Page:Moonfleet - John Meade Falkner.pdf/20

 poor chaps turned off at Dorchester, and standing up to his knees in the river Frome to get a sight of them; for all the countryside was there, and such a press there was no place on land. There, that's enough," he said, turning again to the gravestone. "On Monday I'll line the ports in black, and get a brush of red to pick out the flag. And now, my son, you've helped with the lantern; so come down to the Why Not, and there I'll have a word with Elzevir, who sadly needs the talk of kindly friends to cheer him, and we'll find you a glass of hollands to keep out autumn chills."

I was but a lad, and thought it a vast honour to be asked to the Why Not; for did not such an invitation raise me at once to the dignity of manhood? Ah, sweet boyhood, how eager are we as boys to be quit of thee; with what regret do we look back on thee before our man's race is halfway run! Yet was not my pleasure without alloy, for I feared even to think of what Aunt Jane would say if she knew that I had been at the Why Not; and beside that, I stood in awe of grim old Elzevir Block, grimmer and sadder a thousand times since David's death.

The Why Not was not the real name of the inn; it was properly the Mohune Arms. The Mohunes had once owned, as I have said, the whole of the village; but their fortunes fell, and with them fell the fortunes of Moonfleet. The ruins of their mansion showed gray on the hillside above the village; their almshouses stood halfway down the street, with the quadrangle deserted and overgrown; the Mohune image and superscription was on everything from the church to the inn, and everything that bore it was stamped also