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Charles stopped a bullet before the British decided to cut their losses and effect another panic evacuation like Sir John Moore's, then of course the house would come to him; but even so, did it matter what condition it was in? He had no further interest in living here. All he was sure was that he would never sell it to the other Poldarks.
    When the meal was finished he dismissed the Harrys and went over the house room by room, almost every one of which had some special memory for him. Some he thought of with affection, one at least with concentrated hate. When he was done he returned to the great hall and sat before the fire Mrs Harry had prudently lighted. The sunshine had not yet soaked through the thick walls of the old Tudor house. He had not decided whether to stay the night. It was his custom to lie here and return on the morrow. But the bedroom upstairs - his bedroom, next to Elizabeth's old bedroom - had looked uninviting, and not even the two warming-pans in the bed were likely to guarantee it against damp. The year before last he thought he had caught a chill.
    He looked at his watch. There was time enough to be back in Truro, if not Cardew - hours of daylight left. But he was loath to move, to wrench at the ribbon of memories that were running through his brain. He lit a pipe - a rare thing for him for he was not a great smoker - and stabbed at the fire, which broke into a new blaze. It spat at him like Aunt Agatha. This was old fir; there was not much else on the estate except long elms and a few pines; not many trees would stand the wind. It was after all a God-forsaken place ever to have built a house. He supposed Geoffrey de Trenwith had made money out of metals even in those far-off days. Like the Godolphins, the Bassets, the Pendarves. They built near the mines that made them rich.
    The first time he had seen Aunt Agatha was in this room more than thirty-five years ago. Francis had invited him from school to spend a night. Even then the old woman had been immensely old. Difficult to believe that she had survived everybody and lived long enough to poison the first years of his married life. Years later she had been sitting in that chair opposite him now - the very same chair - when he had come into this room to tell his father that Elizabeth had given birth to a son, born, prematurely, on the 14th February and so to be called Valentine. She had hissed at both of them like a snake, malevolent, resenting their presence in her family home, hating him for his satisfaction at being the father of a fine boy, trying even then with every ingenuity of her evil nature to discover a weak spot in their complacency through which she could insert some venom, some note of discord, some shabby, sour predi ction. 'Born under a black moon’ she had said, because there had been a total eclipse at the time. 'Born under a black moon, and so he'll come to no good, this son of yours. They never do. I only knew two and they both came to bad ends!'
    In that chair, opposite him now. Strange how a human envelope collapsed and decayed, yet an inanimate object with four legs carved and fash ioned by a carpenter in James II’ s day could exist unchanged, untouched by the years. The sun did not get round to the great window for another hour yet, so it was shadowy in here, and the flickering cat-spitting fire created strange illusions. When the flame died one could see Agatha there still. That wreck of an old female, malodorous, the scrawny grey hair escaping from under the ill-adjusted wig, a bead of moisture oozing from eye and mouth, the gravestone teeth, the darting glance, the hand capped behind the ear. She might be there now. God damn her, she was more real to him at this moment than Elizabeth! But she was dead, had died at ninety-eight, he had at least prevented her from cheatin g the world about her birthday.
    A footstep sounded, and all the nerves in his body started. Yet he contrived not to move, not to give way, not to accept