"There goes your beauty," laughed Brady; "how would you like to paint her in that frock with those sinful blue flowers in her hat?" "Nature must weep to see the bizarre carnival these people enjoy on the Seventh Day," answered the other. "Their duns and drabs, their russets and tawny tones of red and orange, are of their environment, the proper skins for their bodies; but to think of that girl brightening the eyes of a hundred louts by virtue of those fine feathers! Dream of her in the Stone Age, clad in a petticoat torn from a wolf, with her straw-colored hair to her waist and a necklace of shells or wild beasts' teeth between her breasts! And the man--her father, I suppose--what a picture his cursed broadcloth and soft black hat make of him--like the head of a patriarch stuck on a tailor's dummy." Meanwhile, ignorant of these startling criticisms, Mr. Tregenza and his daughter pursued their road, and presently stopped before a cottage in one of the cobble-paved alley-ways of Mousehole. A worn old woman opened the door and courtesied to Gray Michael. He wished her good-afternoon, then entered the cottage, first bidding Joan return in an hour. She had friends near at hand, and hurried off, glad to escape the sight of sickness and the prayers she knew that her father would presently deliver. "How be en?" inquired the fisherman, and the widowed mother of the patient answered: "Better, I do pray. Er was in the doldrums issterday an' bad by night also, a dwaling an' moaning gashly, but, the Lard be praised, he'm better in mind by now, an' I do think 'tis more along of Bible-readin' than all the doctor's traade [Footnote: _Traade_--Physic.] he've took. I read to en 'bout that theer bwoy, the awnly son o' his mother, an' her a widder-wumman, an' how as the Lard brought en round arter he'd gone dead." Gray Michael sniffed and made no comment. "I'll see en an' put up a prayer or so," he said. "An' the Lard'll reward it, Mr. Tregenza." Young Albert Vallack greeted the visitor with even greater reverence than his mother had done. He and the old woman were Falmouth folks and had drifted Westerly upon the father's death, until chance anchored them in Newlyn. Now the lad--a dissolute youth enough, until sudden illness had frightened him to religion--was dying of consumption, and dying fast, though as yet he knew it not. "'Tis handsome in you, a comin' to see the likes o' me," said the patient, flushing with satisfaction. "You'm like the stickler at a wras'lin' match, Mister Tregenza, sir; you sees fair play betwixt God an' man." "So you'm better, Albert, your mother sez." "Iss, a bit. Theer's more kick an' sprawl [Footnote: _Kick an' sprawl_--Strength, vitality.] in me than theer 'ave bin; an' I feels more hopeful like 'bout the future." Self-righteousness in a new-fledged Luke Gospeler, who had been of the fold but three months and whose previous record was extremely unsatisfactory, irritated Gray Michael not a little.