Taffy laughed.  “I like it.  But—­”

Sir Harry laughed too, in an embarrassed way.  “But you don’t suppose I rode over from Carwithiel for that?  Well, well!  The fact is—­one gets foolish as one grows old—­George went out hunting this morning, and didn’t turn up for dinner.  I kept to my rule and dined alone.  Nine o’clock came; half-past; no George.  At ten Hoskins locked up as usual, and off I went to bed.  But I couldn’t sleep.  After a while it struck me that he might be sleeping here over at Tredinnis; that is, if no accident had happened.  No sleep for me until I made sure; so I jumped out, dressed, slipped down to the stables, saddled the mare and rode over.  I left the mare by Tredinnis great gates and crept down to Moyle’s stables like a housebreaker, looked in through the window, and sure enough there was George’s grey in the loose box to the right.  So George is sleeping there, and I’m easy in my mind.  No doubt you think me an old fool?”

But Taffy was not thinking anything of the sort.

“I couldn’t wish better than that.  You understand?”

“Not quite.”

“He lost his mother early.  He wants a woman to look after him, and for him to think about.  If he and Honoria would only make up a match. . . .  And Carwithiel would be quite a different house.”

Taffy hesitated, with a hand on the forge-bellows.

“I dare say it’s news to you, what I’m telling.  But it has been in my mind this long while.  Why don’t you blow up the fire?  I bet Miss Honoria has thought of it too:  girls are deep.  She has a head on her shoulders.  I’ll warrant she sends half a dozen of my servants packing within a week.  As it is, they rob me to a stair.  I know it, and I haven’t the pluck to interfere.”

“What does the old Squire say?” Taffy managed to ask.

“It has never come to saying anything.  But I believe he thinks of it, too, when he happens to think of anything but his soul.  He’ll be pleased; everyone will be pleased.  The properties touch, you see.”

“I see.”

“To tell you the truth, he’s failing fast.  This religion of his is a symptom:  all of his family have taken to it in the end.  If he hadn’t the constitution of a horse, he’d have been converted ten years before this.  What puzzles me is, he’s so quiet.  You mark my words “—­Sir Harry rose, buttoned his coat and shook his riding-crop prophetically—­“he’s brewing up for something.  There’ll be the devil of a flare-up before he has done.”

It came with the Midsummer bonfires.  At nine o’clock on St. John’s Eve, Mr. Raymond read prayers in the church.  It was his rule to celebrate thus the vigils of all saints in the English calendar and some few Cornish saints besides; and he regularly announced these services on the preceding Sundays:  but no parishioner dreamed of attending them.

To-night, as usual, he and Taffy had prayed alone:  and the lad was standing after service at the church door, with his surplice on his arm (for he always wore a surplice and read the lessons on these vigils), when the flame of the first bonfire shot up from the headland over Innis village.