of the feminine in him to realise the importance of
the omission.

"Where are you off to, my son?" asked Boase, sticking his hand in the
pocket of his shabby old cassock. He knew better than to pat a boy's
head or thump him between the shoulder-blades with the hearty manner
peculiar to men who have forgotten their own boyhood.

"Oh, I'm just gwain to see if the mill-wheel's workin' down along," said
Ishmael--not for worlds would he have admitted Phoebe Lenine as the
object of his visit. The Parson's eyes twinkled as they rested on the
bouquet.

"Going, not 'gwain,'" he corrected gently.

"Going," repeated Ishmael, with his deceptive docility in little things.

"I'll come to the mill with you," said the Parson briskly, and Ishmael
set off by his side without a word, but presently lagged behind a moment
to drop his carefully-prepared offering between two gorse-bushes. Boase
smiled, then sighed, wondering where such an abnormal dread of ridicule
as Ishmael's would lead; it was a result of the Parson's calling that he
should feel anxiety as to the ultimate trend of things.

The two trudged on in silence; their friendship was so tried, and the
understanding between them so complete, that they sometimes spent an
hour or more together with hardly a remark. Finally Ishmael broke
silence.

"You coming to Cry the Neck this evening, Da Boase?" he asked.

"I'm going to look in before supper," replied the Parson; and
unconsciously his lips took on a sterner line. He was building much on
that evening's "Crying the Neck," which for the first time Ishmael was
to attend, and at the succeeding supper Boase meant him to take his
place at the head of the table, as future master of Cloom. "Crying the
Neck" was a moribund custom in the eighteen-fifties, and it was the
Parson, with an eye to its possibilities, who had encouraged what proved
to be its last revival.

"Mr. Lenine's coming," remarked Ishmael presently.

"Ah! Is he coming alone?" asked Boase carelessly.

"Happen he will, or maybe they'll all come, but Mrs. Lenine always says
she must stay in of an evening when others are trapesing," replied
Ishmael, with equal carelessness. For they were Cornishmen, these two,
and the Parson would no more have asked outright "Is Phoebe coming?"
than Ishmael would have given a direct answer.

Lenine's mill, known as Vellan-Clowse, which means "The Mill by the
Wood," nestled in a valley below the Cloon moor where the leet ran along
b