"Ye're not looking right hearty," said Mr. Poyntz, with bluff geniality, while his good wife set before me a huge plate of daintily fried bacon and eggs, and a smoking cup of coffee. "Maybe ye walked a bit too far last night? 'Twas powerful late afore ye got home, anyhow." "Yes," said I, glancing at Agatha, who was knitting a pair of stockings for Peter in the eastern window, the morning sun glistening on the broad plaits of her yellow hair. "Yes, Mr. Poyntz, I think I must have made a very long journey last evening. By-the-way, is not to-day Sunday?" "Ay, surely!" exclaimed husband and wife in a breath; and then the former added, "Ye'll be wanting to go to church, I suppose?" "No, not this Sunday; though I hope to go before long, if Miss Agatha is willing to show me the way." I glanced at her again as I said this, but she would not look up, and I could not even be sure whether she were listening. "What I want," I continued, "is for you, Mr. Poyntz, since you'll be at leisure, to take a stroll with me a little way up the stream. It will be a novelty, perhaps almost as much so to you as to me." "Up the stream, is it?" returned he, pausing in the operation of cutting up a piece of tobacco, and turning his blue eyes on me; "why, truly, sir, that's a trip I've not made for a number of years. Howsoever, none knows the road better than I do, and if so be as naught else 'll do ye, why, I'm your man!" Accordingly, so soon as I had done breakfast, the sturdy old mariner mounted a wonderful glazed hat and a new pea-jacket of blue pilot cloth, took a fresh clay pipe from the mantelpiece, with a sigh and a shake of the head over the destruction of his beloved meerschaum, and professed himself ready. "Good-bye, Agatha," I said, passing the window. "Is there anything you would like me to bring you when we come back?" "Oh, a great many!" answered she, looking up gravely; "but nothing, I'm afraid, that you can get for me. Though--you'll bring yourself back to dinner, I suppose, won't you?" She bent over her knitting as she said it, and her mouth and downcast eyelids were very demure. Nevertheless, I was encouraged to fancy that my former remark about church-going had not fallen so entirely unheeded as it had appeared to do. Before I could hammer out a fitting answer (my brain always seemed to work with really abnormal sluggishness when I most wanted to do myself credit with Agatha), Poyntz rolled out in his deep, jovial voice, "Back to Sunday dinner? Well, I should hope so. Why, the old woman is baking a pie as I'd sail round the Horn to get a snack of! Come on, Mr. Firemount; it'll go hard but we fetches back an appetite as 'll warm the women's hearts to look at." We trudged off at a tolerably round pace, and soon struck into a narrow grass-grown lane which led towards the east; and had proceeded some distance along it before I said: "Do you know, Mr. Poyntz, that your daughter is one of the loveliest women in the world?"