in hand. For six months it had remained
boarded up, darkening the chancel. Mr. Raymond removed the boards
and fixed them up again on the outside, and the Bryanite worked
behind them night after night. He could only be spied upon through
two lancet windows at the west end of the church, and these they
curtained.

But what continually bothered them was their ignorance of iron-work.
Staples, rivets, hinges were for ever wanted. At length, one
evening, toward the end of March, the Bryanite laid down his tools.

"Tell 'ee what 'tis, Parson. You must send the boy to someone
that'll teach en smithy-work. There's no sense in this cold
hammering."

"Wheelwright Hocken holds his shop and cottage from the Squire."

"Why not put the boy to Mendarva the Smith, over to Benny Beneath?
He's a first-rate workman."

"That is more than six miles away."

"No matter for that. There's Joll's Farm close by; Farmer Joll would
board and lodge en for nine shillings a week, and glad of the chance;
and he could come home for Sundays."

Mr. Raymond, as soon as he reached home, sat down and wrote a letter
to Mendarva the Smith and another to Farmer Joll. Within a week the
bargains were struck, and it was settled that Taffy should go at
once.

"I may be calling before long, to look you up," said the Bryanite,
"but mind you do no more than nod when you see me."

Joll's Farm lay somewhere near Carwithiel, across the moor where
Taffy had gone fishing with George and Honoria. On the Monday
morning when he stepped through the white front gate, with his bag on
his shoulder, and paused for a good look at the building, it seemed
to him a very comfortable farmstead, and vastly superior to the
tumble-down farms around Nannizabuloe. The flagged path, which led
up to the front door between great bunches of purple honesty, was
swept as clean as a dairy.

A dark-haired maid opened the door and led him to the great kitchen
at the back. Hams wrapped in paper hung from the rafters, and
strings of onions. The pans over the fire-place were bright as
mirrors, and through the open window he heard the voices of children
at play as well as the clacking of poultry in the town-place.

"I'll go and tell the mistress," said the maid; but she paused at the
door. "I suppose you don't remember me, now?"

"No," said Taffy truthfully.

"My name's Lizzie Pezzack. You was with the young lady, that day,
when she bought my doll. I mind you quite well.