the result was a product like neither father nor mother, so cunning are the ways of spiritual chemistry.  The boy, Robert Trevanion, on the contrary, was his father; not only with no apparent mixture of the mother, but his father intensified.  The outside fact was of far less consequence to him than the self-created medium through which it was seen, and his happiness depended much more intimately on himself as he chanced to be at the time than on the world around him.  He was apprenticed to his father, and the two were bound together by the tie of companionship and friendship, intertwined with filial and paternal love.  What Eliza said, although it was right and proper, never interested the father; but when Robert spoke, Michael invariably looked at him, and often reflected upon his words for hours.

There was in the town of Perran a girl named Susan Shipton.  Michael knew very little of the family, save that her father was a draper and went to church.  Susan was reputed to be one of the beauties of Perran, although opinion was divided.  She had—­what were not common in Cornwall—­light flaxen hair, blue eyes, and a rosy face, somewhat inclined to be plump.  The Shiptons lay completely outside Michael’s circle.  They were mere formalists in religion, fond of pleasure, and Susan especially was much given to gaiety, went to picnics and dances, rowed herself about in the bay with her friends, and sauntered about the town with her father and mother on Sunday afternoon.  She was also fond of bathing, and was a good swimmer.  Michael hardly knew how to put his objection into words, but he nevertheless had a horror of women who could swim.  It seemed to him an ungodly accomplishment.  He did not believe for a moment that St. Paul would have sanctioned it, and he sternly forbade Eliza the use of one of the bathing-machines which had lately been introduced into Perran for the benefit of the few visitors who had discovered its charms.

It was a summer’s morning in June, and Robert had gone along the shore on business to a house which was being built a little way out of the town.  The tide was running out fast to the eastward.  A small river came down into the bay, and the current was sweeping round the rocks to the left in a great curve at a distance of about two hundred yards from the beach.  Inside the curve was smooth water, which lay calmly rippling in the sun, while at its edge the buoys marking the channel were swaying to and fro, and the stream lifted itself against them, swung past them, with bright multitudinous eddies, and went out to sea.  Half-way in the shallows was one of the bathing-machines, and Robert saw that a girl whom he could not recognise was having a bathe.  She swam well, and presently she started off straight outwards.  Robert watched her for a moment, and saw her go closer and closer to the dangerous line.  He knew she could not see it so well as he could, and he knew too that the buoys which were placed to