ranfer. "See how brassy the
sun's going down. Swell coming in too. Boats up be boats safe."

"Hould yer bloody row," said John. "What be talking 'bout? Plenty o'
time to haul up if the sea makes."

"All very well for yu," Tony protested, "living right up to Saltmeadow.
If the sea urns up to the boats in the night yu won't be down to lend a
hand, no, not wi' yer own boats. 'Tis us as lives to the beach what has
to strain ourselves to bits hauling your boats up over so well as our
own."

"Let 'em bide, then!"

"Looks dirty, I say," said Granfer. "Might jest so well haul up as bide
here talking about it. _I_ shan't sleep till I knows the boats be all
right."

"Thee't better lie awake then. An't got no patience wi' making such a
buzz afore you wants tu." With that, John shouldered his coat and
strode homewards.

[Sidenote: _JOHN WIDGER_]

The rest of us pulled the boats up, John's included, till their stems
touched the sea-wall, and we placed the two sailing boats, John's and
Tony's, close beside the steps, handy for hauling up over if need
should be.

Tony and Granfer went in house. Uncle Jake watched them go with an
ironical smile on his wrinkled old face. "Don't like the looks o' this
yer lop on a ground-swell," he said. "There! Did 'ee see how thic sea
licked the baych? Let one o' they lift yer boat.... My zenses! 'Tis all
up wi' it, an' I should pick it up in bits, up 'long, for
firewood.--Well, John's gone home along...."

John is the youngest, handsomest and most powerfully built of the
Widgers; the most independent, most brutal-tongued and most logical,
though not, I fancy, the most perceptive. The inborn toughness, the
family tendency to health and strength, which made fine men of the
elder Widgers in spite of their youthful exposure and privations, has,
in the case of John who underwent fewer hardships, resulted in the
development, unimpeded, of a wonderful physique. "Never heard o' John
being tired," says Uncle Jake.

Premature toil did not bend him; what he is the others had it in them
to be, and by their labour helped to make him. Because his spirit has
never been so buffeted, let alone broken, by hard times, he is also the
most self-reliant. And like the majority of lucky men, he takes fate's
forbearance as his due and adds it to his own credit. Fair-haired,
blue-eyed, his clean-shaven face deeply and clearly coloured; a
combination of the Saxon bulldog type with the seafaring man's
alertness; h