'There was a gentleman who came to me yesterday on the beach when I was picking up pebbles. He had very curled whiskers, and was sprucely dressed. He wore a fine hat and a green coat. He gave me the watch.' 'Did he say anything to you?' asked Jane in the same low, suppressed tone. She held the watch in her hand and turned it about. 'Yes, he spoke of you, mother; he continued asking about you, and what you were doing, and where you had been. He was strange in his manner.' 'Did he tell you his name?' 'No, but there are initials on the case, J. H.' 'It surely must be he!' said Mrs. Marley. 'He would at one time have given me the watch――it is the same; but I could not read the hours then; I have learned that since. It is he. Why did he not come to see me? Did he say he would do that?' 'No, mother, he was in a hurry.' 'Where was he going?' 'He did not say.' 'Tell me――tell me something more. What was he like? I do not mean his hat and his coat.' 'He was a rather handsome man, but he had hardly any chin, and that spoiled his face; and he was for ever fumbling with something, generally with a key; and he blew down it, and turned it about at the end of his tongue. But when he spoke of you I thought he was going to cry.' 'It was he,' said Jane, and she knitted her hands together about the watch on her lap. 'Who, mother?' 'Child――you met your father.' CHAPTER XVIII DECLARATION OF WAR As soon as Winefred had eaten something, had changed her dress, and cleaned her face and hands of the soil that had adhered to them, Mrs. Marley despatched her to Bindon to inform Mrs. Jose of what had occurred. The farmer's wife was so kind-hearted that Jane knew that she might calculate on receiving prompt assistance from her. When the girl had departed on her errand, Jane sat brooding with her eyes on the floor. Occasionally she looked at the man extended in the bed, but his eyes were now shut, and he seemed to be asleep; consequently her services were not in immediate requisition, and she was free to think over what had taken place. But her mind was in a turmoil, and she was incapable of arresting the successive pictures, fancies that whirled around in her head, to consider one apart from the rest. To think clearly is not given to all. By some it is acquired through education, but to others education aggravates the confusion. A totally ignorant person with a limited range of ideas is accordingly often a far more valuable member of the community than one whose head is a ragbag stuffed with odds and ends, new and old, unco-ordinated. Nature has not furnished every brain with nests of boxes into which to sort its ideas; but education of a proper sort should be directed to the inculcation of mental tidiness, and not to the accumulation of articles which serve only to make the confusion worse confounded.