forth, the skies were swept clear of clouds
and all the countryside lay robed in a sun-drenched, dazzling whiteness.
Sir Oliver called for his horse and rode forth alone through the crisp
snow. He turned homeward very early in the afternoon, but when a couple
of miles from Helston he found that his horse had cast a shoe. He
dismounted, and bridle over arm tramped on through the sunlit vale
between the heights of Pendennis and Arwenack, singing as he went. He
came thus to Smithick and the door of the forge. About it stood a group
of fishermen and rustics, for, in the absence of any inn just there,
this forge was ever a point of congregation. In addition to the rustics
and an itinerant merchant with his pack-horses, there were present Sir
Andrew Flack, the parson from Penryn, and Master Gregory Baine, one of
the Justices from the neighbourhood of Truro. Both were well known
to Sir Oliver, and he stood in friendly gossip with them what time he
waited for his horse.

It was all very unfortunate, from the casting of that shoe to the
meeting with those gentlemen; for as Sir Oliver stood there, down the
gentle slope from Arwenack rode Master Peter Godolphin.

It was said afterwards by Sir Andrew and Master Baine that Master Peter
appeared to have been carousing, so flushed was his face, so unnatural
the brightness of his eye, so thick his speech and so extravagant and
foolish