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old along with the inn. You will wear a white apron, and you will fawn upon your guests. You will become obsequious. And you will drink more and more ripe ale from a high-rimmed jug. You will pocket gifts of shillings and pence. You will drink wine with every warmhearted person who asks it of you. Your paunch will bulge, and it will bulge further; your cheeks will turn rosy red; your eyes will recede into sockets of fat. You will take some one for your wife—perhaps that stout Pauline whose father grows cabbages down the road. You will not love her, but you will sleep with her every night in the big four-posted bed that was your mother’s. And she will see to the roasts and the washing. And I do not doubt that after a half-dozen years or so you will not wish for anything else.”
    But wistfully:
    â€œYes—once, years ago, you killed a man—a man with one arm and a yellow face, whom nobody knew. Still he was an officer in the Continentals, for they found his uniform coat in his bag. He must have lived. If only they knew his name, they would have discovered more, and perhaps the horror of the thing would not be with you even now. But he had no name. (Unless Peter had lied, and for what conceivable reason would Peter lie?) Nowhere about him was there a name …”
    Rising, he looked towards the sea; then he looked down beneath him where the inn lay. A light came into his eyes; his nostrils spread as he gulped in the flowing air. Half walking, half running, he went down the hill.
    Quickly he walked towards the inn, and when he was in the yard before it, he called for Peter. He sat down at a table in that place, which was a garden, an inn-yard only by usage, and he cried: “Peter!—Peter, where are you, you lout? Must I shout until the blood bursts from my head!”
    Yet in coming, Peter moved slowly, for he was contained in his sixty years, and not at all disturbed by John Preswick’s commands. A large man, he was, in a white apron, and with white hair. Nodding, he wiped his hands upon his apron.
    â€œSit down,” John Preswick said. “Sit down, Peter, over there. You and I shall have a little talk.”
    When the other had seated himself across from John Preswick at the table, the younger man laid his hands together and went on. Slowly and convincingly he spoke, that he might not have to state the thing over again. He said:
    â€œPeter, you have taken care of me for a long time. You have been good to me, and you have been a mother and a father to me. And you have done all this with no hope of real reward. It is almost twenty years since I was first given into your charge.”
    â€œThat is true,” old Peter agreed gravely.
    â€œBut I am not so ungrateful as you might have thought me—nor am I so unseeing. I have not spoken because I could see no way to reward you.” This he said with complete and calm satisfaction in the lie. “It is not that I have considered you unworthy of reward; it is only that I have never chanced upon a reward worthy of you. Things must be taken into consideration.”
    â€œLabor is reward in itself,” old Peter pronounced sagely. “You have been like my own son.”
    â€œYes, that is all true enough. But that will not take care of you in your old age, nor will that buy you a coach or a team of four for you to ride about in, nor will that get you a wife to warm your bed, which has been so long cold. You have worked hard, and it is not fitting that you should see your work to no purpose. I have thought much upon it, and I have decided that you shall be served justly.”
    â€œAnd how is that?” old Peter inquired doubtfully. “You speak in a manner I hardly understand.”
    â€œTell me, Peter, do you not love this place? Do you not love this garden and the fields all about it? Do you not take satisfaction in the fashion of the coaches, in the way they drive up, announcing their arrival with a blast upon