Secret Bread

as using it as a bridle, his bare knees gripped the wooden bar under him, and his little brass-tipped heels flashed in the sun like spurs. It was Saturday morning, whic

arson was preparing him for St. Renny Grammar School, felt in the mood for h

quality by successive coats of whitewash. The room where Ishmael had been born boasted a domed ceiling, and a band of moulding half-way up the walls culminated over the bed's head in a representation of the Crucifixion-the drooping Christ surrounded by a medley of soldiers and horses, curiously intent dogs and swooning women, above whose heads the fluttered angels seemed entangled in the host of pennons flaunting round the cross. Cloom was a house of neglected glories, of fine things fallen on base uses, like the family itself. When James Ruan came into his inheritance it was still a gentleman's estate; when he died it was a mere farm. A distor

tion was slow and such luxuries as meat, white bread, bedding, and coal were unknown to the poor, and by a shrewdness peculiar to himself-did James Ruan manage to make his property contribute to his private income, a condition of affairs by no means inevitable in farming, although at that time the hated Corn Law, only repealed soon after Ishmael's birth, had for thirty years been in force for the benefit of landowners. If t

ins the special licence had been obtained from the commissary of the Bishop of Exeter, how she had sent for the Parson the moment the Squire had finally declared his mind made up, and then for Lawyer Tonkin, only to be excluded from the conference that followed, Annie felt her resentment surge up. If it had not been for the fact that the Parson and Tonkin had been appointed guardians to the boy, Ishmael would, in all probability, never have lived beyond babyhood. A little neglect would soon have ended the matter, and even if any local magnate had bestirred himself to make a fuss, no Cornish jury would have convicted. All this Boase knew, and he managed to make Annie aware of the fact that he meant his ward to thrive or he would make trouble, and she was one of those women who tremble before a spiritual pastor and master. Therefore she

a monotonous and hurried orchestra. A big red cow came across the field and stood in a line with the gate, her head, with its calm eyes and gently moving wet nostrils, turned towards Ishmael. She was against the sun, and at the edges of her the fine outer hairs, gleaming transparent, made her seem outlined in flame-she was a glorified, a transfigured cow, a cow for the gods. In a newly-turned field beyond a man and a boy were planting young broccoli; they worked with the swiftness and smoothness of a machine, the man making a succession of holes with

es. His fair hair curled closely over his head and clung to his forehead in damp rings, the sweat standing out all over his face made it shine like metal, and the soaked shirt clung to the big muscles of his body. His face changed a little as he caught sight of the child on

he marnen'. Couldn' 'ee be gleanen' in th' arish? You may be gentry, but

s nawthen. It'll be a good day, sure 'nough, when he goes to school to St. Renny, if it gives we a little

silently buckling on his belt, took hold of the rope head-stall and led the horse towa

it was such a tremendous risk to take, such a staking of his soul. He went forward, measuring the distance with his eye, and trying to calculate which foot would take that

s it means I'll be saved by something I do myself. I wish I could be quite

avour, he did see a crow, there would then be no smoothing away the fact, as often before, with "Perhaps that doesn't count"-it would be too obviously a sign from Heaven. He finally changed the wager to, "If I see birds in the field I'll see Phoebe to-day:" to such considerations