My father, who copied this out for me, had announced in few words poor Theodore’s fate, but without particular allusion to our adventure, which, as he made no movement to follow it up, or none that he confided, I came in time to regard humorously as an escapade of his, a holiday frolic, a piece of midsummer madness.  The serious part was that he had undoubtedly paid away large sums of money, and for two years my Uncle Gervase had worn a distracted air which I set down to the family accounts.  By degrees I came to conclude, with the rest of the world, that my father’s brain was more than a little cracked, and sounded my uncle privately about this—­delicately as I thought; but he met me with a fierce unexpected heat.  “Your father,” said he, “is the best man in the world, and I bid you wait to understand him better, taking my word that he has great designs for you.”  Sure enough, too, my father seemed to hint at this in the tenor of his conversation with me, which was ever of high politics and the government of states, or on some point which could be stretched to bear on these; but of any immediate design he forbore—­ as it seemed, carefully—­to speak.  Thus I found myself at pause and let my youth wait upon his decision.

Yet I had sense enough to feel less than satisfied with myself, albeit sorer with Nat as I watched the dear lad go from me across the turf and out at the garden gate.  Nor will I swear that my eyes did not smart a little.  I was but a boy, and had set my heart on our travelling down to Cornwall together.

To Cornwall I rode down alone, a week later, and fell to work to idle my vacation away; fishing a little, but oftener sailing my boat; sometimes alone, sometimes with Billy Priske for company. 
  Billy—­whose duties as butler were what he called a sine qua non,
pronounced as “shiny Canaan” and meaning a sinecure—­had spent some part of term time in netting me a trammel, of which he was inordinately proud, and with this we amused ourselves, sailing or rowing down to the river’s mouth every evening at nightfall to set it, and, again, soon after daybreak, to haul it, and usually returning with good store of fish for breakfast—­soles, dories, plaice, and the red mullet for which Helford is famous above all streams.

Now, during these lazy weeks I had not forgotten Eugenio’s advertisement, which, on returning to my rooms that evening after Nat’s rebuff, I had clipped from the newspaper and since kept in my pocket.  For the fun of it, and to find out who this Eugenio might be—­I had given over suspecting my father—­my mind was made up to ride over to Falmouth on the 16th of July; but whether with or without a rose in my hat I had not determined.  Therefore on the morning of the 15th, when Billy, after hauling the trammel, began to lay our plans for the morrow, I cut him short, telling him that to-morrow I should not fish.

“What’s matter with ’ee to-all?” he asked, smashing a spider-crab and picking it out piecemeal from the net.  “Pretty fair catch to-day, id’n-a? spite of all the weed; an’ no harm done by these varmints that a man can’t put to rights afore evenin’.”