“Want lodgings, sir?” said Reuben Brime taking his short black pipe from his lips, and gazing straight out to sea, as if he thought there was plenty of room for a good long rest out there.  Then straightening himself from having a good, thoughtful lean on the cliff rail, where he had been having his evening’s idle after the day’s work done, he turned, and, looking thoughtfully at a youngish man in tweeds, as if he were a plant not growing quite so satisfactorily as could be wished, he said again, in a tone of mild inquiry, ­“Lodgings?”

“Yes, lodgings,” said the new-comer shortly.

“Well, I was trying to think of some, sir; and I could have told you of the very thing if something as I had in hand had come up ­I mean off.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, sir,” said the gardener thoughtfully.  “I don’t mind who knows it.  I’d got as nice a little cottage in my eye as any man would wish to have there, the money to buy all the furniture, as much more as was wanted, theirs being very old; and I could have said to you, `There’s a bedroom and a setten’-room, and the best of attendance.’”

“But it is not in hand, eh?”

“In hand, sir?  No, sir; nothing like in hand.”

“How’s that?”

“Ah, well, I don’t care who knows it now, sir.  Mebbe if she heard how it’s talked about, and the man’s disappointment, she may get better, and alter her mind.”

“She?  The lady?”

“Yes, sir; the lady, as I may say I’d engaged myself to; but she’s took bad and strange, and I suppose it’s all off.”

“Ah, well, I’m sorry to hear that,” said the stranger, looking amused, and as if he thought the man he addressed was a little wanting in brains.

“Thank you, sir, kindly.  Lodgings? ­no.  You see this isn’t a seaside place.”

“Then what do you call it?” said the stranger.

“Call it, sir?  Well, we calls it Danmouth, or, mostly, Dan’orth, because you see it’s shorter, and more like one word.”

“Oh, yes, I know the name; but what do you call it if it isn’t a seaside place?”

“I calls it a port, sir, and as good a little port as there is anywheres about this coast.  Dinton and Bartoe and Minxton’s seaside places, with lots of visitors and bathing machines, and bands and Punch and Judies.  Lodgings, eh?  Let me see.  Lodgings for a gentleman?  What do you say to the Harbour Inn?  They’ve got as good a drop of beer there as a man could wish to drink.”

“No, no, I don’t want to be at a public house.  I’m here for a fortnight’s fishing, and I want nice, comfortable apartments.”

“And you want comfortable apartments?” said Brime respectfully, as he rubbed his sunburned face with the stem of his pipe.  “Fishing, eh?  You mean pottering about with a rod and line; not going with a boat and nets?”

“Quite right.”

“I’ve got it,” said the gardener.  “Mrs Sarson; she lets lodgings.  Stop a moment.  I’ll take you on to the museum.”

“Museum!  Hang it all, man, I’m not a specimen.”

Brime laughed for the first time for a month.

“No, sir, you don’t look as if you was stuffed.  I was going to take you to our barber’s.  He knows everything; and he’ll tell us whether Mrs Sarson can take you in.”

“Is it far ­the museum?”

“Only yonder.  Just where you see that man looking out of the door.”

“Ah, yes,” said the stranger sharply.  “Yours seems a busy place.”

“Tidy, sir, tidy.”

“Whose castle’s that?”

“Mr Gartram’s, sir.  Leastwise it was.  He’s gone.”

“Oh!  Dead?”

“Yes, sir.  The hardest and the best master as ever was.  Some on us’ll miss him, I expect.”

“Curious kind of master, my lad, and likely to be missed.  Gartram?  Oh, yes, I know; the stone quarry man.  Mr Trevithick, in our town, has to do with his affairs.”

“If you talked all night, sir, you couldn’t say a truer word than that.  Mr Trevithick, sir, very big man, lawyer.”

“Yes; they call him Jumbo our way.”

Kck!

Brime burst out into a monosyllabic half laugh, and then stopped short as Wimble was drawing back into his den to let them pass.

“Here, Mr Wimble, sir, this gent wants to ask something about Mrs Sarson.”

“Eh!  Yes!” said the barber sharply; and the suspicious look which had been gathering of late in his face grew more intense.  “Step in, sir, pray,” he added eagerly.

“Oh, that’s not worth while now,” said the stranger, passing his hand over his chin.  “Give you a look in to-morrow.  My friend here thought you could tell me about Mrs Sarson’s lodgings.”

“Yes,” said Brime; “and ­of course, this gent wants to go fishing, and Mr Lisle’s always fishing.”

“Mr Lisle?” said the stranger.  “Christopher Lisle?”

“That’s the man, sir,” said the barber sharply.  “You know anything about him, sir?”

“Only that he has a good heavy account with our bank.”

Wimble looked sharply at the stranger, with his head on one side, and more than one eager question upon his lips.  But the new-comer felt that he had made a slip by talking too freely, and prevented him by asking a question himself.

“Do you think Mrs Sarson could accommodate me?”

“No, sir,” said Wimble, looking at him searchingly.  “No:  she has no room, I am sure.  Take the gentleman up to Mrs Lampton’s at the top of the cliff road.  I daresay she could accommodate him.”

“Why, of course,” said Brime; “the very place.  I never thought of that.”

“No, Mr Brime,” said Wimble patronisingly, as he looked longingly at the visitor with cross-examination in his breast.  “Say I recommended the gentleman.”

“All right.  Come along, sir, I’ll show you; and if you want a few worms for fishing, I’m your man.”

“Worms?” said the visitor, laughing.  “I always use flies.”

“Most gents do, sir.  Mr Chris Lisle does.  But the way to get hold of a good fish in a river is with a whacking great worm.”

“Do you know Mr Lisle?”

“Know him?  Poor young man, yes.”

“Poor?  I don’t call a gentleman who lately came in for a big fortune poor.”

“Big fortune, sir?  Mr Chris Lisle come in for a big fortune, sir?  Hurrah!  Our young lady will be glad.”

The visitor was ready to pull himself up again sharp, for this was another mistake.

Brime stopped, smiling, at a pretty cottage, where fuchsias and hydrangeas were blooming side by side with myrtles, and was going off, when the visitor offered him a shilling for his trouble.

“Thankye, sir, and I hope you’ll be comfortable,” said the gardener, descending the chief path. ­“Well, I am glad.  Come in for a large fortune.  Now, if I were him, I’d just send Mr Glyddyr to the right about, and get the business settled as soon as it seemed decent after master’s death.  He is a good sort, is Mr Lisle, and he’s fond enough of her.  Why, they’ll be married now, and keep up the old place just as it is; and if I speak when we want more help, he isn’t the gent to tell a hard-working man to get up a bit earlier and work a bit later.  Not he.  He made a friend of me when he gave me that half-sov’rin, and I made a friend of him when I caught him.  My, what a lark it was when I dropped on to him, and he thought it was the governor!  I know he did.”

Reuben Brime smiled as he had not smiled for days, and a minute or two later he grinned outright.  From his point of vantage, high up the cliff side, he could see to the mouth of the glen, and there, to his intense delight, he could just make out two figures in deep mourning, one tall and graceful, and the other short, and her head low down between her shoulders, walking away from him in the distance, and, not far behind, a sturdy-looking man in light brown tweeds, with a fishing creel slung at his back, and a rod over his shoulder, trying hard to overtake the pair in front.

“Wouldn’t give much for Mr Glyddyr’s chance,” thought Brime, as he watched the trio out of sight.  “Been an awfully cloudy time, but the sun’s coming strong now, and things’ll grow.  What a fellow I am to give up because she was a bit off.  Friends with the new guv’nor means friends with the new missus, and as Sarah about worships her, and’ll do what she tells her, why, it’ll come right in the end.”

He walked on, building castles as he went, and in the height of his elation he said, half aloud ­

“It’s only six pounds a year, and I could let it till she said yes.  Hang me if I don’t take the cottage after all.”

“Well, Mr Brime,” said a voice at his elbow, “did Mrs Lampton take the gentleman in?”

“Eh?  Oh, I don’t know, as I didn’t stop.  But she’d be sure to.”

“Oh, yes, it will be all right,” said Wimble.  “But you’ll come in, Mr Brime?”

“No.  I think I’ll get back now, and finish my pipe by the cliff.”

“With a beard like that, sir?  Better have it off.”

“Eh?  No, it isn’t shaving day.”

“Your beard grows wonderfully fast, Mr Brime, believe me, sir.  I wonder at a young man like you being so careless of his personal appearance.  You’ll be wanting to marry some day, sir, and there’s nothing goes further with the ladies than seeing a man clean-shaved.”

It was not quite a random shot, for Wimble had wheedled out a little respecting the gardener’s future, and he had only to draw back with a smile for the man to follow him in, passing his hand thoughtfully over his chin, wondering whether it had anything to do with the very severe rebuff he had more than once received.

Once more in the chair, tied up in the cloth, and with his face lathered, he was at Wimble’s mercy; and as the razor played about his nose and chin, giving a scrape here and a scrape there, the barber cross-examined the gardener in a quiet, unconcerned way, that would have been the envy of an Old Bailey counsel.  In very few minutes he had drawn out everything that the gardener had learned, and so insidiously soft were the operator’s words, that Brime found himself unconsciously inventing and supplying particulars that the barber stowed up in his brain cell, ready for future use.

“There, Mr Brime,” he said, after delivering the final upper strokes with a dexterity that was perfect, though thrilling, from the danger they suggested, “I think you will say, sir, that a good shave is not dear at the price.”

These last words were accompanied by little dabs with a wet sponge, to remove soapy patches among the thick whiskers, and then the towel was handed, and the victim walked to the glass.

“Yes, it does make a difference in a man,” he said, as he dabbed and dried.

“Difference, sir?  It’s a duty to be clean-shaved.  To a man, sir, speaking from years of experience, a beard is hair, natural hair.  To a woman, sir, it is nothing of the kind.  A woman cannot help it, sir; it is born in her, but to her, sir, a beard is simply dirt.”

“Hah!” ejaculated the gardener, and he thought deeply.

“Yes, sir; I’ve often heard them call it so.  Even on the properest man, it is, in their eyes ­dirt.”

Brime paid and took his departure, while Wimble plunged at once among his own dark thoughts.

“That man is blind as a mole,” he said, “and can see nothing which is not just before his eyes.  He can dig a garden, but he cannot dig down into his own brain.  How horrible! how strange!  And how the slackest deeds will come out in a way nobody who is guilty suspects.  Yesterday, quite a poor man ­to-day, very rich ­a heavy banking account ­come in for a fortune.  Yes, it’s all plain enough now.  Now, ought I to do anything ­and if so, what?”