CHAPTER VII.
THE "JOLLY PILCHARDS." On the following Saturday night (New Year's Eve) an incident worth record occurred in the bar-parlour of the "Jolly Pilchards" at Porthlooe.
You may find the inn to this day on the western side of the Hauen as you go to the Old Quay.

A pair of fish-scales faces the entrance, and the jolly pilchards themselves hang over your head, on a signboard that creaks mightily when the wind blows from the south.
The signboard was creaking that night, and a thick drizzle drove in gusts past the door.

Behind the red blinds within, the landlady, Prudy Polwarne, stood with her back to the open hearth.

Her hands rested on her hips, and the firelight, that covered all the opposite wall and most of the ceiling with her shadow, beat out between her thick ankles in the shape of a fan.

She was a widow, with a huge, pale face and a figure nearly as broad as it was long; and no man thwarted her.