"Thank ye; I'm not above carrying my own fish," said the old man sharply; and he raised and gave the basket a swing to get it upon his back, but tottered with the weight, and nearly fell on the uneven rocks. "There, it is too heavy for you," said Leslie, taking possession of the basket firmly; and Louise Vine's eyes brightened. "Be too heavy for you when you get as old as I am," snarled the old man. "I daresay," said Leslie quietly; and they went off together. "Luke's in fine form this afternoon," said Van Heldre, nodding and smiling. "Yes," said the brother, looking after him wistfully. "We shall wait till you come, Mr Leslie," he shouted, giving vent to an afterthought. The young man turned and waved his hand. "Rather like Leslie," said Van Heldre. "Maddy, you'll have to set your cap at him." Madelaine looked up at him and laughed. "Yes, poor Luke!" said Mr Vine thoughtfully, as he stooped and picked up a small net and a tin can, containing the treasures he had found in sundry rock pools. "I'm afraid we are a very strange family, Van," he added, as they walked back towards the little town. "Very, old fellow," said his friend smiling. "I'll be with you before Leslie gets back, wife and the necessary change of dress permitting." CHAPTER FOUR. A THUNDERBOLT. George Vine, gentleman, as he was set down in the parish books and the West-Country directory, lived in a handsome old granite-built residence that he had taken years before, when, in obedience to his sister's wish, he had retired from the silk trade a wealthy man. But there he had joined issue with the lady in question, obstinately refusing to make France his home and selecting the house above named in the old Cornish port for two reasons: one, to be near his old friend Godfrey Van Heldre, a well-to-do merchant who carried on rather a mixed business, dealing largely in pilchards, which he sent in his own ships to the Italian ports, trading in return in such produce of the Levant as oranges, olives, and dried fruit; the other, so that he could devote himself to the branch of natural history, upon which he had grown to be an authority so great that his work upon the Actiniadae of our coast was looked forward to with no little expectation by a good many people, in addition to those who wrote F.Z.S. at the end of their names. The pleasant social meal known as high tea was spread in the long low oak-panelled dining-room, whose very wide bay window looked right over the town from its shelf upon the huge granite cliffs, and far away westward from whence came the gales which beat upon the old mansion, whose granite sides and gables had turned them off for the past two hundred years.