'The beer for me,' said Roland. He filled and drank a tumbler of the beverage dear to every right-minded Briton. It was strong and generous, with flakes of hop floating in it like the bee's-wing in port. 'This is splendid beer,' he said. 'I do not remember that I ever tasted such beer as this. It is humming ale--October ale--stingo. No wonder our forefathers fought so well when they had such beer as this to fight upon!' 'Peter is proud of his home-brewed.' 'Do you make everything for yourselves? Is Samson sufficient for all the needs of the islanders? This beer is the beer of Samson--strong and mighty. My hair is growing long already--and curly.' 'We make all we can. There are no shops, you see, on Samson. We bake our own bread: we brew our own beer: we make our own butter: we even spin our own linen.' 'And you make your own wine, Armorel.' He called her naturally by her Christian name. You could not call such a girl 'Miss Armorel' or 'Miss Rosevean.' 'It is a wonderful island!' After supper they sat by the fireside, and, by permission, he smoked his pipe. Then, everybody else on the island being in bed and asleep, they talked. The young man had his way. That is to say, he encouraged the girl to talk about herself. He led her on: he had a soft voice, soft eyes, and a general manner of sympathy which surprised confidence. She began, timidly at first, to talk about herself, yet with feminine reservation. No woman will ever talk about herself in the way which delights young men. But she told him all he asked: her simple lonely life--how she arose early in the morning, how she roamed about the island and sang aloud with none to hear her but the sea-gulls and the shags. 'Do you never draw?' he asked. She had tried to draw, but there was no one to help her. 'Do you read?' No, she seldom read. In the best parlour there was a bookcase full of books, but she never looked at them. As for the old lady and Dorcas, they had never learned to read. She had been at school over at St. Mary's, till she was thirteen, but she hardly cared to read. 'And the newspapers--do you ever read them?' She never read them. She knew nothing that went on. As for her ambitions and her hopes--if he could get at them. Fond youth!--as if a girl would ever tell her ambitions! But Armorel, apparently, had none to tell. She lived in the present; it was joy enough for her to wander in the soft warm air of her island home, upon the hills and round the coast, to cruise among the rocks while the breeze filled out the sail and the sparkling water leaped above the bow. So far she told: nay, she hid nothing, because there was nothing to hide. She told no more because, as yet, her ambitions and her dreams of the future had no shape: they were vague and misty--she was only aware of their existence when restlessness seized her and impelled her to get up and run over the hills to Porth Bay and back again.