“Oh, I’m just gwain to see if the mill-wheel’s workin’ down along,” said Ishmael—­not for worlds would he have admitted Phoebe Lenine as the object of his visit.  The Parson’s eyes twinkled as they rested on the bouquet.

“Going, not ‘gwain,’” he corrected gently.

“Going,” repeated Ishmael, with his deceptive docility in little things.

“I’ll come to the mill with you,” said the Parson briskly, and Ishmael set off by his side without a word, but presently lagged behind a moment to drop his carefully-prepared offering between two gorse-bushes.  Boase smiled, then sighed, wondering where such an abnormal dread of ridicule as Ishmael’s would lead; it was a result of the Parson’s calling that he should feel anxiety as to the ultimate trend of things.

The two trudged on in silence; their friendship was so tried, and the understanding between them so complete, that they sometimes spent an hour or more together with hardly a remark.  Finally Ishmael broke silence.

“You coming to Cry the Neck this evening, Da Boase?” he asked.

“I’m going to look in before supper,” replied the Parson; and unconsciously his lips took on a sterner line.  He was building much on that evening’s “Crying the Neck,” which for the first time Ishmael was to attend, and at the succeeding supper Boase meant him to take his place at the head of the table, as future master of Cloom.  “Crying the Neck” was a moribund custom in the eighteen-fifties, and it was the Parson, with an eye to its possibilities, who had encouraged what proved to be its last revival.

“Mr. Lenine’s coming,” remarked Ishmael presently.

“Ah!  Is he coming alone?” asked Boase carelessly.

“Happen he will, or maybe they’ll all come, but Mrs. Lenine always says she must stay in of an evening when others are trapesing,” replied Ishmael, with equal carelessness.  For they were Cornishmen, these two, and the Parson would no more have asked outright “Is Phoebe coming?” than Ishmael would have given a direct answer.

Lenine’s mill, known as Vellan-Clowse, which means “The Mill by the Wood,” nestled in a valley below the Cloon moor where the leet ran along built-up banks to the dam and then down a succession of wooden troughs to the crest of the wheel.  Facing the mill was the great cluster of elms that headed the valley, and behind only a tiny little yard divided it from the steepness of the hillside.  The trees were the biggest for miles in that wind-swept district, and the bed of the valley showed green and lush with its marshy pastures, where the ugly red and white cows were tearing at the grass.  The wheel was standing dumb, as harvest was not yet garnered, and Boase and Ishmael passed the mill door and went on to the house.  There the door stood open, as did the further one at the end of the cool, straight passage that looked dark by contrast with the yard beyond, where, under the blazing sun, a little girl was feeding some fowls.  The whole scene, set in the black oblong of the doorway, was compact of blue and flame colour—­the blue of the frock and the shadows and the pale flame of the gravel where the shadows lay and the deeper flame fowls clustered.  The man and the boy looked through for a moment in silence, then Phoebe turned and saw them.