he clock, a couple of Town Councillors
stood chatting. While the Emigrant looked there came round the corner a
ruck of boys from school chivvying and shouting after an ungainly man,
who turned twice and threatened them with a stick. The Town
Councillors did not interfere, and the rabble passed bawling by the
Pack-horse. Long before it came the Emigrant had recognised the
ungainly man. It was Dicky Loony, the town butt. He had chivvied the
imbecile a hundred times in just the same fashion, yelling "Black Cat!"
after him as these young imps were yelling--though why "Black Cat"
neither he nor the imps could have told. But Dicky had always resented
it as he resented it now, wheeling round, shaking his stick, and
sputtering maledictions. A stone or two flew harmlessly by.
The Emigrant did not interfere.

As yet no one had recognised him. He had arrived the night before, and
taken a room at the Pack-horse, nobody asking his name; had sat after
supper in a corner of the smoking-room and listened to the gossip there,
saying nothing.

"Who's he travellin' for?" somebody had asked of Abel Walters, the
landlord. "He ain't a commercial. He han't got the trunks, only a
kit-bag. By the soft hat he wears I should say _a_ agent in advance.
Likely we'll have a circus before long."

His father and mother were dead these ten years. He had sent home money
to pay the funeral expenses and buy a substantial headstone. But he had
not been up to the cemetery yet. He was not a sentimental man.
Still, he had expected his return to make some little stir in
Tregarrick, and now a shade of disappointment began to creep over his
humour.

He flung away the end of his cigar and strolled up the sunny pavement to
a sweetshop where he had once bought ha'porths of liquorice and
cinnamon-rock. The legend, "E. Hosking, Maker of Cheesecakes to Queen
Victoria," still decorated the window. He entered and demanded a pound
of best "fairing," smiling at the magnificence of the order.
Mrs. Hosking--her white mob--cap and apron clean as ever--offered him a
macaroon for luck, and weighed out the sweets. Her hand shook more than
of old.

"You don't remember me, Mrs. Hosking?"

"What is it you say? You must speak a little louder, please, I'm deaf."

"You don't remember me?"

"No, I don't," she said composedly. "I'm gone terrible blind this last
year or two."

The Emigrant paid for his sweets and walked out. He had bought them
with a purp