Free Demelza by Winston Graham Page A

health and happiness of all your children, and may we all see a prosperous county and better times together.'
    There was a rapturous cheer at this.
    The Martins stayed behind - Mrs Zacky to help her daughter with the clearing up - so the Daniels went home alone.
    Leading the way Grannie Daniel and Mrs Paul supported Mark's elder brother between them; then just behind, like frigates behind ships of the line, came Paul's three young children. A little to the left, heads close together in whispered talk, were Mark's two sisters, Mary and Ena; at the rear Old Man Daniel hobbled and grunted, and the long silent figure of Mark made up the convoy.
    It was a pleasant July night with the western sky still luminous, as from the reflection of a lighted window. Now and then a cockchafer would drone past their ears and a bat lift fluttering wings in the dusk.
    Once they had left the stream behind, the only babble was that of Grannie Daniel, a hearty fierce old woman in the late seventies.
    The convoy, shadowy uneven figures in the shadowy half dark, breasted the rise of the hill, bobbed and stumbled on the sky line for a few seconds and then plunged down towards the cluster of cottages at Mellin. The valley swallowed them up and left only the quiet stars and the night glow of summer over the sea.
    In his bed Mark Daniel lay very quiet listening. Their cottage, set between the Martins and the Viguses, had only two bedrooms. The smaller of these was used by Old Man Daniel and his mother and the eldest of Paul's three children. The other one Paul and his wife Beth and their two younger children took, while Mary and Ena slept in a lean-to at the back of the cottage. Mark slept on a straw mattress in the kitchen.
    Everyone was a long time settling off, but at last when the house was quiet he stood up and drew on his breeches and coat again. He did not put on his boots until he was safe outside. The silence of the night was full of tiny noises after the enclosed silence of the cottage. He set off in the direction of Nampara. He did not know what he was going to do, but he could not lie and sleep with this thing inside him.
    This time there was no silhouette on the sky line, but for a moment the trunk of a tree thickened and then a shadow moved beside the ruined engine house of Wheal Grace.
    Nampara was not yet in darkness. Candles gleamed behind the curtains of Captain Poldark's bedroom and there was a light flickering about downstairs. But it was not for these that he looked. Some way up the valley beside the stream were the two caravans which housed the strolling players. He went towards them.
    He saw as he drew nearer that there were lights here too, though they had been screened by the hawthorn and wild nut trees. For a man of his size he moved quietly, and he came close to the larger caravan without raising an alarm.
    No one was asleep here or thought of it. Candles burned and the players were sitting about a long table. There was much talk and laughter and the chink of money. Mark crept near, keeping open a wary eye for a possible dog.
    The windows of the caravan were some distance from the ground, but with his great height he could see in. They were all here: the fat man with the glass eye, the blowsy leading woman, a thin fair man who had played the hero, the shrivelled little comedian... and the girl. They were playing some card game, with thick greasy cards. The girl was just dealing, and as she laid a card each time opposite the thin fair man she said something that made them all laugh. She was wearing a kind of Chinese smock and her black hair was ruffled as if she had been running her hands through it; she sat now holding her cards, one bare elbow on the table and a frown of impatience growing.
    But there is a stage when even the slightly imperfect is an added lure; somehow Mark was grateful for this falling short from divinity: he stood there looking in, one great hand holding back a prickly hawthorn bough, the uncertain light from