"It must be somehow, but not that way," he said. "I will have the house, like Hanford Hall, of my own building, with the seven red windows, as in my dream. I will think of nothing now but how I may come at it."

CHAPTER XLII.

A GOLDEN PLUM.

NOTHING is more simple. Fortunes sits on a cloud and lets down golden plums suspended by a hair into this nether world of ours. Those of us who are wide awake and on the lookout for plums, the moment we see the golden drop descend, dash past our neighbors, kick their shins to make them step aside, tread them down if they obstruct our course, jostle them apart; and before they have pulled their hands out of their pockets and rubbed their eyes or their bruised shins, and have asked all round, Where is the plum? we have it in our mouths, have sucked it, and spit the stone out at their feet.

No sooner is one golden plum snatched and carried off, than fortune, with a goodhumored smile, attaches another to her thread, and lets it down through the clear air into our midst. What a busy, swarming world ours is, and all the millions that run about are looking for the plums in the wrong places! It is said that the safest place in a thunderstorm is the spot where lightning has already fallen, because it is ten thousand chances to one against the electric bolt descending in the same place again. With fortune's plums we may be sure that the unlikeliest corner in which to come across one is that where a plum has already been let down. No man when he fishes whips the stream precisely where he whipped last. But this is what few consider. The moment one of us has caught and bolted a plum, there is a rush to the spot, and even a scramble for the stone we have thrown away-and see! all the while behind the backs of the scramblers a golden fruit is dangling, and fortune shakes her sides with laughter to

In this chapter I am going to relate how Richard Cable caught sight of and got hold of one of fortune's golden plums; not, indeed, a very large one, but one large enough to satisfy his requirements. It came about in the simplest way, and it came about also in the way least expected.

"Hullooh!

Whilst Cable was breaking stones on the roadside, Jacob Corye stood before him. He had not seen the host of the Magpie since he had left his roof, nearly a year ago. Since his departure, Richard had occasionally spoken to his mother about Corye, and had told her that the sufferings he had undergone from the weariful talk of the landlord had almost equalled those he endured from his injured thigh. Now that he heard the sawlike voice of Jacob, he looked up and answered ungraciously. He was ill-pleased to renew acquaintance with the man, and be subjected again to his tedious prosing about the rearing and raising and fattening of young stock. Yet that moment was a critical one; on it hung Richard's fortune. Jacob himself had caught a glimpse of the golden plum, and with rare generosity, or rather, with by no means singular stupidity, was about to put it into Richard Cable's mouth, and Richard was like a child offered a rare fruit, that bites cautiously, and turns the piece about in the mouth, considering its flavor, and then, at once, having satisfied itself tnat the quality is excellent, takes the plum at a gulp.

"Hullooh!" said Jacob Corye, standing before Richard, with his hands in his pockets and his legs wide apart, with a pipe in his mouth, and speaking with difficulty and indistinctly because of the pipe, which he was too lazy to remove. 66 How be you a-getting on in the world, eh? I needn't ask that, cap'n, when I seez you come down to stone-knacking for a living."

"If you see that, why do you ask?" inquired Cable irritably.

Jacob continued imperturbably: "I reckon you're a bit disappointed with your house. The garden ain't much for the raising and fattening of seven little maids."

Richard did not answer. He frowned and continued hammering.

"I reckon you're pretty well on wi' the

it was, then he forgot his work. The breaking of the stones became less vigorous, till at last Richard sat looking dreamily before him with the haft of the hammer in his hands and the head resting on a stone. He no more raised the hammer over the stones that day, but hobbled home in a brown study. The thoughts of Jacob Corye, when washed on the floor of his brain, proved to be sterling metal; or, to take another of the landlord's similes, the Long Man of his boggy mind when chipped by Cable's tool proved to be sound stone.

I need not give my readers the turbid talk of Jacob for them to wash, but will let them have the scheme of the innkeeper after it had been sifted and arranged by Cable.

St. Kerian lies eleven miles from Launceston, which is its nearest town. Thither the farmers have to drive their bullocks and sheep for sale. It is even worse for those near the coast; they have to send them some fifteen or twenty miles. At Launceston market the cattle are sold to jobbers, who drive them along the great highroad called Old Street — ancient, no doubt, in Roman times - to Exeter, a distance of thirty-eight or forty miles, where they are resold to dealers from Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and even Berkshire. Of late years the South-Western line has run to Plymouth by Exeter and Okehampton, so that cattle have been trucked at Lydford, Bridestowe, or Okehampton. Quite recently, in 1886, the South-Western has carried a line into Launceston; but at the time of which I write, the line had not come nearer than Exeter, thirty-eight miles from Launceston, and fifty from St. Kerian, and some sixty from the coast.

Now Jacob Corye had picked up scraps of information from the coastguard, some of whom came from Gloucestershire and Somersetshire. From them he learned that the farming done there was dairy farming. Butter and cheese were made and sold at Bath, Bristol, and in London. The land was good, the pastures rich; no stock was raised there it did not pay to raise stock, or it did not pay so well as dairy farming. Along the north coast of Cornwall the land was poor, and exposed to the western sea-gales. Only in the bottoms of the valleys was good pasture and rich alluvial soil. There was a great deal of white clay about, lying in bars from east to west on the hillsides, sometimes filling the valley bottoms; and where that was, nothing would grow but

scant grass and rushes, and sheep put on it were certain to rot. This land did well enough for young stock, and was worth from five to ten shillings an acre; but it was fit for nothing else. Corye considered that when the farmers sold their cattle at Lautceston, the jobbers who drove them to Okehampton or to Exeter and resold them, made a tidy profit; so did the dealers who bought them at Okehampton or Exeter and trucked them on into Somerset, or Gloucester, or Berks. There were at least two profits made out of the bullocks and heifers before they reached their ultimate destination.

Then, again, the dairy farmers, after their cows had calved, wanted to get rid of the calves; it did not pay them to rear them on their dairy land. On the other hand, the north-Cornish farmers could not get calves enough to rear on their poor land. When it came to fattening the young stock, they could not do it; they had not good pasturage for that; therefore, they were forced to sell, and sell cheap. In precisely the same manner, the farmers in the dairy counties sold their calves cheap. The bullocks they did not want at all, and the heifers they wanted after they were grown into cows, but not before. So sometimes calves from Somerset travelled down into Cornwall, and travelled back again, after a lapse of a couple of years, into Somerset; and as they went down, they passed through two or three dealers hands, leaving coin in their several palms; and as they went up, they passed through the same hands, and again left coin in their several palms.

Now Corye saw this confusedly. He had tried his utmost to clear the matter by using a stump of a pencil and a bit of paper, but had only succeeded in further bewildering himself. Cable saw his way at once. There flashed on his eyes the gold of the plum, and he put out his hand for it. He did not take long to consider. He at once offered Corye to drive his stock to Exeter, to truck them there, and go up country with them, and dispose of them in Somersetshire or Gloucestershire. By this means he would save the profits of at least two intermediaries. He proposed that one of these profits should go to Corye, the other to himself. Jacob Corye was to provide him with a cob on which to ride, and was to advance him a small sum sufficient for the maintenance of his children during his absence. Whatever Corye advanced to him, he was to deduct from Cable's share of the profits on his return. The scheme was so simple and practica

ble that the host of the Magpie closed with the offer at once. It was a relief to him to find that his ideas were being put into practical shape. This pleased him more than the prospect of making money. "You see, ," said he, shaking hands again and again with Cable, "I've ideas, but they're bogged."

"Do more," said Richard, "than send your own stock; buy of your neighbors, that I may have a large drove. The larger the drove, so long as it is manageable, the more the money that will come in."

'Doy' look here," said Jacob. "I'm a liberal man wi' them as deals liberal wi' me. I'll keep all your little maids on Magpie ale as long as you're away, and no charge. I said a kilderkin, I say two."

"Thank you," answered Richard. "The little girls drink only water and milk."

Cable finished the work he had to do for the waywardens on the road; he said nothing to any one in St. Kerian except his mother about his projected journey; but he went over to the Magpie once, before starting, to concert plans, and see a coastguardman who came out of Somersetshire, and who, Corye thought, might be of use to him. The man was anxious to send a message home, and with the message some Cornish crystals set in bog-oak as a brooch for his sister, who kept an inn near Bath; also some specimens of peacock copper, and spar with tin ore in it, and mundic. These samples of the riches of Cornwall would interest the Somersetshire folk of his native village of Bewdley. Cable took the names of some of the farmers about the place, and promised to lodge at the inn and give the specimens and the brooch.

My sister," said the coastguardman, "has a lot o' little childer; but I haven't seen none but the eldest, whom she calls Mary."

"Her eldest - Mary!" exclaimed Richard. "I'm certain to put up with her. What is her inn?"

"The Otterbourne Arms. It belongs to an old lady who is squiress of the place, called Otterbourne."

Richard received his instructions from Jacob; they were confused and unintelligible. He almost offended him and Brought the agreement to a condition of rupture by declining Magpie beer.

"I've a notion of taking the pledge," he said.

"More's the reason you should take a drop now, afore you does," argued Corye.

The night before his departure, Richard Cable could not sleep. He saw that the golden plum was let down within his reach, and he had his hand on it. There remained to him only to bite into the rich fruit. But in this case, as in all other in this world, every good thing brings with it something bad-there is no gain without loss. If he were about to rise from want to plenty, he must consent to be much parted from his children. What this meant to him, few can understand. We all have our interests, our friends, our studies, and although we love our children, they do not engross our whole thoughts, occupy our hearts to the exclusion of everything else. With Richard Cable it was otherwise. He had no friends, no acquaintances, no pursuits, no interests apart from his children. He lived for nothing else, he thought of nothing else. He worked for nothing else; he loved nothing else, except only his mother. The wrench to him was almost unendurable. He had given up the thought of going to sea after his accident, because he could not bear to be parted from them; and now he only left them because he had resolved to make his dream come true, and in no other way that he could see was that dream to be realized.

Richard kept a little lamp alight all night before he left home, because he left his bed every hour to look at one after another of the seven little sleeping heads, and to wonder which he could best spare, should it please that Providence which so ill-used him to take one away whilst he was absent. He found that he could not part with dearest Mary, so thoughtful and forbearing with others, so full of love and kindness to the youngest ones - so like a little mother to them, though she was only fourteen years old; nor with Effie, so sprightly, with her twinkling eyes, and that dimple in her ever-laughing cheek; nor with Jane, who clung to Effie, being her twin sister, and who must go if Effie went: nor with Martha, who had such endearing, coaxing ways; nor with Lettice, with a voice like a lark, so shrill, yet withal so clear and sweet; nor with Susie the pickle, who already knew her letters, and could say Ba-Ba, and one and two makes three; no- she said Ba spells sheep, and one and two makes four; no, not with Bessie the baby, Bessie, whom, after all, it would be best that God should take. No, no, no-ten thousand times, no!