my hurt--as indeed 'twould seem--they lose their labor: for this
very night I ride from Oxford."

"And why is that?"

"I'll tell thee, Jack, tho' I deserve to be shot. I am bound with a
letter from His Majesty to the Army of the West, where I have
friends, for my father's sake--Sir Deakin Killigrew of Gleys, in
Cornwall. 'Tis a sweet country, they say, tho' I have never seen
it."

"Not seen thy father's country?"

"Why no--for he married a Frenchwoman, Jack, God rest her dear
soul!"--he lifted his hat--"and settled in that country, near
Morlaix, in Brittany, among my mother's kin; my grandfather refusing
to see or speak with him, for wedding a poor woman without his
consent. And in France was I born and bred, and came to England two
years agone; and this last July the old curmudgeon died. So that my
father, who was an only son, is even now in England returning to his
estates: and with him my only sister Delia. I shall meet them on the
way. To think of it!" (and I declare the tears sprang to his eyes):
"Delia will be a woman grown, and ah! to see dear Cornwall
together!"

Now I myself was only a child, and had been made an orphan when but
nine years old, by the smallpox that visited our home in Wastdale
Village, and carried off my father, the Vicar, and my dear mother.
Yet his simple words spoke to my heart and woke so tender a yearning
for the small stone cottage, and the bridge, and the grey fells of