own depths.

"A love-charm."

The schoolmaster nodded.

"Thomasine Slade has been wishing for a husband. I see no sin in that.
When she looked up and saw you coming down the lane--"

I paused. The schoolmaster said nothing. He was leaning over the well,
gloomily examining the pins.

"--your aspect was enough to scare anyone," I wound up lamely.

"I wish," the schoolmaster hastily began, "I wish to Heaven I had the
gift of humour! I lose my temper and grow positive. I'd kill these
stupid superstitions with ridicule, if I had the gift. It's a great
gift. My God, I do hate to be laughed at!"

"Even by a fool?" I asked, somewhat astonished at his heat.

"Certainly. There's no comfort in comparing the laugh of fools with
the crackling of thorns under a pot, if you happen to be inside the
pot and in process of cooking."

He took off his hat, brushed it on the sleeve of his coat, and resumed
in a tone altogether lighter--

"Yes, I hate to be laughed at; and I'll tell you a tale on this point
that may amuse you at my expense.

"I am London-bred, as you know, and still a Cockney in the grain,
though when I came down here to teach school I was just nineteen and
now I'm over forty. It was during the summer holidays that I first set
foot in this neighbourhood--a week before school re-opened. I came
early, to look for lodgings and find out a little about the people and
settle down a bit before beginning work.

"The vicar--the late vicar, I mean--commended me to old Retallack, who
used to farm Rosemellin, up the valley, a widower and childless. His
sister, Miss Jane Ann, kept house for him, and these were the only two
souls on the premises till I came and was boarded by them for thirteen
shillings a week. For that price they gave me a bedroom, a fair-sized
sitting-room and as much as I could eat.

"A month after my arrival, Farmer Retallack was put to bed with a
slight attack of colic. This was on a Wednesday, and on Saturday
morning Miss Jane Ann came knocking at my door with a message that the
old man would like to see me. So I went across to his room and found
him propped up in the bed with three or four pillows and looking very
yellow in the gills, though clearly convalescent.

"'Schoolmaster,' said he, 'I've a trifling favour to beg of ye. You
give the children a half-holiday, Saturdays--hey? Well, d'ye think ye
could drive the brown hoss, Trumpeter, into Tregarrick this afternoon?
The fact is, my old friend Ab