these, stick out for the mills taking over one idiot with every twenty sensibles."

"My God!" exclaimed Mr. Trevenna, as if for one moment getting hint of some horror in the transactions, but what good are the idiots to them?

"Much the same as to us and themselves, I don't doubt!"

"What becomes of them?"

"I s'pose the Lord has mercy on their souls, R.I.P. and all that . . . same as you and me, when all is told!"

"But I must know more about this."

"Must? Well, then, sir, I'll tell you the truth: I'm only joking. The work's as good and easy for the innocents as for t'others. And I must be going, or Captain Pentrose will weigh anchor without us: that much I can tell you.'

So Gennifer remained with Watchman closely guarding her, while the others, with their gay hearts, evinced no immediate regrets at leaving Martha or her master, so tempting to them were the promises of pastie and plum-pudding every day and pennies to buy lollipops with. Their host went with them down to the harbour where rocked the Rising Sun, Captain Pentrose ready to weigh anchor as soon as its passengers were aboard. The tide was high and the children stepped from the quay into the long mackerel boat alongside that was to take them on board. When they were all in, Mr. Trevenna was on the point of stepping in also, when the overseer pushed him roughly aside as he sprang inhimself. "Captain Pentrose won't have a Jonah aboard, sir, not for five seconds."

So Mr. Trevenna must be content in setting the children to sing, as they were rowed away, Wesley's hymn," Jesu, lover of my soul," which he had taught them. They sang lustily; and the little man stood gazing after them till they were all aboard, but feeling desolate and full of dreadful doubts.

F

THE

CHAPTER XI

THE LEAVES FALL

HE autumn advanced rapidly and gave promise of an early winter. In spite of storms almost unprecedented and their interference with ploughing and the sowing of spring wheat, peas and beans, Mr. Trevenna had his hands full; and the troubles of farming multiplied apace. The war was dislocating the usual course of country life, and the gentlefolk who had residences in Truro or Penzance were remaining there. Some must join their regiments, others felt an urgency to frequent their clubs, in imitation of London's new fashion-to play whist, manufacture political gossip and foment the fears of the Revolution extending across the channel, or of a French invasion. Partly for such reasons, and partly because of the bad weather following a lamentable harvest, cub-hunting was neglected. The young families of foxes not being broken up, roamed the country in packs, doing much mischief among young flocks and devastating poultry yards, among them Martha's. As if incited by their betters, packs of stoats grew bold in their depredations and might be seen even in the twilight, following up the scent of hare or rabbit or field mouse. These small terrors almost completed the destruction of Martha's poultry, and had left her inconsolable but for her splendid and always angry

turkey-cock-the one creature on the glebe that Genny looked upon in terror-and half a dozen young turkeys she was fattening for the Christmas market.

The storms had left their mark also upon the church, repairs to which were so continually in demand that the reverend builder's progress was slow in the restorations he had worked at for so many years.

But now he had taken up the potatoes, had trenched and fitted the ground for the artichokes. His bees he had close-stopped in their skips below the great hedge of fuchsia, and secured their breathing vents. He had housed his best carnations and had planted his tulips in every likely spot of shelter. He had sown his auricula seeds in the potting shed and had covered the peeping ranunculus and overgreen seedlings against the winter-winds' severity. His roses and larkspurs indeed had much the same relation to his wheat crop and potatoes, as the music of his virginal to his church's granite arches.

But the winter was now rushing upon them, and Mr. Trevenna's loneliness gripped him sore. Except in the most sheltered coombs, the ashes, and even the oaks, were stripped of leaves, and the golden elms, after a flare-up into one blue day of Indian summer, had shed their glory; so that, St. Neot's shepherd continually thought upon his flock of children as if they, too, were swept away by the autumn storms. As it was divine law that stripped the trees of grace and grandeur, so, he would assure himself, the children like the green leaves must come again, and each be given back to the mother-arms. Yet Fear, almost a new acquaintance, stood by his side and gripped his heart-a fear which his faith could hardly control. Even when, many years before, Lady Evangeline had been torn from his side as they walked together in the Eden of their hearts' content, leaving him alone among the thorns and thistles of an accursed ground, his faith had not been so fiercely assailed; was she not still the soul of God's

Eden, even if it had vanished from his own eyes for ever?

But in the case of his little flock this just assurance was lacking. It had been no heavenly wind that swept them from their holdings: it was not the rain and the sun that made their clothes to crumble away, leaving their souls asleep within some ghostly nursery till spring should come. It was the enemy who took them away, he who had entered the North Door during their baptism and cast the black shadow over their lives. Mr. Trevenna could not get quit of that memory; it stood at his side telling him he had managed things ill ; that, had he trusted in God entirely he would somehow have withstood the Law's authority and kept the flock till the spring came and he could give them, rosy and merry, back to their mothers.

Christmas was at hand, though to him it failed of its inspiration. The elasticity of youth, hitherto unfailing during his forty years of faithful life, showed signs of weariness. His great head of black hair grew bright with strands of silver. He became thinner every day; and Martha, who watched him as an own child, sorely fretted over the increasing stoop of his shoulders.

Do what he would, preach as he never had done so insistently before, that not a sparrow falls to the ground without their Creator, the conviction that his children were in desperate strait grew upon him every day. His ministrations to law-breaker and ploughman and miner were given no less fearlessly. His muscles kept strong and his joints supple by his unremitting tasks of restoring carved bench-ends, or reglazing the windows of the church. His faculty of going from one to another of his soul's chambers was scarcely hindered: he could rejoice with those that rejoiced-children or birds or lovers-no less heartily that his own grief was sore; and, in the midst of it he wrote and sent these lines to Lady Evangeline-hardly trusting himself to tell of his own anguish :

AUTUMN SONG.

Birds flock and fly

High up in the sky,

To greet the red wintry sun;
The golden leaves fall
From the elm-trees tall,

In multitudes, one by one.

And now the white dew

All a-glitter doth strew

The grass and the spider's festoon;
And the tall fuchsia hedges

Forget their green pledges

And let in the stars and the moon.

Once rooks all in love,

Cawed, chattered and strove

With the thrushes, hosannas to sing;
But now silence broods

In the leaf-littered woods,

And the birds are gone after my Spring.

The lark's morning glee

In mad ecstasy

Woke songs in my heart, set it leaping:

My home is now bleak,

My thatch is a-leak,

And my soul with the rain falls a-weeping.

Gone, gone is my Dear,

With never a tear,

Who laughingly bid me be brave;

Her gay clothes are shed,

Her spirit is fled,

And I am left watching her grave.

And still the leaves fall:

They pile up a pall

Her pitiful body to cover

There be ghosts in the mist,

But she keepeth no tryst,

Nor remembers her desolate lover!

Come back, O my dear!

The winter is drear

With its storms and its rock-bound distresses:

Yet if thou bidd'st me die,

With the seeds will I lie

Till thou wake us with song and caresses."