CHAPTER I. HOW THE CHILDREN PLAYED. When news of the War first came to Polpier, Nicholas Nanjivell (commonly known as Nicky-Nan) paid small attention to it, being preoccupied with his own affairs. Indeed, for some days the children knew more about it than he, being tragically concerned in it—poor mites!—though they took it gaily enough. For Polpier lives by the fishery, and of the fishermen a large... more...

PROLOGUE. Beside a winding creek of the Lynher River, and not far from the Cornish borough of Saltash, you may find a roofless building so closely backed with cherry-orchards that the trees seem by their slow pressure to be thrusting the mud-walls down to the river's brink, there to topple and fall into the tide. The old trees, though sheeted with white blossom in the spring, bear little fruit,... more...

THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF. "Yes, sir," said my host the quarryman, reaching down the relics from their hook in the wall over the chimney-piece; "they've hung there all my time, and most of my father's. The women won't touch 'em; they're afraid of the story. So here they'll dangle, and gather dust and smoke, till another tenant comes and tosses 'em out... more...

OCEANUS I My Dear Violet,—So you "gather from the tone of two or three recent letters that my spirit is creeping back to light and warmth again"? Well, after a fashion you are right. I shall never laugh again as I used to laugh before Harry's death. The taste has gone out of that carelessness, and I turn even from the remembrance of it. But I can be cheerful, with a cheerfulness which... more...

CHAPTER I. ROSEWARNE OF HALL. John Rosewarne sat in his counting-house at Hall, dictating a letter to his confidential clerk. The letter ran— "Dear Sir,—In answer to yours of the 6th inst., I beg to inform you that in consequence of an arrangement with the Swedish firms, by which barrel-staves will be trimmed and finished to three standard lengths before shipment, we are enabled to offer an... more...