He took off his hat, brushed it on the sleeve of his coat, and resumed in a tone altogether lighter—­

“Yes, I hate to be laughed at; and I’ll tell you a tale on this point that may amuse you at my expense.

“I am London-bred, as you know, and still a Cockney in the grain, though when I came down here to teach school I was just nineteen and now I’m over forty.  It was during the summer holidays that I first set foot in this neighbourhood—­a week before school re-opened.  I came early, to look for lodgings and find out a little about the people and settle down a bit before beginning work.

“The vicar—­the late vicar, I mean—­commended me to old Retallack, who used to farm Rosemellin, up the valley, a widower and childless.  His sister, Miss Jane Ann, kept house for him, and these were the only two souls on the premises till I came and was boarded by them for thirteen shillings a week.  For that price they gave me a bedroom, a fair-sized sitting-room and as much as I could eat.

“A month after my arrival, Farmer Retallack was put to bed with a slight attack of colic.  This was on a Wednesday, and on Saturday morning Miss Jane Ann came knocking at my door with a message that the old man would like to see me.  So I went across to his room and found him propped up in the bed with three or four pillows and looking very yellow in the gills, though clearly convalescent.

“‘Schoolmaster,’ said he, ’I’ve a trifling favour to beg of ye.  You give the children a half-holiday, Saturdays—­hey?  Well, d’ye think ye could drive the brown hoss, Trumpeter, into Tregarrick this afternoon?  The fact is, my old friend Abe Walters, that kept the Packhorse Inn is lying dead, and they bury ’en at half after two to-day.  I’d be main glad to show respect at the funeral and tell Mrs. Walters how much deceased ’ll be missed, ancetera; but I might so well try to fly in the air.  Now if you could attend and just pass the word that I’m on my back with the colic, but that you’ve come to show respect in my place, I’d take it very friendly of ye.  There’ll be lashins o’ vittles an’ drink.  No Walters was ever interred under a kilderkin.’” Now the fact was, I had never driven a horse in my life and hardly knew (as they say) a horse’s head from his tail till he began to move.  But that is just the sort of ignorance no young man will readily confess to.  So I answered that I was engaged that evening.  We were just organising night-classes for the young men of the parish, and the vicar was to open the first, with a short address, at half-past six.

“‘You’ll be back in lashins o’ time,’ the farmer assured me.

“This put me fairly in a corner.  ‘To tell you the truth,’ said I, ’I’m not accustomed to drive much.’  But of course this was wickedly short of the truth.

“He declared that it was impossible to come to grief on the way, the brown horse being quiet as a lamb and knowing every stone of the road.  And the end was that I consented.  The brown horse was harnessed by the farm-boy and led round with the gig while Miss Jane Ann and I were finishing our midday meal.  And I drove off alone in a black suit and with my heart in my mouth.