down his cheeks, a fixed resolve to renew the argument as soon
as he was the right way up again, and if necessary the struggle as well.

Luckily for the friendship between Mark and Cass, a friendship that was
awarded a mystical significance by their two surnames, Lidderdale and
Dale, Parson Trehawke, soon after the burial episode, came forward as
the champion of the Nancepean Fishing Company in a quarrel with those
pirates from Lanyon, the next village down the coast. Inasmuch as a
pilchard catch worth L800 was in dispute, feeling ran high between the
Nancepean Daws and the Lanyon Gulls. All the inhabitants of the Rhos
parishes were called after various birds or animals that were supposed
to indicate their character; and when Parson Trehawke's championship of
his own won the day, his parishioners came to church in a body on the
following Sunday and put one pound five shillings and tenpence halfpenny
in the plate. The reconciliation between the two boys took place with
solemn preliminary handshakes followed by linking of arms as of old
after Cass reckoned audibly to Mark who was standing close by that
Parson Trehawke was a grand old chap, the grandest old chap from
Rosemarket to Rose Head. That afternoon Mark went back to tea with Cass
Dale, and over honey with Cornish cream they were brothers again. Samuel
Dale, the father of Cass, was a typical farmer of that part of the
country with his fifty or sixty acres of land, the capital to work which
had come from fish in the fat pilchard years. Cass was his only son, and
he had an ambition to turn him into a full-fledged minister. He had lost
his wife when Cass was a baby, and it pleased him to think that in
planning such a position for the boy he was carrying out the wishes of
the mother whom outwardly he so much resembled. For housekeeper Samuel
Dale had an unmarried sister whom her neighbours accused of putting on
too much gentility before her nephew's advancement warranted such airs.
Mark liked Aunt Keran and accepted her hospitality as a tribute to
himself rather than to his position as the grandson of the Vicar. Miss
Dale had been a schoolmistress before she came to keep house for her
brother, and she worked hard to supplement what learning Cass could get
from the village school before, some three years after Mark came to
Nancepean, he was sent to Rosemarket Grammar School.

Mark was anxious to attend the Grammar School with Cass; but Mrs.
Lidderdale's dread nowadays wa