"I'll just have to stay out a bit longer, or go out in the boat a bit oftener," he said, with a light laugh, when they attempted to reason him out of his project. He did not know then that the days of his boat were numbered; but he knew it now--knew that starvation stared them in the face, and at no distant date either. He could never hope to buy a new boat. It would cost over twenty pounds, and he seldom owned twenty pence over the day's stock of bread and other household necessaries. Among these he counted his whisky; for that a fisherman could do his work without a daily supply of ardent spirits never entered his head. Blue ribbon armies and temperance crusades had never been heard of, and it was a fixed belief among the fisher folk that a man could not work without drinking as well as eating, and drinking deeply, too. So Coomber never thought of curtailing his daily allowance of grog to meet the additional expense of his household: he rather increased the allowance, that he might be able to work the boat better, as he fancied, and so catch more fish. When he forgot his bottle and left it at Fellness, it struck him as something all but marvellous that he should be able to work the next day without his usual drams, but it had not convinced him that he could do without it all together. Of its effect upon himself, in making him sullen, morose, and disagreeable, he was in absolute ignorance, and so the children's talk about it came upon him as a revelation. He knew that Tiny sometimes shrank from and avoided him; but he had considered it a mere childish whim, not to be accounted for by anything in himself; and so to hear that she was absolutely afraid of him sometimes was something to make him think more deeply than he had ever done in his life before. But he did not say a word to Tiny about this. When he had done rubbing his gun he carried it home, and Tiny was left free to make acquaintance with the farm children. She walked shyly up to where they were sitting--Polly reading, and Harry throwing sand at Dick, who had seated himself at a short distance, and was returning the salute. "Would--wouldn't you like to tell me about these letters, please?" said Tiny, holding out her paper to Polly. "Well, that's a rum way of asking," said Harry, with a laugh. "Suppose she wouldn't now, little 'un," he added. "Then she mustn't," said Tiny, stoutly; though the tears welled up to her eyes at the thought of all her hopes being overthrown just when they seemed about to be realised. "Don't, Harry; what a tease you are!" said his sister. "I should like to tell you, dear," she added, in a patronising tone. "Come and sit down here, and tell me what you want."