"You wouldn't care to invest in Wheal Risky, I suppose? suggested Mark maliciously. "Not just at present," replied Mr. Josiah in a sarcastic tone. ""Twould be a pity to take away one shilling of profit from the clever young gentlemen who are enriching an ungrateful country by turning its tin and copper into gold. I daresay you can find a few widows and orphans to take the shares you do not want yourselves. Josiah Toms prefers to exercise the virtue of self-denial a little longer." 213 CHAPTER XVI. A MAN'S LOVE. Of a' the airts the wind can blaw, For there the bonnie lassie lives, The lassie I lo'e best. Burns. It MARK RUNDLE had been a week at St. Enodoc. He had finished his business, such as it was, and his leave from the postoffice would expire on the morrow. occurred to him that he should like to spend his last evening strolling about the cliffs and little coves which he had known from childhood. His thoughts during his ramble took a wide range, dwelling in turn upon his mining schemes, his love projects, his own past folly, Jenifer's beauty and Esther Mansell's spitefulness. Immersed in his day-dreams he became oblivious of the beauty of the scene spread out before him. The moan of the harbour was sounding in his ears, and a line of breakers showed where the bar lay, but what were keen of ocean, and feathery foam, and blue sea, and clamorous sea-gull to him whose heart was set on the acquisition of a faire ladye; to say nothing of tin-mines and the ten per cent. interest? Hence it was that Mark in his abstraction nearly stumbled over a woman sitting reading on a rock by the side of the path through the barleyfield which skirted the cliff. As he instinctively apologized his eyes met those of the reader, and to his intense embarrassment he saw that it was Jenifer Trewhella. Mark had usually no lack of confidence, but somehow in this emergency he could frame Jenifer no satisfactory speech to the girl whom he loved and really wished to see. made no answer to his incoherent apologies, but simply moved aside to give him room to pass. "Won't you speak to me, Jenifer?" he asked, recovering himself. "You needn't shun me as if I were a snake or a toad, or some other noxious animal." "" I never shunned you," she said simply, "I only moved out of your way." "But you can't deny that you dislike me?" he persisted. "I have no feeling of dislike towards you," she answered; "I have no feeling one way or the other. You have passed away altogether out of my life, that is all." Why "And yet we were once great friends, if not something more," he said. should there be such a separation?" "You need not ask me that,” Jenifer replied. "The separation was your act, not mine." "Not altogether mine," he said. "Ar thur Treleaven cut me out, although he knew there was almost an engagement between us." "Arthur never did a dishonourable thing," said Jenifer indignantly. "I only go by what Esther Mansell told me." "You weren't always so ready to believe Esther; it suited your purpose to believe her then. But we need not go into that now, it is all dead and buried.” "Will you shake hands with me and forget the past then ?" he asked. "I have been foolish and worse than foolish, I know; and if I have given you pain by any action of mine, forgive me, Jenifer. I haven't done you any real harm, and the |