be reconciled with heaven and the future life promised by the
Bible. Yet it haunted him, though at rare intervals, and not
importunately. To the past he gave never a thought.

Ruth Tregarthen, his wife, was one of those women who find their
happiness within their own doors. The farm-house stood some way up the
slope of the southern hill, facing eastward over the valley which
curved a little at its feet and spread into a line of small flat
meadows around the East Bay, where the farmer kept his two boats; and
the site had been chosen here to avoid the seas which, with a gale
falling on top of the equinoctial springs, are driven up the valley
from east and west, and meet to form an isthmus, cutting the Island in
two.

The state-rooms of the farm-house--parlour, hall, and best
bedrooms--looked eastward upon Cromwell's Sound; but the waters of the
Sound were hidden from the lower windows by a stout hedge of tamarisk.
The kitchen window at the back--by far the largest in the house, as the
kitchen itself, where the family took its meals on every day but
Christmas Day and Good Friday, was the true focus of the
household--looked across the town-place, or farm-yard, upon another
tall hedge of tamarisk, above which climbed the hill, steep, strewn
with small white stones, shutting out the Atlantic.

The kitchen table stood close beside this window, just beyond the edge
of the bacon-rack; and directly opposite, across the wide paved floor,
was a wide open hearth, fitted with crooks and brandises, where all the
day long something or other would be cooking, and where the night
through the logs smouldered and fell in soft grey ash, to be fed and
stirred to flame again in the early morning. Yes, and as though this
was not enough, the hearth had beside it an iron door which, being
opened, disclosed to the children a long narrow hole filled with fire;
vision to them of a passage leading straight to hell, though their own
mother (and she so gentle) stoked it with bunches of furze, and drew
from it loaves and saffron cakes, hot and detectable.

To the children it seemed that their parents seldom or never talked,
and never by any chance took a rest.

Their names were Annet, Linnet and Matthew Henry, and this was the
order of their ages--Annet nine, Linnet seven, and Matthew Henry rising
five. On fine days they attended school at Inniscaw, being rowed to and
fro across the Sound by John Nanjulian (Old Jan), the hind, or Stevy,
the farm