by a huge fire-place, in one corner of which stood a new iron cooking
range, and alongside it a heap of white ashes and some smouldering
sticks of gorse under a big black iron pot filled the room with the
fragrance of wood smoke. In the opposite side of the fire-place was an
iron door closing the great baking oven, and above it ran a wide
mantel-shelf on which stood china dogs and glass rolling-pins and a
couple of lamps.

A well-scrubbed white wooden table was set ready for supper. On a very
ancient-looking black oak stand--cupboard below and shelves above--was
ranged a vast assortment of crockery ware, and on the walls hung
potbellied metal jugs and cans which shone like silver.

Two doors led to the other rooms of the house, one of them wide open.

One corner of the room was occupied by a great wooden bin eight feet
square, filled with dried bracken. On the wide flat side, which looked
like a form, a woman and a girl were sitting when the two men entered.

Hamon introduced them briefly as his wife and daughter, and, comely
women as Gard had been accustomed to in his own country of Cornwall,
there was something about these two, and especially about the younger of
the two, which made him of a sudden more than satisfied with the
somewhat doubtful venture to which he had bound himself--set a sudden
homely warmth in his heart, and made him feel the richer for being
there--made him, in fact, glad that he had come.

And yet there was nothing in their reception of him that justified the
feeling.