Meanwhile, Captain Branscome had, of course, returned to Falmouth, and would book our passages on the Kingston packet as soon as my affairs allowed.  We received letters from him from time to time, and on Saturdays and Mondays a passing call from Mr. Goodfellow, on his way to and from Plymouth.  He had stipulated that, before sailing with us, he should take his inamorata into his confidence; and this was conceded after Miss Belcher had taken the opportunity of a day’s marketing in Plymouth to call at the dairy-shop in Treville Street and make the lady’s acquaintance.

“A very sensible young person,” she reported; “and of the two I’d sooner trust her than Goodfellow to keep a still tongue.  There’s no danger in that quarter!”

Nor was there, as it proved.  Mr. Goodfellow told us that he could hardly contain himself whenever he thought of his prospects; “for,” said he, “I was born a parish apprentice; in place of which here I be at the age of twenty with two fortunes waiting for me, one at each end of the world.”

At length, in the last week of July, Messrs. Harding and Whiteway announced that all formalities were complete; and three days later a bill appeared on the whitewashed front of Minden Cottage announcing that this desirable freehold residence with two and a half acres of land would be sold by public auction on August 6, at 1.30 o’clock p.m., in the Royal Hotel, Plymouth.  Any particulars not mentioned in the bills would be readily furnished on application at the office of the vendor’s solicitors; and parties wishing to inspect the premises might obtain the keys from Miss Belcher’s lodge-keeper, Mr. Polglaze—­that is to say, from the nearest dwelling-house down the road.

Plinny, with the help of half a dozen of Miss Belcher’s men and a couple of waggons, had employed these three days in removing our furniture to the great cricket pavilion above the hill; an excellent storehouse, where, for the time, it would remain in charge of Mr. Saunders, the head keeper.  We ourselves removed to the shelter of Miss Belcher’s lordly roof, as her guests; and Ann, the cook, to a cottage on the home farm, where that lady—­who usually superintended her own dairy—­had offered her the post of locum tenens until our return from foreign travel.  By the morning when the bill-poster came and affixed the notice of sale, Minden Cottage stood dismantled—­a melancholy shell, inhabited only by memories for us, and for our country neighbours by mysterious ghostly terrors.

This was one of the many grounds on which we agreed that the Lord Chancellor had acted foolishly in insisting upon a public auction.  His lordship, to be sure, could not be expected to know that recent events had utterly depreciated the selling value of Minden Cottage over the whole of the south and east of Cornwall; that the homeward-trudging labourer would breathe a prayer as he neared it along the high-road in the dark, and