Read Online The Four Swans by Winston Graham - Free Book Online Page B

three years ago for copper before tin was discovered in the sixty level. Here they put on their shirts, took off their hats, sat down, and by the smeeching light of the tallow candles spent a half-hour over their meal. Munching his thick cold, pasty, Peter Hoskin began to chaff Sam about Drake’s new property and asked politely if he could have the grass captain’s job when Captain Poldark bought Sam a mine of his own. Sam bore this equably, as he often had to bear jokes about his religious life from other miners who were hardy unbelievers and meant to stay that way. His even temper had stood him in good stead many times. With an abiding conviction of the redemption of the world, it made little difference to him that some should scoff. He smiled quietly at them and thought no worse of them at all.
    But presently he interrupted Peter’s mouth-filled banter by saying he had been to surgeon’s that morning to get aid for the Verneys, and that a maidservant had opened the door, tall and handsome but bold looking with white skin and blackish hair. Did Peter know who twas?
    Peter, having been in the district a year longer than Sam, and having mixed in different company, knew well enough who twas. He sputtered some crumbs on his breeches and said that without a trace of doubt this would be Emma Tregirls, Lobb Tregirls’s sister, him that worked a stamp in Sawle Combe, and daughter of that old scoundrel Bartholomew Tregirls who had but recent found himself a comfortable home at Sally Chill-Off’s.
    `Tholly went wi’ your brother Drake and Cap’n Poldark on that French caprouse. You mind last year when Joe Nanfan were killed and they corned back wi’ the young doctor.’
    `Aye; I mind well. I should do !’
    `Tholly went on that. Old devil ‘e be, if ever I seen one. E’d not live long round these here parts if some folk ‘ad their way.’
    `And Emma?’
    Peter wet his forefinger and, began to pick up the, crumbs he had spattered on his breeches. `Cor, that’s better now. I were nation thurled for that. I ‘ad scarce a’ bite for supper last eve, Emma? Emma Tregirls? Reg’lar piece. You want to be warned, you do. Half the boys of the village be tail-on-end ‘bout she.’
    `Not wed?’
    `Not wed, nor like to be, I’d say. There be always one man or another over-fanged ‘bout Emma; but gracious knows whether they get what they come for. She d’go mopping around but she never had no brat yet, not’s I know. Bit of a Mystery. Bit of a mystery. But that d’make the lads all the more randy…’
    Sam was silent then until they resumed work. He thought quietly about it all. God moved in a mysterious way. He would not presume to question the workings of the Holy Spirit. Nor would he attempt to direct them himself. In due course all would be revealed to him.. But had there not also been Mary Magdalen?

CHAPTER FOUR
    On a sunny February afternoon which, although fine and bright, had all day had a, hint of frost lingering in it like a chill breath, the stage coach, on, the last leg ofits journey from Bodmin to Truro, stopped about a mile out of the-town: and deposited two young girls at the mouth of a lane leading down to the river. Waiting to meet them was a tall, graceful, shy young woman who in the last months had become known to the inhabitants of the town as the new wife of the vicar of St Margaret’s.
    The young woman, who was accompanied by a manservant, embraced the two girls ecstatically, tears welling into her eyes but not falling; and presently they began to walk, together, down the steep lane, followed by the manservant with a trunk, and a, valise belonging to the girls. They chattered. continuously, and the manservant, who was accustomed to his mistress being excessively reserved and silent, was astonished to hear her taking a full part in the conversation, and actually laughing. It was a surprising sound.
    As sisters they were not noticeably like - except perhaps in the fancy names which their father, an