Treliss has not, as yet, been spoiled by the demands of modern civilisation. “Touristy” it is in August, and the “Man at Arms” is one of the most popular hotels in the West of England; but it has managed to keep undefiled its delightfully narrow streets, its splendidly insufficient shops, its defective lighting, and a quite triumphant lack of competition. Its main street runs steeply up the hill, having its origin in the wet, gleaming sands of the little bay and its triumphant conclusion in the splendid portals and shining terraces of the “Man at Arms.” The street is of cobbles, and the houses still hang over it with crooked doorposts and bending gables, so that the Middle Ages stalks by your side as you go, and you expect some darkly cloaked figure to point menacingly with bony fingers up the dark alleys and twisting corners. There are shops of a kind along the way, but no one has ever taken them seriously. “You can buy nothing in Treliss” is the constant cry of all visitors; and it is generally followed by the assertion that you have to pay double West End prices all the same. The ancient four-wheeler containing the Maradicks bumped slowly up the hill, and at every moment it seemed as though the avalanche of boxes on the top must come down with a rush and a roar and scatter their contents over the cobbles. Mrs. Maradick said nothing, her mind was fixed on the forthcoming interview with her hotel manager. She would have to fight for those rooms, she knew, but she would win her victory and give no quarter. The charm of the place had caught Maradick once more in its arms. In the dust and heat of the London year he had thought that he had lost it altogether; but now, with a glimpse of the curving bay and the cobbled street, with that scent of spray and onions and mignonette and fishing-nets (it was compounded of all those things) in his nostrils, his heart was beating excitedly, and he was humming a little tune that he had heard the year before. What was the tune? He had forgotten it; he had never thought of it in London, but now it was with him again. He had heard a sailor sing it in an inn on the quay. He had stood outside in the dusk and listened. He remembered the last line:— And there’s gold in the creek and the sands of the sea, So ho! for the smuggler’s cargo! It meant nothing, of course—a kind of “Pirates of Penzance” absurdity—but the little tune was beating in his brain. Half-way up the hill there is the market-place, standing on a raised plateau as it were, with the town-hall as its central glory. They drove through with difficulty, because there was a fair that filled the market and overflowed into the crooked streets up and down the hill. They only caught a passing glimpse as they bumped and stumbled through: a merry-go-round and rows of booths and shouting crowds of men and girls, and a strange toothless old woman in a peaked hat seated on a barrel and selling sweets.