relaxed. Her son grew up a mere hind upon the home-farm. When he reached twenty-five, she saddled her grey horse, rode over to Looe, and returned with a maid for him—one of the Mayows, a pale, submissive creature—whom he duly married. She made the young couple no allowance, but kept them at Hall as her pensioners. In the year 1747, Charles (by this time a man of forty) had the temerity to get religion from the Rev. John Wesley. The great preacher had assembled a crowd on the green by the cross-roads beyond Parc-an-hal. Charles Rosewarne, who was stalling the cattle after milking-time, heard the outcries, and strolled up the road to look. Two hours later he returned, fell on his knees in the outer kitchen, and began to wrestle for his soul, the farm-maids standing around and crying with fright. But half to hour later his mother returned from Liskeard market, strode into the kitchen in her riding-skirt, and took him by the collar. "You base-born mongrel!" she called out. "You barn-straw whelp! What has the Lord to do with one of your breed?" She dragged him to his feet and laid her horse-whip over head and shoulders. Madam had more than once used that whip upon an idling labourer in the fields.

She died, leaving the estate in good order and clear of debt. Charles Rosewarne enjoyed his inheritance just eleven years, and, dying in 1771 of angina pectoris, left two married daughters and a son, Nicholas, on whom the estate was entailed, subject to a small annual charge for maintaining his mother.

In this Nicholas all the family passions broke out afresh. He had been the one living creature for whom Madam Rachel's flinty breast had nursed a spark of love, and at fourteen he had rewarded her by trying to set fire to her skirts as she dozed in her chair. At nineteen, in a fit of drunkenness, he struck his father. He married a tap-room girl from St. Austell, and beat her. She gave him two sons: the elder (named Nicholas, after his father), a gentle boy, very bony in limb, after the fashion of the Rosewarnes; the younger, Michael, an epileptic. His mother had been turned out of doors one night in a north-westerly gale, and had lain till morning in a cold pew of the disused chapel, whereby the child came to birth prematurely. This happened in 1771, the year that Nicholas took possession of the estate. He treated his old mother even worse, being fierce with her because of the small annual charge. She grew blind and demented toward the end, and was given a room in the west wing, over the counting-house. Nicholas removed the door-handle on the inside, and the wainscot there still showed a dull smear, rubbed by the poor creature's shoulder as she trotted round and round; also marks upon the door, where her fingers had grabbled for the missing handle. There were dreadful legends of this Nicholas—one in particular of a dark foreigner who had been landed, heavily ironed, from a passing ship, and had found hospitality at Hall. The ship (so the story went) was a pirate, and the man so monstrously wicked that even her crew could not endure him. During his sojourn the cards and drink were going at Hall night and day, and every night found Nicholas mad-drunk. He began to mortgage, and whispers went abroad of worse ways of meeting his losses; of ships lured upon the rocks, and half-drowned sailors knocked upon the head, or chopped at with axes.

All this came to an end in the great thunderstorm of 1778, when the harvesters, running for shelter to the kitchen, found Nicholas lying in the middle of the floor with his mouth twisted and eyeballs staring. They were lifting the body, when a cry from the women fetched them to the windows, in time to catch a glimpse of the foreigner sneaking away under cover of the low west wall. As he broke into a run the lightning flashed upon the corners of a brass-bound box he carried under his arm. One or two gave chase, but the rain met them on the outer threshold in a deluge, and in the blind confusion of it he made off, nor was seen again.

Thus died Nicholas Rosewarne, and was followed to the grave by one mourner only—his epileptic child, Michael. The heir, Nicholas II., had taken the king's shilling to be quit of his home, and was out in Philadelphia, fighting under Sir Henry Clinton. He returned in 1780 with a shattered knee-pan and a young wife he had married abroad. She died within a year of her arrival at Hall in giving birth to a son, who was christened Martin.

The loss of her and the ruinous state of the family finances completely broke the spirit of this younger Nicholas. He dismissed the servants and worked in the fields and gardens about his fine house as a common market gardener. On fair-days at Liskeard or St. Austell the ex-soldier, prematurely aged, might have been seen in the market-place, standing as nearly at 'Attention' as his knee-pan allowed beside a specimen apple tree, which he held to his shoulder like a musket. Thus he kept sentry-go against hard Fortune—a tall man with a patient face. Thanks to a natural gift for gardening, and the rare fertility of the slopes below Hall, he managed to pay interest on the mortgages and support the family at home— his sad-browed mother, his brother Michael, and his son Martin. And he lived to taste his reward, for his son Martin had a financial genius.

This genius awoke in Martin Rosewarne one Sunday, in his fifteenth year, as he sat beside his father in the family pew and listened to a dull sermon on the Parable of the Talents. He was a just child, and he could not understand the crime of that servant who had hidden his talent in a napkin. In fault he must be, for the Bible said so.

The boy spent that afternoon in an apple-loft of the deserted chapel, and by evening he had hit on a discovery which, new in those days, now informs the whole of commerce—that it is more profitable to trade on borrowed capital than upon one's own.

He put it thus: "Let me, not knowing the meaning of a 'talent,' put it at £100. Now, if the good and faithful servant adventured five talents, or £500, at ten per cent, he made £50 a year. But if the servant with one talent can borrow four others, he has the same capital of £500. Suppose him to borrow at five per cent. and make ten like the other, he pays £20 profit in interest, and has thirty per cent, left on the talent he started with."

"Father," said the boy that night at supper, "what ought the wicked servant to have done with his talent?"

"Parson told you that plain enough, if you'd a-been listening."

"But what do you think?"

"I don't need to think when the Bible tells me. 'Thou wicked and slothful servant,' it says, 'thou oughtest to have put my money to the exchangers, and then I should have received mine own with usury.'"

"That means he ought to have lent it?"

"Yes, sure."

"Well, now," said the boy, nodding, "I think he ought to have borrowed."

Nicholas stared at his son gloomily. "Setting yourself up agen' the Scriptures, hey? It's time you were a-bed."

"But, father."—

The ex-soldier seldom gave way to passion, but now he banged his fist down on the table. "Go to bed!" he shouted. "Talk to me of borrowing! Don't my shoulders ache wi' the curse of it?"

Martin took his discovery off and nursed it. By and by another grew out of it: If the wicked servant be making thirty per cent against the other's ten, he can afford for a time to abate some of his profit, lower his prices, and, by underselling, drive the other out of the market.

He grew up a tall and taciturn lad, pondering his thoughts while he dug and planted with his father in the kitchen-gardens. For this from the age of eighteen he received a small wage, which he carefully put aside. Then in 1800 his uncle Michael died, and left him a legacy of £50. He invested it in the privateering trade, in which the harbour did a brisk business just then. Three years later his father suffered a stroke of paralysis—a slight one, but it confined him to his room for some weeks. Meanwhile, Martin took charge.