er a furious quarrel at home, he disappeared, and for
another three years his parents had never a word of him.

It was rumoured afterwards that he had enlisted, following his
grandfather's example, and had spent at least some part of these
wander-years as private in a West India regiment. At any rate, one fine
morning in 1838 he returned, bringing with him a wife and an infant son,
and it appeared that somehow he had exorcised, or at least chained, his
devil. He settled down quietly at Hall, where meanwhile business had been
prospering, and where now it put forth new vigour.

It was John who foresaw the decline in agriculture, and turned his
father's attention from wheat-growing to mining. He opened up the granite
and china-clay on the moorland beyond the town, and a railway line to
bring these and other minerals down to the coast. He built ships, and in
times of depression he bought them up, and made them pay good interest on
their low prices. He bought up the sean-boats for miles along the coast,
and took the pilchard-fishery into his hands. Regularly in the early
spring a fleet sailed for the Mediterranean with fish for the Spaniards
and Italians to eat during Lent. Larger ships--tall three-masters--took
emigrants to America, and returned with timber for his building-yards,
mines, and clay-works. The banking business had been sold by his father
not long before the great panic of 1825.

In this same year 1825 John lost his first wife. After a short interval
he sought and found a second--this time a lady of good family on the
shores of the Tamar. She bore him a daughter, Anne, who grew up to make
an unhappy match, and died untimely. The children at play in the garden
were hers. Her mother survived her five years.

As men count prosperity, John Rosewarne had lived prosperously. He had a
philosophy, too, to steel him against the blows of fate, and behind his
philosophy a great natural courage. Nevertheless, as he gazed across his
acres for the last time--knowing well that it might be the last--and
across them to Damelioc, the wider acres of his stewardship, his eyes for
one weak moment grew dim. He had reached the stile at the summit of
Parc-an-hal, and was leaning there, when he felt a cool, damp touch upon
his fingers. The little greyhound, puzzled at his standing there so long
motionless, had reached up on her hind legs, and was licking his hand
affectionately.

He frowned, pushed her off, and st