ort ten years before Roger Stephen, a mile-and-a-half
away, first let fly his bullets at the Sheriff, on the principle that an
Englishman's house is his castle, and in firm conviction--shared by all
the countryside and in the bottom of his heart by Sir John himself--that
this particular castle was Roger Stephen's; not perhaps by law, but
assuredly by right.

II.

Four miles south of Steens, and a trifle over, lies the market town of
Helston (or 'Helleston' as men wrote it in 1734, and ought to write it
still); on the road to nowhere and somnolent then as now, but then as now
waking up once a year, on the 8th of May, to celebrate the Feast of Flora
and welcome back the summer. She is brought in at daybreak with green
boughs and singing, and at noon the citizens dance through the streets in
her honour, the Mayor himself leading off as the town band strikes up its
immemorial quickstep, the staid burgesses following with their partners.
At first they walk or amble two and two, like animals coming out of Noah's
ark; then, at a change in the tune, each man swings round to the lady
behind him, 'turns' her, regains his partner, 'turns' her too, and the
walk is resumed. And so, alternately walking and twirling, the procession
sways down the steep main street and in and out of the houses left open
for it--along the passage from front door to court or garden, out at the
back door, in at the back door of the next open house, and through to the
street again--the beadles preceding with wreathed wands, the band with
decorated drum, the couples 'turning' duly at the break in the tune,
though it catch them in the narrowest entrance or half-way down a flight
of steps.

On the 8th of May, 1734, at the foot of Coinage-hall Street, hard by the
Bowling Green, a pewterer's shop stood open, like its neighbours, to admit
the Flora. But the master of the shop and his assistant--he kept no
apprentice--sat working as usual at their boards, perhaps the only two men
in Helleston who disregarded the public holiday. But everyone knew Roger
Stephen to be a soured man, and what old Malachi Hancock did was of no
account.

Malachi sat at his bench in the rear of the shop turning the rim of a
pewter plate, and Roger Stephen in the front, for the sake of better
light, peering into the bowels of a watch which had been brought to him to
be cleaned--a rare job, and one which in his sullen way he enjoyed.
From youth up he had been badly used. His