cheek-bone, where the skin was stretched tight as a drum. She looked
not to ha' fed for a year; an', if you please, she'd a needle and
strip o' calico in her hands, sewin' away all the while her eyes were
glarin' down into mine.

"But there was a trick I minded in the way she worked her mouth, an'
says I, 'Missus Polwarne, your husband's a-waitin' for 'ee, round by
the front door.'

"'Aw, is he indeed?' she answers, holdin' her needle for a moment--
an' her voice was all hollow, like as if she pumped it up from a
fathom or two. 'Then, if he knows what's due to his wife, I'll
trouble en to come round,' she says; 'for this here's the door _I_
mean to go in by.'"

But at this point Simon asserts very plausibly that he swooned off;
so it is not known how they settled it.

[This story is true, as anyone who cares may assure himself by
referring to Robert Hunt's "Drolls of the West of England," p. 357.]



IV.--THE BOY BY THE BEACH.

There are in this small history some gaps that can never be filled
up; but as much as I know I will tell you.

The cottage where Kit lived until he was five years old stands at the
head of a little beach of white shingle, just inside the harbour's