was now stretched on the settle beside the fire.

"I don't know who you may be, sir, but--"

"You are kind enough to excuse my rising to introduce myself.
My name is Zebedee Minards."



CHAPTER IV.


YOUNG ZEB FETCHES A CHEST OF DRAWERS.

The parish of Ruan Lanihale is bounded on the west by Porthlooe, a
fishing town of fifteen hundred inhabitants or less, that blocks the
seaward exit of a narrow coombe. A little stream tumbles down this
coombe towards the "Hauen," divides the folk into parishioners of
Lanihale and Landaviddy, and receives impartially the fish offal of
both. There is a good deal of this offal, especially during pilchard
time, and the towns-folk live on their first storeys, using the lower
floors as fish cellars, or "pallaces." But even while the nose most
abhors, the eye is delighted by jumbled houses, crazy stairways leading
to green doors, a group of children dabbling in the mud at low tide, a
congregation of white gulls, a line of fishing boats below the quay
where the men lounge and whistle and the barked nets hang to dry, and,
beyond all, the shorn outline of two cliffs with a wedge of sea and sky
between.

Mr. Zebedee Minards the elder dwelt on the eastern or Lanihale side of