difficult to dissuade him from his purpose. What boy would willingly
give up the prospect of an adventure on the marsh alone, with a
bull's-eye? Miriam tried, and tried in vain. She gained time, however,
and was listening for Marvin's footstep on the gravel all the while.

Sep found the matches--and it chanced that there was a sufficiency of
oil in his lantern. He lighted up and went away, leaving an abominable
smell of untrimmed wick behind him.

It was tea-time, and, half a century ago, that meal was a matter of
greater importance than it is to-day. A fire burned in the dining-room,
glowing warmly on the mellow walls and gleaming furniture; but there was
no lamp, nor need of one, in a room with large windows facing the sunset
sky.

Miriam led the way into this room, and lifted the shining, old-fashioned
kettle to the hob. She took a chair that stood near, and sat, with her
shoulder turned toward him, looking into the fire.

"We will have tea as soon as they come in," she said, in that voice of
camaraderie which speaks of a life-long friendship between a man and a
woman--if such a friendship be possible. Is it?--who knows? "They will
not be long, I am sure. You will like tea, after having been so
long abroad. It is one of the charms of coming home, or one of the
alleviations. I don't know which. And now, tell me all that has happened
since you went away--if you care to."

CHAPTER XXVII. OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

Miriam's manner toward him was the same as it had always been so long as
he could remember. He had once thought--indeed, he had made to her the
accusation--that she was always conscious of the social gulf existing
between them; that she always remembered that she was by birth and
breeding a lady, whereas he was the son of an obscure Frenchman who was
nothing but a clockmaker whose name could be read (and can to this day
be deciphered) on a hundred timepieces in remote East Anglian farms.

Since his change of fortune he had, as all men who rise to a great
height or sink to the depths will tell, noted a corresponding change in
his friends. Even Captain Clubbe had altered, and the affection which
peeped out at times almost against his puritanical will seemed to have
suffered a chill. The men of Farlingford, and even those who had sailed
in "The Last Hope" with him, seemed to hold him at a distance. They
nodded to him with a brief, friendly smile, but were shy of shaking
hands. The hand which they