"A man?" cried the widow, shrilly. "What man?" A voice answered the question, calling for help out of the river--a voice that she knew. "What is it?" she called back. "I think," quavered Master Simon, "I think 'tis the roof o' 'Flowing Source'!" Mistress Prudence ran down the quay steps, cast off the first boat that lay handy, and pulled towards the dark mass sweeping seaward. As it crossed ahead of her bows, she dropped the paddles, ran to the painter, and flung it forward with all her might. The "Pandora's Box" Inn stands on Ponteglos Quay to this day. And all that is left of "Flowing Source" hangs on the wall of its best parlour--four dark oak timbers forming a frame around a portrait, the portrait of a woman of middle age and comfortable countenance. In the right-hand top corner of the picture, in letters of faded gold, runs the legend--VXOR BONA INSTAR NAVIS. EXPERIMENTS. I.--A YOUNG MAN'S DIARY. _Monday, Sept. 7th_, 189-. I am one year old to-day. I imagine that most people regard their first birthday as something of an event; a harvest-home of innocence, touched with I know not how delicate a bloom of virginal anticipation; of emotion too volatile for analysis, or perhaps eluding analysis by its very simplicity. But whatever point the festival might have had for me was rudely destroyed by my parents, who chose this day for jolting me back to London in a railway-carriage. We have just arrived home from Newquay, Cornwall, where we have been spending the summer holidays for the sake of my health, as papa has not scrupled to blurt out, once or twice, in my presence. There is a strain of coarseness in papa; or perhaps I should say--for the impression it leaves is primarily negative, as of something _manque_--an incompleteness in the sensitive equipment. As yet it can hardly be said to embarrass me; though I foresee a time when I shall have to apologise for it to strangers. There is nothing absurd in this. If a man may take pride in his ancestry, why may he not apologise for his papa? My papa will be forgiven, for he is so splendidly virile! He left our compartment at Bristol and did not return again until the train stopped at Swindon for him to eat a bun. In the interval, mamma took me from nurse and endeavoured to hush me by singing-- Father's gone a-hunting. . . .