five in the afternoon, my time is occupied by teaching, and I cannot
expect, nor do I wish, that he should sit moping indoors all day. He
had far better be out in the boats with the fishermen, than be hanging
about the place doing nothing. If anything happened to me, before he is
started in life, there would be nothing for him but to take to the sea.
I am laying by a little money every month, and if I live for another
year there will be enough to buy him a fishing boat and nets. I trust
that it may not come to that, but I see nothing derogatory in his
earning an honest living with his own hands. He will always be
something better than a common fisherman. The education I have striven
to give him, and his knowledge that he was born a gentleman, will nerve
him to try and rise.

"As to what you say about mischief, so far as I know all boys are
mischievous. I know that my own brothers were always getting into
scrapes, and I have no doubt, Mr. Allanby, that when you look back upon
your own boyhood, you will see that you were not an exception to the
general rule."

Mr. Allanby smiled. He had come rather against his own inclinations;
but his wife had urged him to speak to Mrs. Walsham, her temper being
ruffled by the disappearance of two favourite pigeons, whose loss she,
without a shadow of evidence, most unjustly put down to James Walsham.

The parson was by no means strict with his flock. He was a tall man,
inclined to be portly, a good shot and an ardent fisherman; and
although he did not hunt, he was frequently seen on his brown cob at
the meet, whenever it took place within a reasonable distance of
Sidmouth; and without exactly following the hounds, his knowledge of
the country often enabled him to see more of the hunt than those who