Though I didn't know it then, she was the Preventive boat, and her business was to watch the Hauen: for there had been a brush between her and the _Unity_ lugger, a fortnight back, and a Preventive man shot through the breast-bone, and my mother's brother Philip was hiding down in the town.

I minded, later, how that the men across the vale, in Farmer Tresidder's wheat-field, paused every now and then, as they pitched the sheaves, to give a look up towards the churchyard, and the gleaners moved about in small knots, causeying and glancing over their shoulders at the cutter out in the bay; and how, when all the field was carried, they waited round the last load, no man offering to cry the _Neck_, as the fashion was, but lingering till sun was near down behind the slope and the long shadows stretching across the stubble.
"Sha'n't thee go underground to-day, father ?" says I, at last.
He turned slowly round, and says he, "No, sonny.

'Reckon us'll climb skywards for a change." And with that, he took my hand, and pushing abroad the belfry door began to climb the stairway.

Up and up, round and round we went, in a sort of blind-man's-holiday full of little glints of light and whiff's of wind where the open windows came; and at last stepped out upon the leads of the tower and drew breath.
"There's two-an'-twenty parishes to be witnessed from where we're standin', sonny--if ye've got eyes," says my father.
Well, first I looked down towards the harvesters and laughed to see them so small: and then I fell to counting the church-towers dotted across the high-lands, and seeing if I could make out two-and-twenty.
'Twas the prettiest sight--all the country round looking as if 'twas dusted with gold, and the Plymouth road winding away over the hills like a long white tape.

I had counted thirteen churches, when my father pointed his hand out along this road and called to me-- "Look'ee out yonder, honey, an' say what ye see!" "I see dust," says I.
"Nothin' else?
Sonny boy, use your eyes, for mine be dim." "I see dust," says I again, "an' suthin' twinklin' in it, like a tin can--" "Dragooners!" shouts my father; and then, running to the side of the tower facing the harvest-field, he put both hands to his mouth and called: "_What have 'ee?
What have 'ee ?_"-- very loud and long.
"_A neck--a neck!_" came back from the field, like as if all shouted at once--dear, the sweet sound! And then a gun was fired, and craning forward over the coping I saw a dozen men running across the stubble and out into the road towards the Hauen; and they called as they ran, "_A neck--a neck!_" "Iss," says my father, "'tis a neck, sure 'nuff.