Mavis and Merle were brimming over with curiosity about Bevis and about several other affairs in Chagmouth, but they had to keep their questions to themselves, for Dr. Tremayne considered that narrow Devon roads in the gathering darkness required his whole attention, and that conversation might mean an accident.

"You're requested not to speak to the man at the wheel," he replied, in answer to Merle's first eager inquiry; "it takes me all my time to drive."

So the girls subsided into quiet, and did not even speak to one another, but sat watching the glare of the headlights on the road and the dark outlines of the high hedges and banks above. They made up for their silence, though, after supper, for they found Jessop in the pantry, and, offering to wipe the silver for her as an excuse for their presence, they began a brisk catechism.

Jessop was a kindly old gossip, a native of Chagmouth, and had all the affairs of the little town at her fingers' ends. She was nothing loath to discuss its inhabitants while she washed up the supper things. "To begin with, who is Bevis?" asked Mavis eagerly. "We can't make him out at all. He speaks and looks like a gentleman, and yet he talked about working in the fields. Does he live at Grimbal's Farm? What relation is he to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock?"

"He called Mrs. Penruddock 'Mother'," added Merle, "but he doesn't look the least bit like her son. Is he or not?"

"Yes and no," said Jessop, wielding her dish-cloth as she talked. "Mrs. Penruddock has been a good mother to him for a matter of over fourteen years now, but his own mother lies in Chagmouth churchyard. She must have been a handsome woman from all accounts, though I never saw her myself. It was my cousin, Mary, who was barmaid at the 'King's Arms' at the time, who told me. It's a long story. There are many in Chagmouth besides you who've asked themselves if Bevis isn't a gentleman born. But nobody has ever been able to answer the question."

"Why? Oh, do tell us!"

"We want so immensely to know."

Jessop wrung out her dish-cloth with rather irritating slowness, then hung it to dry on a nail. She seemed turning matters over in her mind, and her mental processes were apparently no swifter than her actions.

"I don't see why I shouldn't. There's nothing you oughtn't to hear," she replied at last, as if coming to a conclusion. "Everybody in Chagmouth knows about Bevis, and if I don't tell you somebody else will. It's nothing to the lad's discredit, I'm sure. I always say I've a soft corner for Bevis. Such a fine boy he always was, and he'll make a fine man yet—he's worth two of young Williams at The Warren in my opinion. But some folks are born with silver spoons in their mouths and others aren't. Bevis isn't one of the lucky ones, poor lad! Providence always seems to be taking him up and throwing him down again. What'll be the end of him goodness only knows!"

The story which Jessop told to the girls, while she polished the silver in the pantry, was lengthy and interspersed with many comments and reflections of her own, and many quotations from what other people had said, but the main facts of the case, as related to Mavis and Merle, were briefly as follows.

Rather more than fourteen years ago, on a stormy afternoon in late autumn, such inhabitants of Chagmouth as happened to be standing on their doorsteps, or looking out of their windows, noticed a closed conveyance from Kilvan station drive along the main street. The occurrence was sufficiently unusual to arouse comment. Except in the summer season tourists rarely came to Chagmouth, and if any stranger made his appearance during the quiet months of the year the villagers were naturally inquisitive as to his errand. In a small place every item of news is of interest, and those who saw the conveyance pass at once began to speculate whether the Rector's sister had come to pay him a visit, or whether old Mrs. Greaves's sailor son had returned home on leave. The bystanders near the market square had the opportunity of satisfying their curiosity, for the carriage stopped at the King's Arms Hotel, and from it stepped a lady, young, handsome, and well-dressed, and carrying a little child in her arms. She interrogated the landlord, who had come to the door at the sound of wheels, paid and dismissed the driver, gave one hasty glance round the square, then entered the hotel.

Those inhabitants of Chagmouth who witnessed her arrival agreed afterwards that she was "a dark-eyed, smart-looking sort of person, with an air of London fashions about her", but their glimpse was a brief one, for next moment she and her child and her travelling-bag had disappeared inside the doorway of the little hotel, and the conveyance was toiling up the hill on its way back to Kilvan station.

Inside the "King's Arms" the lady gave her name as Mrs. Hunter, and engaged a private sitting-room and a bedroom, explaining that she had heard of the mild climate of Chagmouth and wished to try the benefit of its sea air. With the help of the chambermaid she bathed her little boy and put him to bed. Later she was served with dinner. At about nine o'clock she rang the bell violently, and the servant, who came in response to her summons, found her huddled in an armchair, half fainting and fighting for breath.

"My heart," she panted. "It's one of my heart attacks. Can you fetch a doctor? Oh, I am dying!"

The terrified girl ran for the landlord, who hurried in with brandy. In the midst of the general panic someone was dispatched for the village nurse, and the ostler mounted a bicycle and rode away to Durracombe to summon Dr. Tremayne. The people at the "King's Arms" did their ignorant best. They laid the patient on the sofa, rubbed her hands, bathed her head, and tried to force brandy between her blue lips; but long before any medical aid could reach her, she gave one last shuddering gasp, and passed away beyond reach of human help. Dr. Tremayne had been paying a night visit to a farm on the moors. It was not possible for him to arrive at Chagmouth until the following morning. He found the place all agog about the tragic event that had happened. Mrs. Jarvis, the village nurse, had performed the last offices. Mr. Tingcomb, the landlord, had solemnly collected the poor lady's possessions and had locked them up in his safe, and his wife and the barmaid between them were trying to still the wails of the little, dark-eyed boy, who did not take readily to strangers and refused all their well-meant offers of comfort.

Such a case had never been known in the neighbourhood, for not only had the stranger succumbed within a few hours of her arrival at Chagmouth, but the news soon leaked out that it was impossible to identify her. There were no papers of any kind either in her pockets or in her travelling-bag. Her purse contained six pounds in gold and a little silver, but no card or address to mark its owner. The police, called in to investigate matters, could obtain no clue. On hearing all the evidence they ventured the opinion that the lady had probably given a false name. London newspapers published an account of the romantic happening, and for perhaps a week the public wondered over it, then other and more important matters cropped up and it was forgotten.

Meanwhile, in the absence of any information as to who she was or whence she had come, the stranger had been laid to rest in the little churchyard on the hill, and the rector, in charity, presuming her to be one of his flock, read Christian burial-service over her. Whatever her errand in Chagmouth her earthly body found its last home there, and most of the villagers, some in kindly sympathy and some in mere curiosity, attended the funeral and left flowers upon her grave.

Naturally, amid the whole of the sad and perplexing business, the great centre of interest was the dark-eyed baby who was toddling about the passages of the "King's Arms". He had made friends with Mrs. Tingcomb and the barmaid, but resented being kissed by the dozens of women who came to see him and gossip over him. He was a bonny, sturdy, little fellow, possibly about two years old, who could walk, but beyond a few words had not mastered even the elements of speech. The chambermaid, who helped at his first bath, remembered that his mother had called him Bevis. The possession of his Christian name was felt to be something, though all other information about him was painfully lacking. For several weeks the police did their best to trace his relations, and Mr. Tingcomb lived in hourly expectation that somebody would arrive suddenly in a station conveyance to claim him and take him away. But nobody came. The excitement died down, and presently even the local newspapers ceased to refer to the case. People began to shake their heads and say it was plain the poor lamb wasn't wanted, or his friends would have turned up from somewhere to find him. Mrs. Tingcomb, very much occupied with her house and the bar, began to complain to her neighbours of the burden of her charge. It was nobody's business at the "King's Arms" to look after a lively boy whose toddling feet led him into every mischief. She even hinted that she considered the time had arrived when she could conscientiously hand him over to the Poor Law Guardians at the "Union", whose obvious duty it was to provide for him.

At this point of the proceedings Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock had stepped into the breach. Eight years before they had lost their only child, a boy of three, and they now proposed to adopt little Bevis to fill up the empty gap in their household. They were kind, homely people, without much education, but thoroughly respected in the village, and everybody at once agreed that their offer solved the difficult problem. To save the child from the stigma of being brought up at the Union was everything. Even the poorest fisherman's home would have been preferable to that. So little Bevis, with the approval of the whole of Chagmouth, was formally adopted and transferred to Grimbal's Farm, where he grew apace and learnt to call Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock Father and Mother. If gossiping tongues could only have kept silent he might have continued to believe they were his parents, but one day, when he was about seven years old, he came back from school crying as if his heart was broken. Some of the boys had teased him and told him the story, with several exaggerations, of how he had been left at the "King's Arms" and never claimed. Mrs. Penruddock comforted him as best she could, but she acknowledged to her neighbours that he was never the same child afterwards. The knowledge had shattered his Paradise. He was a very proud, sensitive boy, and the taunts of his schoolfellows rankled. Henceforward he felt a sense of difference between himself and other children. He was quick to catch any allusions to his position, and a word or a glance was enough to bring the colour flooding into his cheeks. He fought many battles at school on this score, for he was hot tempered as well as proud, and for a year or two he was somewhat of an Ishmael, shunning his companions and hurrying home to the haven of Grimbal's Farm directly lessons were over.

Then the fates, who seemed to use the boy as a shuttlecock, brought him an unexpected turn of good fortune. A lady, who was a summer visitor at the farm, took an interest in him, and was much touched by the romance of his story. She was well off, and she offered to pay for his education at a high-class school. So Bevis went as a boarder to Shelton College, where nobody knew anything about his antecedents, and he held his own among other boys, and only came back to Grimbal's Farm for holidays, and grew up so different from the fisher children of Chagmouth that he was less inclined than ever to make friends with them, and was a source of much gratification to Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock, who marvelled at his learning and his manners, and were as proud of him as a pair of robins who have hatched a young cuckoo.

Mrs. Martin, the lady who had provided for Bevis's education, threw out hints of Cambridge, and of training him for one of the professions, a goal which had spurred his ambition and caused him to work his hardest. He was making most satisfactory progress at Shelton College, and was already beginning to look forward to choosing a career, when fickle fate again interfered, and toppled over all his castles in the air. Mrs. Martin died suddenly and left no will. Her heirs-at-law took over her estate, and paid any outstanding debts, but they saw no necessity for continuing her charities. Bevis's schooldays, therefore, came to a brief end, and he returned to Grimbal's Farm with no prospect of ever realizing the hopes that tantalizing Fortune had dangled before his longing eyes.

"I do say it's hard on him," finished Jessop, as she told the tale to Mavis and Merle in the pantry. "He's been educated a gentleman as much as young Williams at The Warren—and my cousin, Mary, who saw her, sticks to it his mother was a lady born!—yet there he is, working on the farm like any labourer, and it's not his job. A head-piece like his was meant for book learning and college."

"Can't Mr. and Mrs. Penruddock send him back to school?" asked Mavis.

"No; the farm's not been doing over well lately. They want his help on the land, too, and, fair play to the lad, he's giving them of his best. It's a poor look-out for him, though, just to carry on at the farm. The doctor has been teaching him to dispense, but that's only a step towards medicine, and won't do much for him in the long run, I'm afraid. Some say it was foolish kindness of Mrs. Martin, and his schooling will have done him more harm than good, but you know how folks talk. They're all a bit jealous of him really, down Chagmouth way, if the truth be told. He's a fine lad, and he sticks to his foster-parents right loyally, but you've only to look at him to see he was made for something different from farm life, and if ever he gets the chance he'll be off and away, or I'm greatly mistaken. There, I've told you all about Bevis, and a little too much perhaps, though there's no harm in your knowing, that I can see."

"Thank you!" said Mavis. "We're so glad to know. It explains so very much that we thought queer about him. I understand it all now. Poor Bevis!" "Yes, poor Bevis, indeed!" echoed Merle. "We'd no idea he had all that romantic story behind him when we walked down the cliffs with him this afternoon. What you say is just right—he's different altogether from other people, and you wonder how it is until you really know the reason why."