The lunch was ended and Mrs. Trembath was bustling around, clearing the table. Ande had a project in view that afternoon. It was a half-holiday and he had purposed going to the Loe Pool with some of his fellows to gather shells, and a swim in the lake or in the sea adjoining was a pleasure to his athletic nature. The Loe Pool had other fascinations for him also. What wonderful tales were related about it! A little sheet of water below Helston, kept full by the little River Cober, having no outlet to the sea except by percolating through the sandbar which Mother Ocean, inhospitably, threw up between herself and her child; yet was it not the remnant of the old harbour of Helston. He had heard of it from the old Droll Tellers, and loved to lie on the sandbar meditating, dreaming of the things that had happened there centuries before. He knew the Ph[oe]nicians had sailed over that sandbar with their ships and the Danish freebooters in later times. It was a pleasure highly anticipated. "Well, laddie, I suppose you must hurry back soon to school." "No, there's no school. The master gave us a half-holiday to-day; that is the reason I loitered some on the way home." "Then thou canst cut the furze in the croft." Submissive to his mother, not even mentioning his disappointment, with furze cutter o'er his shoulder, the youth sallied forth and was soon busy in the furze croft, a sort of high, rough land in which the furze grew. The prickly, shrubby plant grew around him in great abundance, some of them reaching the height of three feet. He paused for a moment during which he viewed with delight the abundance of its golden flowers, dappling the whole field with its starlike disks. It was a pity to cut them down, thought the lad, but then we must have something to burn, and what is equal to furze in a grate on a cold evening? With this thought he again wielded the cutter with a will, and the desired amount was soon bound in bundles, ready to carry to the cottage. "Well, young squire, and how dost like the work?" The remark emanated from a tall, muscular man, in shirt-sleeves, who, leaning on the hedge, calmly smoked a "bob" or short Cornish pipe. He was a little over the medium height but looked short because of the heavy shoulders and thick, muscular arms and limbs which nature and hard work had given him. The face was kindly, good-humoured, honest and open. By his general outline he was neither a hard eater or drinker. There was a suppleness and ease in this young man of twenty-six that made him admired by the whole country around, a suppleness demonstrated by the ease with which he placed one hand on the hedge and leaped lightly over. "Pretty well, thank 'ee, Tom Glaze," responded Ande. "I 'eard that thou and Bob Sloan 'ad a bit of a scrimmage this marning and that 'e was a bit too much for 'ee. Is that so?" The welcome look died out of the lad's face and he flushed, angrily. "There's no truth in that at all," he said, curtly.