On the following afternoon Ralph made his way up the slant again in the direction of Treliskey Plantation. It was a glorious afternoon. The hot sunshine was tempered by a cool, Atlantic breeze. The hills and dales were looking their best, the hedges were full of flowers, the woods and plantations were great banks of delicious green. At the stile he paused for several minutes and surveyed the landscape, but his thoughts all the time were somewhere else. Hope had sprung up afresh in his heart, and a determined purpose was throbbing through all his veins. After awhile he left the stile and passed through the plantation gate. He was a trespasser, he knew, but that was a matter of little account. No one would molest him now. He was a man of too much importance in the neighbourhood. He hardly realised yet what a power he had become, and how anxious people were to be on good terms with him. In himself he was conscious of no change. So far, at any rate, money had not spoiled him. Every Sunday as he passed through the little graveyard at Veryan he was reminded of the fact that his mother had died in the workhouse. If he was ever tempted to put on airs--which he was not--that fact would have kept him humble. The true secret of his influence, however, was not that he was prosperous, but that he was just. There was not a toiler in Great St. Goram Mine who did not know that. In the past strength had been the synonym for tyranny. Those who possessed a giant's strength had used it like a giant. But Ralph had changed the tradition. The strong man was a just man and a generous, and it was for that reason his influence had grown with every passing day. Yet he was quite unconscious of the measure of his influence. In his own eyes he was only David Penlogan's son, though that fact meant a great deal to him. David Penlogan was an honest man--a man who, in a very real sense, walked with God--and it was Ralph's supreme desire to prove worthy of his father. But it was of none of these things he thought as he walked slowly along between high banks of trees. The road was grass-grown from end to end, and was so constructed that the pedestrian appeared to be constantly turning corners. "I think she will walk out to-day," he kept saying to himself. "This beautiful weather will surely tempt her out." He had made up his mind what to do and say in case they did meet. For good or ill, he was determined to know his fate. It might be an act of presumption, or a simple act of folly--that was an aspect of the question that scarcely occurred to him. The supreme factor in the case, as far as he was concerned, was, he loved her. On that point there was no room for doubt. The mere social aspect of the question he was constitutionally incapable of seeing. A man was a man, and if he were of good character, and able to maintain the woman he loved, what mattered anything else?