"
Meanwhile, ignorant of these startling criticisms, Mr. Tregenza and his
daughter pursued their road, and presently stopped before a cottage in one
of the cobble-paved alley-ways of Mousehole. A worn old woman opened the
door and courtesied to Gray Michael. He wished her good-afternoon, then
entered the cottage, first bidding Joan return in an hour. She had friends
near at hand, and hurried off, glad to escape the sight of sickness and the
prayers she knew that her father would presently deliver.
"How be en?" inquired the fisherman, and the widowed mother of the patient
answered:
"Better, I do pray. Er was in the doldrums issterday an' bad by night also,
a dwaling an' moaning gashly, but, the Lard be praised, he'm better in mind
by now, an' I do think 'tis more along of Bible-readin' than all the
doctor's traade [Footnote: _Traade_--Physic.] he've took. I read to en
'bout that theer bwoy, the awnly son o' his mother, an' her a
widder-wumman, an' how as the Lard brought en round arter he'd gone dead."
Gray Michael sniffed and made no comment.
"I'll see en an' put up a prayer or so," he said.
"An' the Lard'll reward it, Mr. Tregenza."
Young Albert Vallack greeted the visitor with even greater reverence than
his mother had done. He and the old woman were Falmouth folks and had
drifted Westerly upon the father's death, until chance anchored them in
Newlyn. Now the lad--a dissolute youth enough, until sudden illness had
frightened him to religion--was dying of consumption, and dying fast,
though as yet he knew it not.
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