pe with tears in his eyes.

"There you be," said he, talking to the lights, "and here be I; and
somewheres down amongst you is the dear maid I've come to marry.
Not much welcome for me in Ardevora, I b'law, though I do love every
stone of her streets. But there's one there that didn' forget me in my
captivity, and won't despise me in these here rags. I wish I'd seen
Abe's face when I jumped aboard the boat. Poor old Abe!--but all's fair
in love and war, I reckon. He can't be here till to-morrow at earliest,
so let's have a pipe o' baccy on it."

He lit up and sucked away at his pipe, still considering the lights in
the valley. Somehow they put him in mind of Abe, and how in the old
days he and Abe used to come on them shining just so on their way home
on Saturday nights from Bessie's Cove. Poor old mate!--first of all he
pictured Abe's chap-fallen face, and chuckled; then he began to wonder
if Abe would call it fair play. But all was fair in love and war: he
kept saying this over to himself, and then lit another pipe to think it
out.

Well, he couldn't; and so, after a third pipe, he pulled an old French
cloak out of his knapsack and wrapped himself in it and huddled himself
to sleep there on the slope of the hillside.

When he woke up the sun was shining and the smoke coming up towards him
from the chimneys, and all about him the larks a-singing just as they'd
carried on every fine morning since he'd left Ardevora. And somehow,
though he had dropped asleep in a puzzle of mind, he woke up with not a
doubt to trouble him. He hunted out a crust from his knapsack and made
his breakfast, and then he lit his pipe again and turned towards
Penzance. He was going to play fair.

On he went in this frame of mind, feeling like a man almost too virtuous
to go to church, until by-and-by he came in sight of Nancledrea and the
inn he'd left in such a hurry over night. And who should be sitting in
the porchway, and looking into the bottom of a pint pot, but Abe
Cummins!

"Why, however on earth did you come here?" asked Billy.

"Cap'en landed us between four and five this morning," said Abe.

"Well," said Billy, "I'm right glad to meet you, anyway, for--tell 'ee
the truth--you're the very man I was looking for."

"Really?" says Abe, like one interested.

"You and no other. I don't mind telling 'ee I've been through a fire of
temptation. You know why I jumped into that boat: it vexed you a bit, I
dare say. And s