scare of War upon him.

In his dream he had been retracing accurately and in detail a small
scene of the previous morning, at the moment quite without
significance for him. Limping back from his cliff-patch with a
basket of potatoes in one hand and with the other using the shaft of
his mattock (or "visgy" in Polpier language) for a walking-staff, as
he passed the watch-house he had been vaguely surprised to find
coastguardsman Varco on the look-out there with his glass, and
halted.

"Hallo, Bill Varco! Wasn't it you here yesterday? Or has my memory
lost count 'pon the days o' the week?"

"It's me, right enough," said Varco; "an' no one but Peter Hosken
left with me, to take turn an' turn about. They've called the others
up to Plymouth."

"But why?" Nicky-Nan had asked: and the coastguardsman had responded:

"You can put two an' two together, neighbour. Add 'em up as you
please."

The scene and the words, repeated through his dream, came back now
very clearly to him.

"But when a man's in pain and nervous," he told himself, "the least
little thing bulks big in his mind." War? They couldn't really mean
it. . . . That scare had come and had passed, almost a score of
times. . . . Well, suppose it was War? . . . that again might be the