"Only seed you, sir. I was over at Wynport, as I were saying, and only this morning I comed across my old messmate, Ben Babbage, what was pressed along o’ me. He’s now bo’sun of the _Fury_, and we was having a smoke and a chat about old times when you come down the yard along o’ the lieutenant, and Ben says to me: ’Joe,’ says he, ’that’s Mr. Hardy, the new midshipman.’ That’s how I knowed your name, but I didn’t know as how you was cousin to squire, though to be sure, now I look at you, sir, you do seem to have something of his figurehead about you." "Talking of figureheads, that’s a queer-looking thing yonder." He pointed to a tower that just showed above the trees in the distance. In shape it was not unlike a mushroom, the top and part of the stalk being visible. "That?" said Gumley. "Queer, indeed. That be Congleton’s Folly." "And who was Congleton?" "A man, sir, leastways a madman. Where he hailed from no one knowed, but years and years ago, when I was a’ infant in arms, Congleton suddenlike come to Luscombe. He was a man about fifty then, and ’twas said that having waited to that age to fall in love, he got it very bad with a widder, who wouldn’t have him. Love seems to be like measles, better had young. Well, Congleton took it so to heart that he made up his mind to live forlorn and lonely ever more. So he built a kind o’ summer-house in the Hollow yonder; and when he tired o’ that he set a small army o’ laborers building the Folly, for so it got to be called; and there he lived for a dozen years in one room at the top all by himself, seeing nobody, having his food sent up twice a week by a pulley. And then he died. Congleton’s Folly ’twas called then, and so it be called to this day: a sort of wilderness all round it, and a fearsome place on a dark night." The old tar talked on, Jack doing the listening, until they came to a spot where, just after the road crossed a deep chine cutting through the cliff to the sea, there stood a large farm-building by the roadside. "Is that one of my cousin’s farms?" asked Jack. "No, sir, that be Mr. Gudgeon’s freehold." Jack glanced at it idly. It was an old roving building of stone, with gables and mullioned windows, many barns and outhouses hemming it in. Across the road was the farmyard, with a large pond skirting the roadway; and beyond it a level triangular stretch of pasture and cornland extending to the edge of the cliff, which here jutted out prominently into the sea. Just before they reached the farm-house, Jack noticed a dense cloud of smoke pouring from one of the chimneys. "The kitchen chimney’s afire, I suppose," he said. "Ay, ay, sir. Mr. Gudgeon do have a bad lot o’ chimbleys. And there’s a many in Luscombe, too. Plenty of jobs hereabouts for a good sweep! And there’s Mr. Gudgeon himself—Nathaniel’s his chrisom name."