He sat down on a rock facing her. “My leg,” he explained; “must rest it.” She made no remark, which he thought unkind; she might have shown some interest in his leg. “Got wounded in the leg in Barbary.” The girl looked up. “What’s that?” Ortho reeled slightly. Was it possible there was anybody in England, in the wide world, who did not know where Barbary was? “North coast of Africa, of course,” he retorted. The girl nodded. “Oh, ’es, I believe I have heard father tell of it. Dutch colony, isn’t it?” “No,” Ortho barked. The girl went imperturbably on with her knitting. Her shocking ignorance did not appear to worry her in the least; she did not ask Ortho for enlightenment and he did not feel like starting the subject again. The conversation came to a full stop. The girl was a ninny, Ortho decided; a feather-headed country ninny—yet remarkably good looking for all that. He admired the fine shape of her shoulders under the blue cloak, the thick curls of glossy brown hair that escaped from her hood, and those fresh cheeks; one did not find complexions like that anywhere else but here in the wet southwest. He had an idea that a dimple would appear in one of those cheeks if she laughed, perhaps in both. He felt he must make the ninny dimple. “Live about here?” he inquired. She nodded. “So do I.” No reply; she was not interested in where he lived, drat her! He supplied the information. “I live at Bosula in the valley; I’m Ortho Penhale.” The girl did not receive this enthralling intelligence with proper emotion. She looked at him calmly and said, “Penhale of Bosula, are ’e? Then I s’pose you’m connected with Eli?” Once more Ortho staggered. That any one in the Penwith Hundred should be in doubt as to who he was, the local hero! To be known only as Eli’s brother! It was too much! But he bit his lip and explained his relationship to Eli in a level voice. The ninny was even a bigger fool than he had thought, but dimple she should. The conversation came to a second full stop. Two hundred feet below them waves draped the Luddra ledges with shining foam cloths, poured back, the crannies dribbling as with milk, and launched themselves afresh. A subdued booming traveled upwards, died away in a long-drawn sigh, then the boom again. Great mile-long stripes and ribbons of foam outlined the coast, twisted by the tides into strange patterns and arabesques, creamy white upon dark blue. Jackdaws darted in and out of holes in the cliff-side and gulls swept and hovered on invisible air currents, crying mournfully. In a bed of campions, just above the toss of the breakers, a red dog fox lay curled up asleep in the sun. “Come up here often?” Ortho inquired, restarting the one-sided conversation. “No.” “Ahem!—I do; I come up here to look at the ships.” The girl glanced at him, a mischievous sparkle in her brown eyes. “Then wouldn’t you see the poor dears better if you was to turn and face ’em, Squire Penhale?”