Dear Sir,--Will you come up and see me this evening? I want to ask a favour of you once more. What I have seen to-day makes me hope that you can now meet me in a better spirit. Yours faithfully, Thomas Paul. PS. If you are in the spirit that I hope you feel, bring poor Madge. Geoffrey Trethick, Esq. "Geoffrey Trethick, Esquire! Ha, ha, ha! Poor old fellow! Esquire! A broken-down mining adventurer in a smuggler's cottage. No, Master Paul, I am not in the spirit you mean, and it is of no use for us to meet and quarrel again." "Will you write an answer, sir?" said Pengelly, after watching Trethick for some minutes, as he read and re-read the letter, and then walked up and down talking to himself. "Yes--no--yes--no. Wait a few moments, Pengelly. I have not yet made up my mind. Tell him--tell Mr Paul--yes, tell him that I will come up and see him this evening. I will not write." Pengelly nodded, and moved towards the cottage to get a sight of Bessie. "Have you heard, sir, who has bought the mine?" he asked. "No, Pengelly. I have been trying, but they keep it very quiet. You have heard nothing, I suppose?" "Not a word, sir," said Pengelly, with a sigh; and he went on into the cottage. "Papa-in-law elect does not seem to give him so much of his confidence as he does me. However, just as he likes. Now what am I to say to the old man?" He walked up and down thinking for a few minutes, and then decided that the time had come for him to speak out frankly all that he knew, and to refer them to Madge for the rest. "Poor lass! I'll speak up well for her sufferings. She has done wrong, but look at her. Poor lass! How a man can be such a scoundrel, and leave a poor weak girl to fight out her difficulties alone, is more than I can understand; and what Nature is about to allow it. Here's poor Madge dying of consumption, and scouted as an outcast for her wrong, and the scoundrel who shared her sin--bah, no! who made her sin--is in high feather, and about to be rewarded for his goodness with a beautiful and loving wife-- "Oh!" he ejaculated, grinding his teeth; "if I think about it, I shall go mad;" and he set off down to the rough shore, where, in a reckless way, he set about wrenching over great blocks of the granite, telling himself he was looking for curious sea-anemones and star-fish, when it was to weary himself out by his tremendous exertion, and dull the aching misery of his thoughts. It was quite evening when he returned to the cottage, and sat and chatted with poor Mrs Prawle for a time, before following the old wrecker down to his den below the cliff, and stopping with him to smoke a pipe. The old fellow was more sociable than usual, and chatted about the mine and the chance they had lost, but in quite a friendly spirit. "It wur a bad job, my lad, but I'm not so sore now. I've got enough for me, I dare say, but I'd liked to have seen ye doing a bit better."