Mr. Penzance was interested.  His outlook on the past and the present had always been that of a bookworm, but he understood enough to see that he had come upon a temperament novel enough to awaken curiosity.  The apparently entirely neglected boy, of a type singularly unlike that of his father and elder brother, living his life virtually alone in the big place, and finding food to his taste in stories of those of his blood whose dust had mingled with the earth centuries ago, provided him with a new subject for reflection.

That had been the beginning of an unusual friendship.  Gradually Penzance had reached a clear understanding of all the building of the young life, of its rankling humiliation, and the qualities of mind and body which made for rebellion.  It sometimes thrilled him to see in the big frame and powerful muscles, in the strong nature and unconquerable spirit, a revival of what had burned and stirred through lives lived in a dim, almost mythical, past.  There were legends of men with big bodies, fierce faces, and red hair, who had done big deeds, and conquered in dark and barbarous days, even Fate’s self, as it had seemed.  None could overthrow them, none could stand before their determination to attain that which they chose to claim.  Students of heredity knew that there were curious instances of revival of type.  There had been a certain Red Godwyn who had ruled his piece of England before the Conqueror came, and who had defied the interloper with such splendid arrogance and superhuman lack of fear that he had won in the end, strangely enough, the admiration and friendship of the royal savage himself, who saw, in his, a kindred savagery, a power to be well ranged, through love, if not through fear, upon his own side.  This Godwyn had a deep attraction for his descendant, who knew the whole story of his fierce life—­as told in one yellow manuscript and another—­by heart.  Why might not one fancy—­Penzance was drawn by the imagining—­this strong thing reborn, even as the offspring of a poorer effete type.  Red Godwyn springing into being again, had been stronger than all else, and had swept weakness before him as he had done in other and far-off days.

In the old library it fell out in time that Penzance and the boy spent the greater part of their days.  The man was a bookworm and a scholar, young Saltyre had a passion for knowledge.  Among the old books and manuscripts he gained a singular education.  Without a guide he could not have gathered and assimilated all he did gather and assimilate.  Together the two rummaged forgotten shelves and chests, and found forgotten things.  That which had drawn the boy from the first always drew and absorbed him—­the annals of his own people.  Many a long winter evening the pair turned over the pages of volumes and of parchment, and followed with eager interest and curiosity the records of wild lives—­stories of warriors and abbots and bards, of feudal lords at ruthless war