as anyone Ishmael had ever heard of—­far more so than anyone he had ever met.  And of later years the Parson had grown in tolerance, which always to him had been a Christian duty—­though it was far from being a weak or maudlin tolerance; and he had also lost much of that individualism which had been the only thing to cloud his judgment.  More than most old men he had been free from glorification of the past, though not as free as he himself imagined.  Something of Ishmael had gone with Killigrew’s going, but that something had hardly included much of his heart; now there was buried with the Parson, or, more truly, strove to follow him whither he had gone, a love which was as single-natured a thing as can be felt.  The return of Nicky was the only thing which at all filled the emptiness in Ishmael’s days.

Nicky had altered, and for the better, if, thought Ishmael, it was not the mere selfishness of the old generation which had ever made him feel Nicky needed improvement.  This deepening, this added manliness, would after all have been superhuman in the boy who had gone away.  Nicky had lived roughly among rough men, and he had stood the test well.  He still had the delightful affectations of youth, but wore them with a better grace.  He came back not only the heir and future master of Cloom, but a man who could have won his way in the world without so many acres behind him.  He was full of new ideas for farming, which he had imbibed in Saskatchewan, and Ishmael, with a smile of dry amusement against himself, found he was as suspicious of them as ever John-James had been of his iron ploughs and Jersey cows.  Farming being “the thing” in Canada, Nicky, who had gone away rather despising it, came back eager to try his hand.

When Ishmael had first started machinery at Cloom, beginning with a binder and going on to a steam thresher that he hired out for the harvest all around the district, the hedges had been black with folk crowding to see the wonders, just as they had when the first traction engine made its appearance in West Penwith.  Yet Cornishmen, who are conservative creatures, still cling to their straight-handled scythes, although they are less convenient than those with curved handles in use up-country.  Nicky had small use for customs such as this, and he poured forth ideas that would have turned John-James pale, if anything could have affected his seamed and weather-beaten countenance.

John-James was an old man now—­he had aged quickly with his outdoor life; but always he refused to let Ishmael pension him off, and though as overseer he had a wage passing any paid in the county, and though he lived comfortably enough in his little cottage chosen by himself, with a tidy body who came in from the village every day to attend to his wants, he still showed all the premature ageing of the countryman.  He had never married, and with age had taken many queer ways, one of them being a rooted dislike to having any woman except his sister Vassie in his house.