“How much would you be wanting, sir?” “Ten fathoms will do.” He took the hank down, and, laying it on the floor, began to measure the rope out, yard by yard, coiling it neatly close by Mrs. Winnie’s feet. It was good hemp, unfrayed and unrotted, not too thick and stiff, yet stout enough to carry the weight of three men. Mrs. Winnie watched him, her eyes inquisitively kind, and her tongue all of a tremble. He was borrowing the rope in the cause of adventure, and she felt flattered in the lending of it, but she wished he would tell her what it was for. “It is good hemp, sir.” “I should know a good rope, being a sailor. I shall need it to help me in a bit of a scramble.” Mrs. Winnie began to think of all the cliffs and quarries in the neighborhood, for John Gore had withheld the name of Thorn. “I had better get you a wallet full of food, sir; you may be needing it.” “You think of everything, Mrs. Jennifer. I am going treasure-hunting.” And he laughed. “Treasure, sir?” “Yes. In a few days I may bring my treasure-trove back with me.” Mrs. Winnie understood of a sudden, and her eyes grew full of light. “No doubt she is all you desire, sir, and I ask no more questions of you. You have told me enough before to make me want to take and comfort her.” She went away, and returned anon with an extra cloak, a parcel of bread and meat, some apples, and a drop of good hollands in a flask, for the autumn nights were growing raw and cold. John Gore had saddled his horse and hung the rope over one of the holsters. He looked touched by Mrs. Winnie’s simple kindliness, and by the faith she seemed ready to give to him. “I shall have a heavy debt before long,” he said. “We don’t count by tallies here, sir.” And she was quite happy, good soul, in feeling his gratitude pledge its truth. She watched him ride away along the hedge, knowing him for a brave man and a strong one—a man whom a woman instinctively respects. Now, at Thorn, Simon Pinniger sat on a tree-stump in an out-house lazily splitting billets of wood with the axe edge of a pick. It was growing dusk, and a pile of white wood lay beside him, with here and there the pink core of an old apple trunk amid the billets of oak and ash. Simon Pinniger was tired of the job, and, filling a basket with split logs, he shouldered it and crossed the court-yard into the kitchen, and dumped the basket down beside the hearth with the air of a man whose day’s work was done. The woman Nance was at the table, peeling apples for a pie, her lips pressed intently together, and three hard lines running across her forehead. The man looked at her a little furtively, and then went to draw some beer from a cask that stood in the corner. He put the jug on the floor under the tap, so that the ale should have a head on it, and stood there watching the liquor flow with the stupid slouching pose of a man whose body was too big for his brain. “Sim!”