The innkeeper led his visitor along a passage past the open door of the bar-parlour. John Trevanion glanced in as he went by. A number of rough fishermen in various garments sat drinking on settles along the wall. The most noticeable among them was a man of vast breadth, brawny and muscular, his strong features tanned copper-colour by years of sea-faring, his thick hair and beard the hue of ebony. The sleeves of his scarlet jersey were turned up, revealing brown and hairy forearms that would have befitted a Hercules. "Tonkin is still flourishing, I see," said Trevanion in an undertone to the innkeeper as he passed. "Iss, Zacky Tonkin be as great a man as ever he wer, and a tarrible plague o’ life to the preventives. Mr. Curgenven—ye mind of him, Maister John?—died two year back, and they sent a furrin feller, Mildmay by name, to look arter us mortals—hee! hee! He be a good feller at his job, a sight better than Curgenven, who loved an easy life, as ’ee could remember; but Zacky do know how to deal wi’ un, he do so. Oh, ’tis a rare deceivin’ game he plays wi’ un. He’s up-along and down-along, and this Mildmay feller atraipsin’ arter un, by sea and land, ’tis all one to Zacky. Here’s yer room, Maister John. Do ’ee set yerself down and I’ll bring ’ee up a supper fit for a lord in no time." He looked at his visitor doubtfully for a moment. "I’d axe ’ee one thing," he said. "Be I to let ’em know down below as you be in house?" "To be sure, Doubledick, there’s nothing to conceal. You might remember to say that I’ve come from London—no, hang me, I am forgetting; from Newquay directly, from London ultimately. You understand?" "Iss, I understand. No matter where ’ee come from, if ’twere from old Nick hisself, they’ll be glad to see ’ee, that they will." John Trevanion kept to his room until the morning. At nine o’clock he left the inn and made his way through the village by back lanes, to escape the notice of such fishermen as might remember him, and proceeded at a quick pace along the road to the Towers. He was dressed this morning in a black hat turned up at one side with a rosette, a bottle-green frock coat, white kerseymere breeches, and long boots. "He looks summat older and nearer graveyard, as must we all," remarked Doubledick to a crony as he watched him depart, "but he’s a fine figure of a man still." Arriving at the Towers, John Trevanion lifted the latch of the door leading to the inhabited portion, and entered with the freedom of one of the family. The Squire was at breakfast with his wife and son. "Come in," he shouted, in answer to a tap on the door, and rose from his chair as the well-dressed visitor entered, thinking, as might have been gathered from his manner, that it was one of the few friends who had the freedom of the house. But at a second glance his demeanour altered.