“They’m so like as two peas, faither—braave li’l chets both. Doan’t ’e drown wan of ’em,” she said. “Thicky cat’s been very generous of chets in her time,” declared Mr. Sage. “If such things had ghostesses, you might see a whole regiment of ’em—black an’ white, tabby an’ tortoiseshell—down-along by the river come dark.” “Even I shouldn’t be feared of a chet’s ghostie,” declared little Milly Sage. But she had her way. One kitten, when it could face the world alone, was given to a friend who dwelt some miles distant at Princetown; the other grew into a noble tom of bold tabby design and genial disposition. His mother, feeling him to be her masterpiece, passed gently out of life soon after her son reached cat’s estate. She had done her duty to the feline community, and Milly mourned for her a whole week. But Mr. Sage did not mourn. He much preferred the young tom, and between the cat and the old man, as years passed by, there waxed a friendship of remarkable character. “I call un ‘Corban,’” said Mr. Sage, “’cause he was a gift—a gift from my little girl when she was a little ’un. ’Twas her own ram cat, you mind, but as the creature growed up, it took that tender to me that Milly said as it must be mine; an’ mine ’tis; an’ what he’d do wi’out me, or what I’d do wi’out he, be blessed if I know.” He spoke to his next-door neighbour and personal crony, Amos Oldreive, a gamekeeper and river-watcher for many years. Now this man was honourably retired, with a small pension and a great rheumatism, the reward of many a damp night on behalf of the salmon in Dart’s ancient stream. At Postbridge these old people dwelt—a hamlet in the heart of Dartmoor—a cluster of straggling cots beside the name-river of that region, where its eastern branch comes tumbling through the shaggy fens beneath Cut Hill. Here an elderly, disused, packhorse bridge crosses Dart, but the main road spans its stream upon a modern arch hard by. The lives of Sage and Oldreive had passed within twenty miles of this spot. The keeper knew every tor of the waste, together with the phases of the seasons, and the natural history of each bird and beast and fish sacred to sporting. His friend’s days were also spent in this desolate region, and both ancients, when necessity or occasion drove them into towns, felt the houses pressing upon their eyes and crushing their foreheads and the air choking them. At such times they did their business with all speed, and so returned in thankfulness to the beech-tree grove, the cottages and those meadowlands of Postbridge by Dart, all circled and cradled in the hills. Noah Sage and his next-door neighbour quarrelled thrice daily, and once daily made up their differences over a glass of spirit and water, sometimes consumed in one cottage, sometimes in the other. Their conditions were very similar. Noah had an only daughter; Amos, an only son; and each old man, though both had married late in life, was a widower.