opening of the railway, with the mayor and all the magistrates and the
volunteer band in attendance, had made far the greater stir in West
Penwith. Iron Dukes were intangible creatures compared with iron
engines, although the Parson had preached about the former and seemed to
think, as some parishioners said, that it might have been the Almighty
Himself who had passed away. Wellington had gone, but the railway had
come--therein lay the difference; and Ishmael swelled with pride as he
talked casually to Phoebe of the experience before him.

The miller lent his trap for the drive into Penzance, for, incredible as
it may seem, there was still hardly a cart in the countryside, all the
carrying of turf, furze, and produce being done on donkeys' back, and
thus it came about that Phoebe came too to see him off. She held her
round softly-tinted face, with the mouse-coloured ringlets falling away
from it, up to his in the railway station as he prepared to climb to his
place in the pumpkin-shaped compartment. He ensured a tear-wet pillow
for her that night by merely shaking her hand at the full length of a
rigid arm.




CHAPTER IX

FRESH PASTURE


For most children the first day at school is a memorable landmark; for
Ishmael it was the more so because all his life hitherto he had lived in
one atmosphere, without the little voyagings and visitings in which more