y, as white as a
ghost. "What's wrong, my dear?" He glanced about him, but saw nothing
to account for her pallor--only the scorched hillside, alive with the
noise of grasshoppers, the hot air quivering above the bramble-bushes,
and beyond, a line of sunlight across the harbour's mouth, and a
schooner with slack canvas crawling to anchor on the flood-tide.

"You--you came upon me sudden," she explained.

"Stupid of me!" thought John; and going to the house, fetched not only
a dish of cream but the tea-caddy and a kettle, which they put to
boil outside the summer-house over a fire of dried brambles. The tea
revived Hester and set her tongue going. "'Tis quite a picnic!" said
John, and told himself privately that it was the happiest hour they
had spent together for many a month.

Two evenings later, on his return from St. Austell market, he happened
to let himself in by the door of the walled garden just beneath the
house, and came on a tall young man talking there in the dusk with his
wife.

"Why, 'tis Zeke Penhaligon! How d'ee do, my lad? Now, 'tis queer, but
only five minutes a-gone I was talkin' about 'ee with your skipper,
Nummy Tangye, t'other side o' the ferry. He says you'm goin' up for
your mate's certificate, and ought to get it. Very well he spoke of
'ee. Why don't Hester invite you inside? Come'st 'long in to supper,
my son."

Zeke followed them in, and this was the first of many visits. John was
one of those naturally friendly souls (there are many in the world)
who never go forth to seek friends, and to whom few friends ever come,
and these by accident. Zeke's talk set his tongue running on his own
brief _Wanderjahre_. And Hester would sit and listen to the pair with
heightened colour, which made John wonder why, as a rule, she shunned
company--it did her so much good. So it grew to be a settled thing
that whenever the _Touch-me-not_ entered port a knife and fork awaited
Zeke up at Hall, and the oftener he came the pleasanter was John's
face.

V

Three years passed, and in the summer of the third year Captain Nummy
Tangye, of the _Touch-me-not_, relinquished his command. Captain
Tangye's baptismal name was Matthias, and Bideford, in Devon, his
native town. But the _Touch-me-not_, which he had commanded for
thirty-five years, happened to carry for figurehead a wooden
Highlander holding a thistle close to his chest, and against his thigh
a scroll with the motto, _Noli Me Tangere_, and this being, in