Matthew Henry pursed up his small mouth dubiously. He himself had sometimes wished to live in the wilds of America, or on a South Sea Island; even to visit Australia and have a try at walking upside down. There must be a flaw in Annet's argument somewhere. "But if Jan comes from the mainland--" he began. "Cornwall," said Jan, tranquilly, his mouth full of raw turnip. "Then you ought to want to go back to it." "I mean to, one of these fine days." "I shouldn't put it off too long, if I were you," advised Linnet, candidly. "You're getting up in years, and the next thing you'll be dead." "But didn't your father ever want to go back?" asked Matthew Henry, sticking to his point. "No fear." "Why?" "Because, if he'd showed his face back in Cornwall, they'd have hanged him; that's all." "Oh!" exclaimed the three, almost simultaneously, and sat for a moment or two gazing on Jan in awed silence. "But why should they want to hang your father?" asked Annet. Jan sliced his bread with an air of noble indifference. "Eh? Why, indeed? He used to say 'twas for being too frolicsome. He never done no wrong--not what you might call wrong: or so he maintained, an' 'twasn't for me to disbelieve 'en. Was it, now?" "You'll tell us about it, Jan dear?" coaxed Annet. "There's no particular story in it." (The children put this aside; it was Jan's formula for starting a tale.) "My father, in his young days, lived at a place in Cornwall called Luxulyan, and arned his wages as a tinner at a stream-work----" "What is a stream-work?" asked Matthew Henry.