more consideration for Peet, whose irritable temper,
she was forced to admit, was very trying to their high spirits.

Dick, the only child of Peet and his wife, had been a fine handsome lad,
with an unusual amount of brains, and with, what is still better, a
wonderful capacity for really hard work. He had won all the prizes that
he could possibly compete for in the little school at Lynwood, as well
as most of the honours in the cricket and football field, for he was
quite as good at games as at books. Peet was at that time, and had been
ever since his youth, a gardener on the Earl of Lynwood's
estate--Lynwood Keep, in Scotland. He had risen through steady work to
be head gardener and bailiff. On finding himself possessed of sufficient
means to take a wife and settle down, he had married an old love of his,
a Cornish girl from the village of Newlyn, and had carried her off to
the home he had so proudly prepared for her. A very happy couple they
had been, and the birth of Dick had added a still greater happiness to
their already bright life. Peet's temper had not then become what the
sore trials and disappointments of his later life had made it. He was
contented and prosperous, and the clouds which afterwards darkened his
existence had not so much as sent the tiniest little messenger before
them to tell of their coming.

As Dick grew older, and showed of what true, strong metal he was made,
his parents' pride in him became greater than they could quite conceal.
A certain amount of envy and ill-will was the natural result. Dick
himself was not in the least conceited. None knew so well as he how hard
it was to restrain a naturally hasty temper, to give up the games he
loved for the work he did not, to labour as thoroughly at the subjects
he disliked or took no interest in as at those he liked. But he had grit
enough to determine he would not thus lose the battle of life in the
beginning of it, and step by step the habit of overcoming difficulties
prevailed.

He rose steadily and surely over the heads of his school-fellows,
gaining prize after prize, until there was nothing more to win either in
places or rewards.

Having by this time laid by enough to enable him to retire from work,
Peet allowed himself to be persuaded by his brother-in-law to take a
small cottage at Newlyn. This brother-in-law, captain of a merchant
vessel, offered at the same time to give his clever nephew a berth on
board his own ship, a barque tradi