Francis took his leave praying devoutly that he might not meet his Martha, but no sooner had he set foot outside the parlour door than there she stood before him, and he could say nothing and she could say nothing, until suddenly he caught her up in his arms and hugged her and kissed her, set her down on her feet gasping, begged her pardon, and blundered out of the house blushing furiously. Cousin Bampfield warmly congratulated his kinsman on his betrothal, and, two adjacent livings in Cornwall presently falling vacant, gave him both of them. There was a splendid wedding and the young couple spent their honeymoon in London, for neither had ever before visited the capital. They saw the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral, but Martha was impressed by nothing so much as her husband's grandfather's town house in Curzon Street. She thought it grand, and was never tired of hearing her husband tell of his gentle family, the Folyats. III ST. WITHANS _Not knowing how to find the open air, But toiling desperately to find it out._ HENRY VI, Part III. IF Potsham was somnolent, St. Withans, our parson's Cornish living, might well have been the home of the Sleeping Beauty. For a time it was a place of enchantment while the charm and novelty of wedded love were upon Francis and his Martha. They were blissfully happy: the county welcomed them, they had a charming house and garden, a carriage, money in plenty, children, and when they were bored with the country they could escape to the gaiety of Plymouth. After they had been married for five years they exchanged duties for a year with the English chaplain at Hâvre-de-Grace in Normandy, and their fourth child, a daughter, was born there. After that it became a habit with them to go over to the Continent every year for a couple of months. Their sixth child died in infancy, their seventh only lived to be three years old, but the eighth, ninth, and tenth were as healthy and comely as the first five. It was a year or so after the birth of the tenth, in 1867, that they began to discover that while their family had grown their income had remained stationary. It was at that moment that for the first time they began to think of what they had done and counted up the number of their offspring, and realised that they had brought nine good lives into the world and had to face the responsibility and, somehow or other, establish them. These were the names of the young Folyats: Serge, Gertrude, Frederic, Mary, Leedham, Minna, Annette, and James.