[Illustration: The River Buddle, Lyme Regis] "It is not really antique. It is a very clever imitation, not more than a few months old," came the old man's voice. He paused, the smile still lighting his face. "A genuine specimen like this one is not to be found anywhere--outside the museums." He lifted his arm with a peculiar gesture that seemed to take in the whole world. Outwardly I remained calm, swinging my foot nonchalantly against the wooden panel of his counter. If I had burst out laughing that moment I cannot think what the old curio-dealer would have thought, but it was with difficulty that I restrained myself from doing so. Little did he know that I had just picked up a genuine black jack for a mere song! Then I told him, with gusto, my adventure with the rustic at the inn. Suddenly he broke out: "What was his name?" "Copplestone--Ralph Copplestone," I replied. "Why, he's the very rogue that sold me this one," said the old man, shaking his simple head. "Is that possible?" I said, and I jumped down from the counter where I had perched myself. The strangest sensation came over me. I thought of the honest, open face and the innocent blue eyes of my friend the tavern-haunter. The curio-dealer smiled quietly, sadly. "Yes, he imposed upon me, too. He is a very clever rogue. A harness-maker by trade, and all his people before him for three hundred years have been of the same calling. So you see the secret of making a black jack has been handed down from father to son. It is one of the traditions of his family; a knowledge which is mingled with his blood and fibre, so to speak. Such skill is older than five thousand years. He has the spirit of the artist--but the soul of the rogue." "Why," I said, "then if he is a rogue, then I'm a rogue too, for I knew I was paying him a paltry sum for an article I thought to be worth ten pounds--perhaps twenty." So I laughed, and I've been laughing gloriously ever since--at myself, at the merry rogue in the inn, at the silly old hypocritical world. As I passed out of the dim old shop and walked down to the sea it came over me, with a sudden feeling of satisfaction in my soul, that the sun shone on Ralph Copplestone just as joyfully as it did on me, that the good God had endowed him with strong arms and a mighty voice for songs. "After all," I said to myself, "we are all rogues if we are only scratched deep enough." CHAPTER XII THE DEVON AND DORSET BORDERLAND "How far is it to Babylon?" Ah, far enough, my dear, Far, far enough from here-- Yet you have farther gone! "Can I get there by candlelight?" So goes the old refrain. I do not know--perchance you might-- But only, children, hear it right, Ah, never to return again! The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt, Shall break on hill and plain, And put all stars and candles out, Ere we be young again. "R. L. S."