"Hey, Tom, you don't know what's good for others, so don't set up as a judge," and the speaker, a short, lame, very thick-set man, in a rough canvas suit, stained all over of a deep red, showed his white teeth in a pleasant smile, which seemed like sunshine on his rough, repellent face. "Maybe I do; maybe I don't. I say I don't call him a good-looking chap." "Just as if you could tell whether a man's good-looking or not, Tom Jennen. That's for the women to do." "Ha--ha--ha! yes. Bess Prawle says you're the plainest man she ever see." The miner flushed scarlet, and an angry light flashed from his eyes, but he seemed to master the annoyance, and said cheerfully,-- "I dare say she's right, Tom. I never set up for a handsome man." "Like yonder 'venturer chap. He's the sort as would please old smuggler Prawle's lass." The angry flush came into the miner's face again, but he mastered his annoyance, and said, rather hoarsely,-- "Hold your tongue, lad; the gentleman will hear what you say." "What's that man doing up on the cliff?" said Geoffrey Trethick, who had walked down by the harbour in making a tour of his new home. "The one waving those things in his hands." "Sighting a school," said Tom Jennen, in a sing-song tone, as, after the manner of sea-side men, he leaned his back against the stout rail which guarded the edge of the cliff. "Sighting a school, eh? Of fish, of course?" "Mack'," said Tom Jennen, so curtly that he cut the word in half, and then proceeded to add to the brown stains at the corners of his mouth by hacking off a piece of tobacco with his big knife. "They do it in partnership like, sir," said the miner, eagerly, as he gazed in the new-comer's face, as if attracted by the sound of the word "adventurer." "One of them goes up on the highest part of the cliff yonder, Pen Dwavas that is, and he watches till he sees a school coming." "How can he see a school of fish coming?" "Colour," growled Tom Jennen, who had now turned round, and was trying to spit upon a particular boulder on the shore below. "Yes, by the colour, sir," said the miner, Amos, or more commonly Preaching Pengelly--"colour of the water; and then he signals to his mates. That's them gone off in yon boat." "I see." "They have their boot ready with the seine in--long net, you know--and rows out, just as you see them now." "Yes; but what's the use of his waving those things now?" "Them's bushes, sir," continued the miner, who was talking, and reading the new-comer at the same time. "Don't you see, them in the boot being low down, couldn't see which way to go, so he waves them on with the bushes." "To be sure, yes," said Geoffrey. "I see now. They are throwing something over--yes, of course, the net. So that dark, ripply patch, then, is where the fish lie?" "Yes, sir, that's them," said the miner, who seemed strangely attracted; "but you've got good eyes."