This was a Saturday night, and much business (for Polperro) was being transacted. Little shops shed glow-worm lights across the roadways, and on to rugged walls, which acted in some sort the part of the sheet in magic-lantern entertainments; that is to say, the little patches of comparative brilliancy exhibited exaggerated replicas of the window’s contents. Loaves of bread on the baker’s shelves assumed, in this sordid magic, the gigantic size of the free loaf in old-time Anti Corn-Law demonstrations; the sweetstuff bottles in the windows of the general shops argued, not ounces, but pounds of stickinesses; and the wavering shadows of customers’ and shopkeepers’ figures seemed like the forms of giants, alternately squat and long-drawn, contending for these gargantuan delicacies. I burned to picture these things, not in words, but by other methods. My companion hungered still, and truth to tell, so did I; and so we bought some biscuits and munched them as we went. We eventually returned to the “Three Pilchards” and went to bed, escorted by the landlord with a dip stuck in a ginger-beer bottle. I _must_ say, though, that _we_ were given candlesticks. The next morning, being Sunday, the landlord had “cleaned” himself with more than usual care, and appeared resplendently arrayed in a suit of glossy black cloth, of the kind which I believe is called “doe-skin.” He shut us in the sitting-room to breakfast, which was waiting, and, before disappearing, repeated his usual formula. After breakfast, we covenanted to return at one o’clock for dinner, and went out upon the headlands that guard with jagged rocks the narrow gut of Polperro. It was the quietest of days; even the screaming sea-gulls’ cries were less persistent than on week-days; and the male population of the place lay idly on the rocks, or lounged, gossiping, at sunny corners of the lanes, while the mid-day meal cooked within doors. But above all the grateful kitchen odours rose the scent of the fish offal that, with the ebbing of the tide, lay stranded in the ooze of the harbour, and bubbled and fermented in the heat of the sun, vindicating the country folk, who call the place Polstink.