the
slipway and accosted him.

"Is your name Nicholas Vro?"

"It is; and you'm askin' after the right boat, stranger though you be.
Step aboard, mister."

"Thank you," said the seedy-looking man, "but I don't need to cross.
The fact is, I've a paper to deliver to you."

Nicky, as he did not mind confessing, was 'no scholar'; he could read at
the best with great difficulty, and he had left his spectacles at home.

"What's the meaning o' this?" he asked, turning the document over.

"It's an injunction."

"That makes me no wiser, my son."

"It's a paper to restrain you from plying this ferry for hire pending a
suit Killow _versus_ Vro in which you are named as defendant."

"'Suit'--'verses'? Darn the fellow, what's to do with verses? Come to me
with your verses!" Nicky tossed the injunction contemptuously down in the
sternsheets.

"You'll find 'tis the law," said the stranger warningly.

"The law? I've a-seen the law, my friend, over to Bodmin, and 'tis a very
different looking chap from you, I can assure 'ee. The law rides in a
gilt coach with trumpets afore it, and two six-foot fellows up behind in
silk stockings and powder. The law be that high and mighty it can't even
wear its own nat'ral hair. And you come to me stinkin' of beer in a
reach-me-down overcoat, and pretend _you_ be the law! You'll be tellin' me
next you're Queen Victoria. But it shows what a poor kind o' case
Rosewarne must have, that he threatens me wi' such a make-believe."

That Nicky had been alarmed for the moment cannot be denied.
His uneasiness died away, however, as the days passed and nothing
happened. The paper he stowed away at home in the skivet of his chest,
and very foolishly said nothing about it even to his neighbour Hosken.

Indeed he had almost forgotten it when, just before Christmas, the
stranger appeared again on the slip with another paper.

"Hullo! More verses?"

"You've to show cause why you shouldn't be committed for contempt."

"Oh, have I? Well, a man can't help his feelin's, but I'm sorry if I said
anything the other day to hurt yours; for a man can't help his appearance,
neither, up to a point."

"You've none too civil a tongue," answered the stranger, "but I think it a
kindness to warn you. By continuing to ply this ferry you're showing
contempt for the law, and the law is going to punish you."

Nicky thought this out, but could not understand it at all. If Mr. Sam
had a legal right to stop