s, you are a prisoner, if you are pleased to call it so."

"But am I to have no liberty? Am I not to leave this room? I cannot live
penned up here."

"I shall speak no further to you. Food will be brought, and no harm will
happen to you."

With that he left the room as quietly as he came, and I heard his
footsteps echoing again as I had heard them when he came to me. For a
time my brain seemed to grow weak again, and in spite of my anxiety I
dropped into a fitful sleep, from which I was aroused by the chinking of
crockery near me.

My sleep made me feel stronger; I felt far better than when the old man
had visited me. I looked around the room again, and saw a hard-featured
woman. She, too, was elderly, fast beating on toward sixty. She placed a
basin of gruel at my side.

"'Ere," she said, "ait this."

"Ah," I thought, "I am still in Cornwall. Anyhow, the woman speaks with
a Cornish accent."

I thought I might fare better with her than with the old man, so I tried
to gain some information from her.

"Let's see," I said, "what part of Cornwall are we in?"

"Ait yer mait, an' ax no questions," was her response.

I ate the gruel with a good appetite. It was carefully made, and seemed
to be seasoned with some pleasant-tasting cordial. When I had finished
the old woman grunted with satisfaction.

"It is very nice," I said--"very nice. Whoever made it knows her work.
Did you make it?"

"Who es ther' that knaweth how to make sich stuff as that but me?" she
said.

Her answer set me thinking, and I drew two conclusions. One was that the
old woman was vulnerable to flattery, the other was that she did not
hail from that part of the county in which I was reared. The word
"knaweth" told me that she belonged to the northern part of the county.

I put another question in order to test the truth of both these
conclusions.

"You look too much of a lady to be the cook," I said, "and yet I thought
the cook would naturally make such things."

"Ther's no cook. Her's gone. I'm in charge."

She said this proudly, but although her answer was brief, it confirmed
me in my suspicions. People in the western part of the county would say
"She's gone," so when she said, "Her's gone," I was sure that she hailed
from either Devon or from somewhere in the region of Tintagel and
Boscastle.

"It must be a place of importance," I said. "Have you lived here long?"

"I was born in this parish."

"Let's see, this is near St. Minver