Dwellers among these uplands, wringing their
livelihood from the obstinate soil by labour which never slackens, year
in and year out, from Monday morning to Saturday night, are properly
despised by the inhabitants of the Porth, who sit half their time
mending nets, cultivating the social graces, and waiting for the harvest
which they have not sown to come floating past their doors.
By consequence, if a farmer wishes to learn the spiciest gossip about
his nearest neighbour, he must travel down to the Porth for it.
And this makes it the more marvellous that what I am about to tell,
happening as it did at the very gates of the Porth, should have escaped
the sharpest eyes in the place.
The Vicar's custom was to read with me for a couple of hours in the
morning and again for an hour and a half before dinner. We had followed
this routine rigidly and punctually for three months or so when, one
evening in June, he returned from the Porth a good ten minutes late,
very hot and dusty, and even so took a turn or two up and down the room
with his hands clasped behind his coat-tails before settling down to
correct my iambics.
"John Emmet is dead," he announced, pausing before the window with his
back towards me and gazing out upon the ill-kept lawn.
"Wasn't he the coxswain of the life-boat?" I asked.
"Ah, to be sure, you never saw him, did you? He took to his bed before
you came .
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