years before this 8th of May, 1734, word had come
down from Steens that his father wished to speak with him.

"Not dying, is he?" Roger asked the messenger in Cornish. Half his
customers spoke the old language, and it came readier to his tongue.

The messenger chuckled. "Dying? He'll live to be a hundred!
Eh, it's not dying he's after," and the man winked. He was near upon
bursting with news--or gossip--of his own.

"That's enough," said Roger. "Go back and tell him that if he's well and
wants to talk, he knows where to find me." And he turned back to his work.

Next day old Humphrey Stephen rode down into Helleston in a towering rage,
reined up before his son's shop, and dismounted.

"You're a pretty dutiful kind of son," he snarled. "But I've a word that
concerns you belike. I'm going to marry again."

"Ah?" said Roger, drawing in his breath and eyeing the old man up and down
in a way that disconcerted him. "Who's the poor soul?"

"She lives over to Porthleven," answered his father, "and her name is Mary
Nankivell. She's--well, in fact she's a fisherman's daughter; but I've
lived long enough to despise differences of that kind."

"I wasn't asking _your_ age," said Roger meditatively.
"What's the woman's?"

"She'll be twenty next birthday." The old man was sixty-five.
"Well, what's your opinion?" he asked testily, for he knew he was doing a
wrong thing, and craved an excuse to work himself into a rage.

"On which?" asked Roger, "--you, or the woman?"

"On the marriage." Old Humphrey stood glowering under his eyebrows,
and tapped his boot impatiently with the butt of his riding-whip.
"I reckoned it might concern you, that's all."

"I can't see that it does." There was that in Roger's slow look which his
father found maddening.

"Oh, can't you?" he sneered.

"No, for the life of me," answered Roger. "'Tis wickedness of course, but
I've no call to interfere. Take and marry the miserable fool, if you're
so minded."

Humphrey Stephen had more to say, but gulped it down and mounted his horse
with a devilish grin.

Roger Stephen went back to his work-bench.

III.

"Pack of fools!" growled old Malachi as the thump-thump of the drum drew
nearer. He rose and shifted his stool to a corner, for the way to the
back premises lay through the shop. Roger looked forth into the sunny
street, blinked, and, picking up a pair of pincers, returned to his watch.

The band came slowly down the str