No added light marked the western horizon at sunset, but
the short, dull day simply fell headlong into night; and with darkness came
the rain.
About five o'clock in the afternoon, when the flicker and shine of many
lamps in little shop windows brightened the tortuous streets, a man clad in
tarpaulins, and carrying a big canvas bag on his back, passed rapidly
through the village. He had come that day from London upon the paying off
of his vessel; and while he left his two chests at the railway station, he
made shift to bring his sea-bag along himself; and that because he was
bound for the white cottage on the cliff, and the bag held many precious
foreign concerns for Joan Tregenza. It had been impossible to communicate
with the sailor; and he did not write from London to tell any of his
return, that their pleasure and surprise on his appearance might be the
more complete. Now a greater shock than that in his power to give waited
the man himself. The sailor's parents lived at Mousehole, but Michael's
cottage lay upon the way, and there he first designed to appear.
Joe Noy was a very big man, loosely but strongly set together, a Celt to
the backbone, hard, narrow of mind, but possessing rare determination. His
tanned, clean-shaven face was broader at the jaw than the eyes, and a
lowering heaviness of aspect, almost ape-like, resulted when his features
remained in repose. The effect, however, vanished when he spoke or listened
to the speech of another.
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