then, for picturesqueness and variety. 'When the corn is in the
shock,' says our Cornish rhyme, 'Then the fish are off the rock'--and
the rock's St. Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the
hue and cry from the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he
stands on Michael's Crag just below there, as I stand myself so often,
and when he sights the shoals by the ripple on the water, he motions
to the boats which way to go for the pilchards. Then the rowers in the
lurkers, as we call our seine-boats, surround the shoal with a tuck-
net, or drag the seine into Mullion Cove, all alive with a mass of
shimmering silver. The jowsters come down with their carts on to the
beach, and hawk them about round the neighborhood--I've seen them
twelve a penny; while in the curing-houses they're bulking them and
pressing them as if for dear life, to send away to Genoa, Leghorn, and
Naples. That's where all our fish go--to the Catholic south. 'The Pope
and the Pilchards,' says our Cornish toast; for it's the Friday fast
that makes our only market."

"You can see them on St. George's Island in Looe Harbor," Cleer put in
quite innocently. "They're like a sea of silver there--on St. George's
Island."

"My dear," her father corrected with that grave, old-fashioned
courtesy which the coast-guard had noted and described as at once so
haughty and yet so condescending, "how often I've begged of you NOT to
call it St. George's Island! It's St. Nicholas' and St. Michael's--one
may as well be correct--and till a very recent date a chapel to St.
Michael actually stood there upon the rocky top; it was only
destroyed, you remember, at the time of the Reformation."

"Everybody CALLS it St. George's now," Cleer answered, with girlish