“What is thy name, lad?”

“John Halifax.”

“Where dost thee come from?”

“Cornwall.”

“Hast thee any parents living?”

The lad answered that he had not, and to many other questions with which the tanner plied him he returned straightforward answers.  He was promised a groat if he would see Phineas safely home when the rain had ceased, and was asked if he would care to take the piece of silver now.

“Not till I’ve earned it, sir,” said the Cornish lad.  So Mr. Fletcher slipped the money into his boy’s hand and left them.  Only a few words were spoken between the two lads for a little while after he had gone, and John Halifax stood idly looking across the narrow street at the mayor’s house, with its steps and porticoes, and its fourteen windows, one of which was open, showing a cluster of little heads within.  The mayor’s children seemed to be amused, watching the shivering shelterers in the alley; but presently a somewhat older child appeared among them, and then went away from the window quickly.  Soon afterwards a front door was partly opened by someone whom another was endeavoring to restrain, for the boys on the other side of the street could hear loud words from behind the door.

“I will!  I say I will——­”

“You sha’n’t, Miss Ursula!”

“But I will!” And there stood the young girl, with a loaf in one hand and a carving-knife in the other.  She hastily cut off a slice of bread.

“Take it, poor boy!  You look so hungry,” she said.  “Do take it!” But the door was shut again upon a sharp cry of pain; the headstrong little girl had cut her wrist with the knife.

In a little, John Halifax went across and picked up the slice of bread which had fallen on the doorstep.  At the best of times, wheaten bread was then a dainty to the poor, and perhaps the Cornish lad had not tasted a morsel of it for months.

Phineas, from the moment he had set eyes on John, liked the lad, and living a very lonely life, with no playfellows and no friends of his own age, he longed to be friends with this strong-looking, honest youth who had come so suddenly into his life, while John had been so tender in helping Phineas home that the Quaker boy felt sure he would make a worthy friend.

It later appeared that John had heard of his own father as a sad, solemn sort of man, much given to reading.  He had been described to him as “a scholar and a gentleman,” and John had determined that he, too, would be a scholar and a gentleman.  He was only an infant when his father died, and his mother, left very poor, had a sore struggle until her own death, when the boy was only eleven years old.  Since then the lonely lad had been wandering about the country getting odd jobs at farms; at other times almost starving.

Thus had he wandered to Norton Bury; and now, thanks to Phineas, Mr. Fletcher gave him a job at the tannery, although at first the worthy Quaker was not altogether sure of John’s character.