chilled with a great disappointment, for Barron's eyes were on the sea; he
was talking as he passed by, and he apparently saw neither her nor her
Sunday gown; which circumstance was a sorrow to Joan. But in reality Barron
missed nothing. He had shivered at her green dress and poor finery long
before she reached him. Her garb ruffled his senses and left him wounded.

"There goes your beauty," laughed Brady; "how would you like to paint her
in that frock with those sinful blue flowers in her hat?"

"Nature must weep to see the bizarre carnival these people enjoy on the
Seventh Day," answered the other. "Their duns and drabs, their russets and
tawny tones of red and orange, are of their environment, the proper skins
for their bodies; but to think of that girl brightening the eyes of a
hundred louts by virtue of those fine feathers! Dream of her in the Stone
Age, clad in a petticoat torn from a wolf, with her straw-colored hair to
her waist and a necklace of shells or wild beasts' teeth between her
breasts! And the man--her father, I suppose--what a picture his cursed
broadcloth and soft black hat make of him--like the head of a patriarch
stuck on a tailor's dummy."

Meanwhile, ignorant of these startling criticisms, Mr. Tregenza and his
daughter pursued their road, and presently stopped before a cottage in one
of the cobble-paved alley-ways of Mousehole. A worn old woman opened the
door and courtesied to Gray Michael. He wished her good-afternoon, then
entered the cottage, first bidding Joan return in an hour. She had friends
near at hand, and hurried off, glad to escape the sight of sickness and the
prayers she knew that her father would presently deliver.

"How be en?" inquired the fisherman, and the widowed mother of the patient
answered: