there, and I'm easy in my mind.
No doubt you think me an old fool?"

But Taffy was not thinking anything of the sort.

"I couldn't wish better than that. You understand?"

"Not quite."

"He lost his mother early. He wants a woman to look after him, and
for him to think about. If he and Honoria would only make up a
match. . . . And Carwithiel would be quite a different house."

Taffy hesitated, with a hand on the forge-bellows.

"I dare say it's news to you, what I'm telling. But it has been in
my mind this long while. Why don't you blow up the fire? I bet Miss
Honoria has thought of it too: girls are deep. She has a head on her
shoulders. I'll warrant she sends half a dozen of my servants
packing within a week. As it is, they rob me to a stair. I know it,
and I haven't the pluck to interfere."

"What does the old Squire say?" Taffy managed to ask.

"It has never come to _saying_ anything. But I believe he thinks of
it, too, when he happens to think of anything but his soul. He'll be
pleased; everyone will be pleased. The properties touch, you see."

"I see."

"To tell you the truth, he's failing fast. This religion of his is a
symptom: all of his family have taken to it in the end. If he hadn't
the constitution of a horse, he'd have been converted ten years
before this. What puzzles me is, he's so quiet. You mark my words
"--Sir Harry rose, buttoned his coat and shook his riding-crop
prophetically--"he's brewing up for something. There'll be the devil
of a flare-up before he has done."

It came with the Midsummer bonfires. At nine o'clock on St. John's
Eve, Mr. Raymond read prayers in the church. It was his rule to
celebrate thus the vigils of all saints in the English calendar and
some few Cornish saints besides; and he regularly announced these
services on the preceding Sundays: but no parishioner dreamed of
attending them.

To-night, as usual, he and Taffy had prayed alone: and the lad was
standing after service at the church door, with his surplice on his
arm (for he always wore a surplice and read the lessons on these
vigils), when the flame of the first bonfire shot up from the
headland over Innis village.

Almost on the moment, a flame answered it from the point where the
lighthouse stood; and, within ten minutes, the horizon of the towans
was cressetted with these beacon-fires: surely (thought Taffy) with
many more than usual. And he remembered that Jacky Pascoe had thro