Was it the monotony of farm labour that was the cause of this? Of course Saul and those about him had long known that he could do much better for himself if he wished. His grandfather had always told him that there was a home open to him in his comfortable cottage if he ever chose to avail himself of it, and that a wife of his would be warmly welcomed to make the home bright and cheerful for them both. He knew that the Duke would at any time give him employment in his stables, for Saul had a knack with horses that was well known all through the neighbourhood, and often caused him to be summoned to look at some refractory animal, and assist in the task of breaking him. Mr. St. Aubyn had more than once offered him the post of “odd man” at the rectory, where his one servant kept the flower garden and looked after the one stout cob which the Rector rode on his parish rounds, and had a comfortable little cottage at the gates for his home. But for some unexplained reason Saul had always declined these chances of bettering himself, and remained obstinately at his ill-paid farm work, greatly to the satisfaction of the farmer, who had never had so good an all-round man before, and who always treated Saul with consideration and affability, recognising qualities in him that he would have been loth to part with. But perhaps no man of latent talent and energy is really content long together in a life that gives no scope for the exercise of his higher powers. Possibly it was merely this sense of constraint and uselessness which was at the bottom of Saul’s inexplicable and little understood depression. However that maybe, he had certainly taken to a mood of sullen brooding, which could hardly be dignified by the name of thought. He avoided his grandfather’s cottage on Sunday, preferring to work off his oppression by taking long walks across the cliffs; often finding himself in the little town of Pentreath before he was ready for a halt; and it was in this place that he first began to know and hear something of the questions of the day that were stirring in the great world around his humble home.