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“I hadn’t got a sweetheart then, an’ I’ve never had one since–never saw another woman who could ha’ looked what she looked. I was condemned a single man there on the spot: an’, what’s more, I was condemned to lose the belt. There was that ‘pon her face that no man is good enow to cause; an’ there was suthin I wanted to see instead– just for a moment–that I could ha’ given forty silver mugs to fetch up.

“An’ I looked at her over your shoulders wi’ a kind o’ question i’ my face, an’ I did fetch it up. The next moment, you had your chance and cast me flat. When I came round–for you were always an ugly player, Sam Badgery–an’ the folks was consolin’ me, I gave a look in her direction: but she had no eyes for me at all. She was usin’ all her dear deceit to make ‘ee think you was a hero. So home I went, an’ never set eyes ‘pon her agen. That’s the tale; an’ I didn’t want to tell it. But we’m old gaffers both by this time, an’ I couldn’ make this here belt meet round my middle, if I wanted to.”

Sam Badgery straightened his upper lip.

“No. I got a call from the Lord a year after we was married, and gave up wrestlin’. My poor wife found grace about the same time, an’ since then we’ve been preachers of the Word togither for nigh on forty years. If our work had lain in Cornwall, I’d have sought you out an’ wrestled with you again–not in the flesh, but in the spirit. Man, I’d have shown you the Kingdom of Heaven!”

“Thank ‘ee,” answered Dendle; “but I got a glimpse o’t once–from your wife.”

The other stared, failing to understand this speech. What puzzled him always annoyed him. He set down the cup and belt on the yacht’s deck, shook hands abruptly, and hurried back to the inn, where already Boutigo was harnessing for the return journey.