lf in Tom's memory. What did she
mean by "her two?"

He contrived to ask Willis that very evening.

"Oh, don't you know, sir? She had a young brother drowned, a long
while ago, when she was sixteen or so. He went out fishing on the
Sabbath, with another like him, and both were swamped. Wild young
lads, both, as lads will be. But she, sweet maid, took it so to heart,
that she never held up her head since; nor will, I think, at times, to
her dying day."

"Humph! Was she fond of the other lad, then?"

"Sir," said Willis, "I don't think it's fair like,--not decent, if
you'll excuse an old sailor,--to talk about young maids' affairs, that
they wouldn't talk of themselves, perhaps not even to themselves. So I
never asked any questions myself."

"And think it rude in me to ask any. Well, I believe you're right,
good old gentleman that you are. What a nobleman you'd have made, if
you had had the luck to have been born in that station of life!"

"I have found too much trouble, in doing my duty in my humble place,
to wish to be in any higher one."

"So!" thought Tom to himself, "a girl's fancy: but it explains so much
in the character, especially when the temperament is melancholic.
However, to quote Solomon once more, 'A live dog is better than a dead
lion;' and I have not much to fear from a rival who has been washed
out of this world ten years since. Heyday! Rival! quotha? Tom
Thurnall, you are going to make a fool of yourself. You must go, sir!
I warn you; you must flee, till you have recovered your senses."

There appeared next morning in Tom's shop a new phenomenon. A smart
youth, dressed in what he considered to be the newest London fashion;
but which was really that translation of last year's fashion which
happened to be current in the windows of the Bodmin tailors. Tom knew
him by sight and name,--one Mr. Creed, a squireen like Trebooze, and
an especial friend of Trebooze's, under whose tutelage he had learned
to smoke cavendish assiduously from the age of fifteen, thereby
improving neither his stature, nor his digestion, his nerves, nor the
intelligence of his countenance.

He entered with a lofty air, and paused awhile as he spoke.

"Is it possible," said Tom to himself, "that Trebooze has sent me a
challenge? It would be too good fun. I'll wait and see." So he went on
rolling pills.

"I say, sir," quoth the youth, who had determined, as an owner of
land, to treat the doctor duly _de haut en bas_, and had