ffer to go on, but my wife and daughter would be wet through
before we could reach any other shelter."

"We would not turn any one away, especially you and Mistress Tremayne,"
said the dame, looking at the elder lady.

"What! do you know us?" asked the gentleman.

"I know Mistress Tremayne and the young lady from her likeness to what I
recollect of her mother," answered Dame Lanreath. "I seldom forget a
person I once knew, and she has often bought fish of me in days gone
by."

"And I, too, recollect you. If I mistake not you used to be pretty
widely known as Polly Lanreath," said the lady, looking at the old
fish-wife.

"And so I am now, Mistress Tremayne," answered the dame, "though not
known so far and wide as I once was. I can still walk my twenty miles
a-day; but years grow on one; and when I see so many whom I have known
as children taken away, I cannot expect to remain hale and strong much
longer."

"You have altered but little since I knew you," observed Mrs Tremayne,
"and I hope that you may retain your health and strength for many years
to come."

"That's as God wills," said the dame. "I pray it may be so for the sake
of my little Nelly here."

"She is your grandchild, I suppose," observed Mrs Tremayne.

"Ay, and the only one I have got to live for now. Her father has just
gone, and she and I are left alone."

"O granny, but there is Michael; don't talk of him as gone," exclaimed
Nelly. "He will come back, surely he will come back."

This remark of Nelly's caused Mr and Mrs Tremayne to make further
inquiries.

They at first regretted that they had been compelled to take shelter in
the cottage, but as the dame continued talking, their interest in what
she said increased.

"It seemed strange, Mistress Tremayne, that you should have come here at
this moment," she observed. "Our Michael is the grandson of one whom
you knew well in your childhood; she was Nancy Trewinham, who was nurse
in the family of your mother, Lady Saint Mabyn; and you, if I mistake
not, were old enough at the time to remember her."

"Yes, indeed, I do perfectly well; and I have often heard my mother
express her regret that so good and gentle a young woman should have
married a man who, though apparently well-to-do in the world, was more
than suspected to be of indifferent character," said the lady. "We
could gain no intelligence of her after she left Penzance, though I
remember my father saying that he had no doubt a