“H’m.  You were at Oxford for a time, were you not?”

“Yes, sir,” Taffy answered, wondering.

“I’ve heard about you.  Where do you live?”

Taffy pointed to the last of a line of three whitewashed cottages behind the light-house.

“Alone?”

“No, sir; with my mother and my grandmother.  She is an invalid.”

“I wonder if your mother would be kind enough to offer me a cup of tea?”

In the small kitchen, on the walls of which, and even on the dresser, Taffy’s books fought for room with Humility’s plates and tin-ware, the Chief Engineer proved to be a most courteous old gentleman.  Towards Humility he bore himself with an antique politeness which flattered her considerably.  And when he praised her tea she almost forgave him for his detestable habit of snuff-taking.

He had heard something (it appeared) from the President of Taffy’s college, and also from—­(he named Taffy’s old friend in the velvet college-cap).  In later days Taffy maintained not only that every man must try to stand alone, but that he ought to try the harder because of its impossibility; for in fact it was impossible to escape from men’s helpfulness.  And though his work was done in lonely places where in the end fame came out to seek him, he remained the same boy who, waking in the dark, had heard the bugles speaking comfort.

As a matter of fact his college had generously offered him a chance which would have cost him nothing or next to nothing, of continuing to read for his degree.  But he had chosen his line, and against Humility’s entreaties he stuck to it.  The Chief Engineer took a ceremonious leave.  He had to drive back to his hotel, and Taffy escorted him to his carriage.

“I shall run over again to-morrow,” he said at parting; “and we’ll have a look at that island rock.”  He was driven off, secretly a little puzzled.

Well, it puzzled Taffy at times why he should be working here with Mendarva’s men for twenty shillings a week (it had been eighteen, to begin with) when he might be reading for his degree and a fellowship.  Yet in his heart he knew the reason. That would be building, after all, on the foundations which Honoria had laid.

Pride had helped chance to bring him here, to the very spot where Lizzie Pezzack lived.  He met her daily, and several times a day.  She, and his mother and grandmother, were all the women-folk in the hamlet—­if three cottages deserve that name.  In the first cottage Lizzie lived with her father, who was chief light-houseman, and her crippled child; two under-keepers, unmarried men, managed together in the second; and this accident allowed Taffy to rent the third from the Brethren of the Trinity House and live close to his daily work.  Unless brought by business, no one visited that windy peninsula; no one passed within sight of it; no tree grew upon it or could be seen from it.  At daybreak