“My dear, I’m as well off as most; but that isn’t saying I shan’t be glad to go and take the pain in my joints to a better land. Before we came here, in militia-time, I used to lie and listen for the buglers, but now I’ve only the clock. No more bugles for me, I reckon, till I hear them blown across Jordan.” Taffy remembered how he too had lain and listened to the bugles; and with that he saw his childhood, as it were a small round globe set within a far larger one and wrapped around with other folks’ thoughts. He kissed his grandmother and went away wondering; and as he lay down that night it still seemed wonderful to him that she should have heard those bugles, and more wonderful, that night after night for years she should have been thinking of him while he slept, and he never have guessed it. One morning, some three weeks later, he and his father were putting on their oil-skins before starting to work--for it had been blowing hard through the night and the gale was breaking up in floods of rain--when they heard a voice hallooing in the distance. Humility heard it too and turned swiftly to Taffy. “Run upstairs, dear. I expect it’s someone sent from Tresedder farm; and if so, he’ll want to see your father alone.” Mr. Raymond frowned. “No,” he said; “the time is past for that.” A fist hammered on the door. Mr. Raymond threw it open. “Brigantine--on the sands! Half a mile this side of the light-house!” Taffy saw across his father’s shoulder a gleam of yellow oilskins and a flapping sou’-wester hat. The panting voice belonged to Sam Udy--son of old Bill Udy--a labourer at Tresedder. “I’ll go at once,” said Mr. Raymond. “Run you for the coast-guard!” The oilskins went by the window; the side gate clashed to. “Is it a wreck?” cried Taffy. “May I go with you?” “Yes, there may be a message to run with.” From the edge of the towans, where the ground dipped steeply to the long beach, they saw the wreck, about a mile up the coast, and as well as they could judge a hundred or a hundred and twenty yards out. She lay almost on her beam ends, with the waves sweeping high across her starboard quarter and never less than six ranks of ugly breakers between her and dry land. A score of watchers--in the distance they looked like emmets--were gathered by the edge of the surf. But the coast-guard had not arrived yet. “The tide is ebbing, and the rocket may reach. Can you see anyone aboard?”