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ALPHA LIBRARY.
Michael's Crag
By
Grant Allen.

Chicago and New York:
Rand, McNally & Company,
Publishers.


Copyright, 1893, by Rand, McNally & Co.
Michael's Crag.



CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. A Cornish Landlord, ----- 7
II. Trevennack, 24
III. Face to Face, - 45
IV. Tyrrel's Remorse, 62
V. A Strange Delusion, 76
VI. Pure Accident, 86
VII. Peril by Land, 103
VIII. Safe at Last, ...... 117
IX. Medical Opinion, 130
X. A Bold Attempt, 147
(5)


6
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
XI. Business is Business, ----- 161
XII. A Hard Bargain, - - - - - 177
XIII. Angel and Devil, - 198
XIV. At Arm's Length, 210
XV. St. Michael Does Battle, - - - -222


8
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

brow despondently, "I simply hate it. If I
wasn't the landlord here, to be perfectly frank
with you, I'd never come near
Penmorgan. I do it for con-
science' sake, to be among my
own people. That's my only
reason. I disapprove of absen-
teeism; and now the land's mine,
why, I must put up with it, I
suppose, and live upon it in
spite of myself. But I do it against the
grain. The whole place, if I tell you the truth,
is simply detestable to me."
He leaned on his stick as he spoke, and looked
down gloomily at the heather. A
handsome young man,Walter Tyr-
rel, of the true Cornish type — tall,
dark, poetical-looking, with pensive
eyes and a thick black mustache,
which gave dignity and character
to his otherwise almost too deli-
cately feminine features. And he
stood on the open moor just a hundred yards
outside his own front door at Penmorgan, on


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
i)

the Lizard peninsula, looking westward down a
great wedge-shaped gap in the solid serpentine
rock to a broad belt of sea beyond
without a ship or a sail on it. The
view was indeed, as Eustace Le
Neve admitted, a somewhat bleak
and dreary one. For miles, as far
as the eye could reach, on either
side, nothing was to be seen but
one vast heather-clad upland, just
varied at the dip by bare ledges of dark rock
and a single gray glimpse of tossing sea between
them. A little farther on, to be sure, winding
round the cliff path, one could open up a glori-
ous prospect on either hand
over the rocky islets of Kyn-
ance and Mullion Cove, with
Mounts Bay and Penzance
and the Land's End in the
distance. That was a mag-
nificent site—if only his an-
cestors had had the sense to
see it. But Penmorgan House, like most other
Cornish landlords' houses, had been carefully


10
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

placed — for shelter's sake, no doubt — in a sea-
ward hollow where the view was most restricted;
and the outlook one got from
it, over black moor and
blacker rocks, was certainly
by no means of a cheerful
character. Eustace Le Neve
himself, most cheery and san-
guine of men, just home from
his South American railway-
laying, and with the luxuriant vegetation of the
Argentine still fresh in his mind, was forced to
admit, as he looked about him, that the position
of his friend's house on that rolling brown moor
was far from a smiling one. ✓ -
"You used to come here when
you were a boy, though," he ob-
jected, after a pause, with a
glance at the great breakers that
curled in upon the cove; "and
you must surely have found it
pleasant enough then, what with
the bathing and the fishing and the shooting and
the boating, and all the delights of the sea and
the country."


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
11

Walter Tyrrel nodded his head. It was clear
the subject was extremely distasteful to him.
"Yes — till I was twelve or thir-
teen," he said, slowly, as one who
grudges assent, "in my uncle's
time, I liked it well enough, no
doubt. Boys don't realize the full
terror of sea or cliff, you know,
and are perfectly happy swimming
and climbing. I used to be am-
phibious in those days, like a seal or an otter
— in the water half my time; and I scrambled
over the rocks—great heavens, it makes me
giddy now just to think where I scrambled. But
when I was about thirteen years
old "— his face grew graver still
— "a change seemed to come
over me, and I began . . .
well, I began to hate Penmor-
gan. I've hated it ever since.
I shall always hate it I learned
what it all meant, I suppose —
rocks, wrecks, and accidents. I saw how dull
and gloomy it was, and I couldn't bear coming


12
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
down here. I came as seldom as I dared, till
my uncle died last year and left it to me. And
then there was no help for it. I had to come
down. It's a landlord's business, I consider, to
live among his tenants and look after the wel-
fare of the soil committed to his charge by his
queen and country. He holds it
in trust, strictly speaking, for the
nation. So I felt I must come
and live here. But I hate it, all
the same. I hate it! I hate it!"
He said it so energetically, and
with such strange earnestness in
his voice, that Eustace Le Neve,
scanning his face as he spoke, felt
sure there must be some good
reason for his friend's dislike of his ancestral
home, and forebore (like a man) to question
him further. Perhaps, he thought, it was
connected in Tyrrel's mind with some pain-
ful memory, some episode in his history he
would gladly forget; though, to be sure, when
one comes to think of it, at thirteen such epi-
sodes are rare and improbable. A man doesn't,


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
13

as a rule, get crossed in love at that early age;
nor does he generally form lasting and abiding
antipathies. And indeed, for
the matter of that, Penmorgan
was quite gloomy enough in
itself, in all conscience, to ac-
count for his dislike—a lonely
and gaunt-looking granite-built
house, standing bare and square
on the edge of a black moor,
under shelter of a rocky dip, in
a treeless country. It must have been a terrible
change for a bachelor about town, like Walter
Tyrrel, to come down at twenty-eight from his
luxurious club and his snug ^
chambers in St. James' to the
isolation and desolation of
that wild Cornish manor-house.
But the Tyrrels, he knew, were
all built like that; Le Neve
had been with three of the
family at Rugby; and con-
science was their stumbling-block. When once
a Tyrrel was convinced his duty lay anywhere,


14 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
no consideration on earth would keep him from
doing it.
"Let's take a stroll down by the shore,"
Le Neve suggested, carelessly, after a short
pause, slipping his arm through his friend's.
"Your cliffs, at least, must be fine; they look
grand and massive; and after three
years of broiling on a South Ameri-
can line, this fresh sou'wester's just
the thing, to my mind, to blow the
cobwebs out of one."
He was a breezy-looking young
man, this new-comer from beyond
the sea — a son of the Vikings,
Tyrrel's contemporary in age, but
very unlike him in form and feat-
ures; for Eustace Le Neve was fair and big-
built, a florid young giant, with tawny beard,
mustache, and whiskers, which he cut in a
becoming Vandyke point of artistic carelessness.
There was more of the artist than of the engi-
neer, indeed, about his frank and engaging
English face — a face which made one like him
as soon as one looked at him. It was impossi-


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
15
ble to do otherwise. Exuberant vitality was the
keynote of the man's being. And he was can-
didly open too. He impressed
one at first sight, by some name-
less instinct, with a certain well-
founded friendly confidence. A
lovable soul, if ever there was
one, equally liked at once by
men and women.
"Our cliffs are fine," Walter
Tyrrel answered, grudgingly, in the tone of one
who, against his will, admits an adverse point he
sees no chance of gainsaying. "They're black,
and repellant, and iron-bound,
and dangerous, but they're cer-
tainly magnificent. I don't deny
it. Come and see them, by all
means. They're the only lions
we have to show a stranger in
this part of Cornwall, so you'd
better make the most of them."
And he took, as if mechan-
ically, the winding path that led down the gap
toward the frowning cove in the wall of cliff
before them.


16 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
Eustace Le Neve was a little surprised at
this unexpected course, for he himself would
naturally have made rather for the top .of
the promontory, whence they were certain to
obtain a much finer and more extensive view;
but he had only arrived at Penmorgan the even-
ing before, so he bowed at once
to his companion's more mature
experience of Cornish scenery.
They threaded their way through
the gully, for it was little more—
a great water-worn rent in the
dark serpentine rocks, with the
sea at its lower end — picking
their path as they went along
huge granite boulders or across fallen stones,
till they reached a small beach of firm white
sand, on whose even floor the waves were rol-
ling in and curling over magnificently. It was
a curious place, Eustace thought, rather dreary
than beautiful. On either side rose black
cliffs, towering sheer into the air, and shut-
ting out overhead all but a narrow cleft of
murky sky. Around, the sea dashed itself in


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
17
angry white foam against broken stacks and tiny
weed-clad skerries. At the end of the first
point a solitary islet, just
separated from the main-
land by a channel of seeth-
ing water, jutted above into
the waves, with hanging
tresses of blue and yellow
seaweed. Tyrrel pointed to
it with one hand. "That's
Michael's Crag," he said,
laconically. "You've seen it before, no doubt,
in half a dozen pictures. It's shaped exactly
like St. Michael's Mount in min-
iature. A marine painter fel-
low down here's forever taking V
its portrait."
Le Neve gazed around him
with a certain slight shudder of
unspoken disapprobation. This
place didn't suit his sunny nature.
It was even blacker and more
dismal than the brown moorland above it.
Tyrrel caught the dissatisfaction in his corn-
's


18 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
panion's eye before Le Neve had time to frame
it in words.
"Well, you don't think much of it?" he said,
inquiringly.
"I can't say I do," Le Neve answered, with
apologetic frankness. "I suppose South Amer-
ica has spoilt me for this sort of
thing. But it's not to my taste.
I call it gloomy, without being
even impressive."
"Gloomy," Tyrrel answered;
"oh, yes, gloomy, certainly. But
impressive; well, yes. For my-
self, I think so. To me, it's all
terribly; unspeakably, ineffably im-
pressive. I come here every day, and sit close
on the sands, and look out upon the sea by the
edge of the breakers. It's the only place on
this awful coast one feels perfectly safe in. You
can't tumble over here, or . . . roll anything
down to do harm to anybody."
A steep cliff path led up the sheer face of the
rock to southward. It was a difficult path, a
mere foothold on the ledges; but its difficulty


20 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
"Why not?" Le Neve cried.
Tyrrel shrugged his shoulders and shook him-
self impatiently. "I don't know," he answered,
in a testy sort of voice. "I don't like the cliff
top. . . . It's so dangerous, don't you know?
So unsafe. So unstable. The rocks go off so
sheer, and stones topple over so
easily."
Le Neve laughed a little laugh
of half-disguised contempt. He
was moving over toward the path
up the cliff side as they spoke.
"Why, you used to be a first-class
climber at school," he said, attempt-
ing it, "especially when you were
a little chap. I remember you could scramble
up trees like a monkey. What fun we had once
in the doctor's orchard! And as to the cliffs,
you needn't go so near you have to tumble over
them. It seems ridiculous for a landowner not
to know a bit of scenery on his own estate that's
celebrated and talked about all over England."
"I'm not afraid of tumbling over, for myself,"
Tyrrel answered, a little nettled by his friend's


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
21

frank tone of amusement. "I don't feel myself
so useful to my queen and country that I rate
my own life at too high a figure.
It's the people below I'm chiefly
concerned about. There's always
someone wandering and scrambl-
ing about these cliffs, don't you
see ?—fishermen, tourists, geolo-
gists. If you let a loose stone
go, it may fall upon them and
crush them."
The engineer looked back upon him with a
somewhat puzzled expression. "Well, that's
carrying conscience a point too
far," he said, with one strong
hand on the rock and one sure
foot in the first convenient
cranny. "If we're not to climb
cliffs for fear of showering down
stones on those who stand be-
low, we won't dare to walk or
ride or drive or put to sea for
fear of running over or colliding against some-
body. We shall have to stop all our trains and


22
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
keep all our steamers in harbor. There's noth-
ing in this world quite free from risk. We've
got to take it and lump it. You know the old
joke about those dangerous beds — so many
people die in them. Won't you break your
rule just for once, and come up
on top here to see the view
with me?"
Tyrrel shook his head firmly.
"Not to-day," he answered, with
a quiet smile. "Not by that
path, at any rate. It's too risky
for my taste. The stones are so
loose. And it overhangs the road
the quarrymen go to the cave by."
Le Neve had now made good his foothold up
the first four or five steps. "Well, you've no
objection to my going, at any rate?" he said,
with a wave of one hand, in his cheerful good-
humor. "You don't put a veto on your friends
here, do you?"
"Oh, not the least objection," Tyrrel an-
swered, hurriedly, watching him climb, none
the less, with nervous interest. "It's . . . it's


A CORNISH LANDLORD.
23
i

3?
a purely personal and individual feeling. Be-
sides," he added, after a pause, "I can stop
below here, if need be, and warn
the quarrymen."
"I'll be back in ten minutes,"
Le Neve shouted from the cliff.
"No, don't hurry," his host
shouted back. "Take your own
time, it's safest. Once you get
to the top you'd better walk
along the whole cliff path to
Kynance. They tell me its splendid; the view's
so wide; and you can easily get back across the
moor by lunch-time. Only,
mind about the edge, and
whatever you do, let no
stones roll over."
"All right," Le Neve
made answer, clinging close
to a point of rock. "I'll do
no damage. It's opening
out beautifully on every side
now. I can see round the corner to St.
Michael's Mount; and the point at the end
there must be Tol-Pedn-Penwith."


CHAPTER II.
TREVENNACK.
It was a stiff, hot climb to the top of the cliff;
but as soon as he reached it, Eustace Le Neve
gazed about him, enchanted at the outlook. He
was not in love with Cornwall, as far as he'd
Sseen it yet; and to say the truth,
except in a few broken seaward
glens, that high and barren inland
plateau has little in it to attract or
interest anyone, least of all a trav-
eler fresh from the rich luxuriance
of South American vegetation. But
the view that burst suddenly upon
Eustace Le Neve's eye as he gained the summit
of that precipitous serpentine bluff fairly took
his breath away. It was a rich and varied one.
To the north and west loomed headland after
headland, walled in by steep crags, and stretch-

(»4)


TREVENNACK.
25

ing away in purple perspective toward Marazion,
St. Michael's Mount, and the Penzance district.
To the south and east huge
masses of fallen rock lay tossed
in wild confusion over Kynance
Cove and the neighboring bays,
with the bare boss of the Rill
and the Rearing Horse in the
foreground. Le Neve stood and
looked with open eyes of delight.
It was the first beautiful view he
had seen since he came to Cornwall; but this at
least was beautiful, almost enough so to compen-
sate for his first acute disappointment at the bar-
renness and gloom of the Lizard
scenery.
For some minutes he could only
stand with open eyes and gaze de-
lighted at the glorious prospect.
Cliffs, sea, and rocks all blended
with one another in solemn har-
mony. Even the blackness of the
great crags and the scorched air of the brown
and water-logged moorland in the rear now


26 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
ceased to oppress him. They fell into their
proper place in one consistent and well-blended
picture. But, after awhile, im-
pelled by a desire to look down
upon the next little bay beyond —
for the coast is indented with end-
less coves and headlands — the en-
gineer walked on along the top by
a coastguard's path that threaded
its way, marked by whitened
stones, round the points and gul-
lies. As he did so, he happened
to notice on the very crest of the ridge that over-
looked the rock they called St.
Michael's Crag a tall figure of a
man silhouetted in dark outline
against the pale gray skyline.
From the very first moment Eus-
tace Le Neve set eyes upon that
striking figure this man exerted
upon him some nameless attraction.
Even at this distance the engineer
could see he had a certain indefinite air of dig-
nity and distinction; and he poised himself lightly


TREVENNACK.
27
on the very edge of the cliff in a way that would
no doubt have made Walter Tyrrell shudder
with fear and alarm. Yet there was something
about that poise quite unearthly and uncanny;
the man stood so airily on his high rocky perch
that he reminded Le Neve at once of nothing so
much as of Giovanni da Bologna's Mercury in
the Bargello at Florence; he seemed to spurn the
earth as if about to spring from *yf*
it with a bound; his feet were V it,
as if freed from the common
bond of gravity.
It was a figure that belonged
naturally to the Cornish moor-
land.
Le Neve advanced along the
path till he nearly reached the summit where the
man was standing. The point itself was a rugged
tor, or little group of bare and weather-worn
rocks, overlooking the sea and St. Michael's
Crag below it. As the engineer drew near he saw
the stranger was not alone. Under shelter of
the rocks a girl lay stretched at length on a
loose camel's-hair rug; her head was hatless; in


28
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
her hand she held, half open, a volume of poetry.
She looked up as Eustace passed, and he noted
fat a glance that she was dark and
pretty. The Cornish type once more;
bright black eyes, glossy brown hair,
a rich complexion, a soft and rounded
beauty.
"Cleer," the father said, warningly,
in a modulated voice, as the young
man approached, "don't let your hat
blow away, dear; it's close by the
path there."
The girl he called Cleer darted forward and
picked it up, with a little blush of confusion.
Eustace Le Neve raised his hat, by way of ex-
cuse for disturbing her, and was about to pass
on, but the view down into
the bay below, with the jagged
and pointed crag islanded in
white foam, held him spell-
bound for a moment. He
paused and gazed at it. "This
is a lovely lookout, sir," he said, after a second's
silence, as if to apologize for his intrusion, turn-


TREVENNACK.
29
ing round to the stranger, who still stood poised
like a statue on the natural pedestal of lichen-
covered rock beside him. "A lovely lookout
and a wonderful bit of wild coast scenery."
"Yes," the stranger answered, in a voice as full
of dignity as his presence and his mien. "It's
the grandest spot along the Cornish coast. From
here you can see in one view
St. Michael's Mount, St. Mi-
chael's Crag, St. Michael's
Church, and St. Michael's
Promontory. The whole of
this country, indeed, just teems
with St. Michael."
"Which is St. Michael's
Promontory?" the young man asked, with a side
glance at Cleer, as they called the daughter.
He wasn't sorry indeed for the chance of having
a second look at her.
"Why Land's End, of course," the dignified
stranger answered at once, descending from his
perch as he spoke, with a light spring more like
a boy's than a mature man's. "You must surely
know those famous lines in 'Lycidas' about


30
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
'The fable of Bellerus old,
Where the Great Vision of the guarded mount
Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;
Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth.'"
"Yes, I know them, of course," Eustace
answered with ingenuous shyness; "but as so
often happens with poetry, to say the truth, I'm

afraid I attached no very def-
inite idea to them. The music
so easily obscures the sense;
though the moment you sug-
gest it, I see they can't pos-
sibly mean anyone but St.
Michael."
"My father's very much in-
terested in the antiquities of Cornwall," the girl
Cleer put in, looking up at him somewhat tim-
idly; "so he naturally knows all these things,
and perhaps he expects others to know them
unreasonably."
"We've every ground for knowing them," the
father went on, glancing down at her with tender
affection. "We're Cornish to the backbone —
Cornish born and bred, if ever there were Corn-


TREVENNACK.
31
ishmen. Every man of my ancestors was a Tre,
Pol, or Pen, to the tenth generation backward;
and I'm descended from the Bassets, too — the
Bassets of Tehidy. You must have heard of the
Bassets in Cornish history. They owned St.
Michael's Mount before these new-fangled St.
Aubyn people."
"It's Lord St. Levan's now,
isn't it?" Le Neve put in, anx-
ious to show off his knowledge
of the local aristocracy.
"Yes, they've made him Lord
St. Levan," the dignified stran-
ger answered, with an almost
imperceptible curl of his delicate
lower lip. "They've made him
Lord St. Levan. The queen can make one any-
thing. He was plain Sir John St. Aubyn before
that, you know; his family bought the Mount
from my ancestors — the Bassets of Tehidy.
They're new people at Marazion — new people
altogether. They've only been there since 1660."
Le Neve smiled a quiet smile. That seemed
to him in his innocence a fairly decent antiquity


32
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

as things go nowadays. But the dignified stran-
ger appeared to think so little of it that his new
— acquaintance abstained from
making note or comment on it.
He waited half a moment to
I see whether Cleer would speak
'again; he wanted to hear that
pleasant voice once more; but
as she held her peace, he
merely raised his hat, and
accepting the dismissal, con-
tinued his walk round the cliffs alone. Yet,
somehow, the rest of the way, the figure of that
statuesque stranger haunted
him. He looked back once
or twice. The descendant of
the Bassets of Tehidy had now
resumed his high pedestal up-
on the airy tor, and was gaz-
ing away seaward, like the
mystic Great Vision of his own
Miltonic quotation, toward
the Spanish coast, wrapped round in a loose
cloak of most poetic dimensions.


TREVENNACK.
33
Le Neve wondered who he was, and what
errand could have brought him there.
At the point called the Rill, he diverged from
the path a bit, to get that beautiful glimpse down
into the rock-strewn cove and smooth white
sands at Kynance. A coastguard with brush
and pail was busy as he passed
by renewing the whitewash on
the landmark boulders that
point the path on dark nights
to the stumbling wayfarer. Le
Neve paused and spoke to him.
"That's a fine-looking man,
my friend, the gentleman on
the tor there," he said, after a
few commonplaces. "Do you
happen to know his name? Is he spending the
summer about here?"
The man stopped in his work and looked up.
His eye lighted with pleasure on the dignified
stranger. "Yes; he's one of the right sort, sir,"
he answered, with a sort of proprietary pride in
the distinguished figure. "A real old Cornish
gentleman of the good old days, he is, if ever you


34
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

see one. That's Trevennack of Trevennack;
and Miss Cleer's his daughter. Fine old crusted
Cornish names, every one of
them; I'm a Cornishman my-
self, and I know them well,
the whole grand lot of them.
The Trevennacks and the Bas-
sets, they was all one, time
gone by; they owned St.
Michael's Mount, and Pen-
zance, and Marazion, and
Mullion here. They owned Penmorgan, too,
afore the Tyrrels bought it up.
Michael Basset Trevennack, that's
the gentleman's full name; the eld-
est son of the eldest son is always a
Michael, to keep up the memory of
the times gone by, when they was
Guardians of the Mount and St.
Michael's Constables. And the
lady's Miss Cleer, after St. Cleer of
Cornwall — her that gives her name
still to St. Cleer by Liskeard."
"And do they live here?" Le Neve asked,


TREVENNACK.
35
much interested in the intelligent local tone of
the man's conversation.
"Lord bless you, no, sir. They don't live no-
where. They're in the service, don't you see.
They lives in Malta or Gibraltar, or wherever the
Admiralty sends him. He's an Admiralty man,
he is, connected with the Vittling Yard. I was
in the navy myself, on the good
old Billy Ruffun, afore I was
put in the Coastguards, and I
knowed him well when we was
both together on the Mediter-
ranean Station. Always the
same grand old Cornish gentle-
man, with them gracious man-
ners, so haughty like, an' yet so condescending,
wherever they put him. A gentleman born. No
gentleman on earth more the gentleman all
round than Trevennack of Trevennack."
"Then he's staying down here on a visit ?" Le
Neve went on, curiously, peering over the edge
of the cliffs, as he spoke, to observe the cor-
morants.
"Don't you go too nigh, sir," the coastguard


36
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
put in, warningly. "She's slippery just there.
Yes, they're staying down in Oliver's lodgings at
Gunwalloe. He's on leave, that's where it is.
Every three or four years he gets leave from the
Vittling and comes home to England; and then
he always ups and runs down to the Lizard, and

wanders about on the cliffs by
himself like this, with Miss Cleer
to keep him company. He's
a chip of the old rock, he is —
Cornish granite to the core, as
the saying goes; and he can't
be happy away from it. You'll
see him any day standing like
that on the very edge of the
cliff, looking across over the
water, as if he was a coastguard hisself, and
always sort o' perched on the highest bit of rock
he can come nigh anywhere."
"He looks an able man," Le Neve went on,
still regarding the stranger, poised now as be-
fore on the very summit of the tor, with his
cloak wrapped around him.
"Able? I believe you! Why, he's the very


TREVENNACK.
37
heart and soul, the brains and senses of the
Vittling Department. The navy'd starve if it
wasn't for him. He's a Com-
panion of St. Michael and St.
George, Mr. Trevennack is.
'Tain't every one as is a Com-
panion of St. Michael and St.
George. The queen made him
that herself for his management of the Vittling."
"It's a strange place for a man in his position
to spend his holiday," Le Neve went on, reflect-
ively. "You'd think, coming back so seldom,
he'd want to see something of London, Brighton,
Scarborough, Scotland."
The coastguard looked up,
and held his brush idle in one
hand with a mysterious air.
"Not when you come to know
his history," he answered, gaz-
ing hard at him.
"Oh, there's a history to him,
is there?" Le Neve answered,
not surprised. "Well, he certainly has the look
of it."


38
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

The coastguard nodded his head and dropped
his voice still lower. "Yes, there's a history to
him," he replied. "And that's
why you'll always see Treven-
nack of Trevennack on the top
of the cliff, and never at the bot-
tom.—Thank'ee very kindly, sir;
it ain't often we gets a chance
of a good cigar at Kynance.—
Well, it must be fifteen year now
— or maybe sixteen — I don't
mind the right time —Trevennack came down in
old Squire Tyrrel's days, him
as is buried at Mullion Church
town, and stopped at Gunwal-
loe, same as he might be stop-
ping there in his lodgings now-
adays. He had his only son
with him, too, a fine-looking
young gentleman, they say, for
his age, for I wasn't here then
—I was serving my time under
Admiral De Horsey on the

good
Billy
Ruffun — the very picture of Miss Cleer, and


TREVENNACK.
39
twelve year old or thereabouts; and they called
him Master Michael, the same as they always
call the eldest boy of the Trevennacks of Tre-
vennack. Aye, and one day they two, father
and son, were a-strolling on the beach under the
cliffs by Penmorgan — mind them stones on the
edge, sir; they're powerful loose — don't you drop
none over—when, just as you might loosen them
pebbles there with your foot,
over came a shower o' small
bits from the cliff on top, and
as sure as you're livin', hit the
two on 'em right so, sir. Mr.
Trevennack himself, he wasn't
much hurt —just bruised a bit
on the forehead, for he was wearing a Scotch
cap; but Master Michael, well, it caught him
right on the top of the head, and afore they
knowed what it was, it smashed his skull in. Aye,
that it did, sir, just so; it smashed the boy's
skull in. They carried him home, and cut the
bone out, and trepanned him; but bless you, it
wa'n't no good; he lingered on for a night, and
then, afore morning, he died, insensible."


40
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

"What a terrible story!" Le Neve exclaimed,
with a face of horror, recoiling instinctively from
the edge of the cliff that had wrought this evil.
"Aye, you may well say so. It was rough on
him," the coastguard went on, with the calm crit-
icism of his kind. "His only son —and all in a
minute like, as you may term it — such a promis-
ing young gentleman! It was
rough, terrible rough on him. So
from that day to this, whenever
Trevennack has a holiday, down
he comes here to Gunwalloe, and
walks about the cliffs, and looks
across upon the rocks by Penmor-
gan Point, or stands on the top of
Michael's Crag, just over against
the spot wnere his boy was hurted. An' he
never wants to go nowhere else in all England,
but just to stand like that on the very edge of
the cliff, and look over from atop, and brood,
and think about it."
As the man spoke, it flashed across Le Neve's
mind at once that Trevennack's voice had quiv-
ered with a strange thrill of emotion as he uttered


TREVENNACK.
41

that line, no doubt pregnant with meaning for
him. "Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt
with ruth." He was thinking of
his own boy, most likely, not of
the poet's feigned Lycidas.
"He'll stand like that for
hours," the coastguard went on
confidentially, "musing like to
himself, with Miss Cleer by his
side, reading in her book or do-
ing her knitting or something.
But you couldn't get him, for love or money, to
go below the cliffs, no, not if you was to kill him.
He's afraid of going below— that's where it is;
he always thinks something's
sure to tumble from the top
on him. Natural enough, too,
after all that's been. He likes
to get as high as ever he can
in the air, where he can see all
around him, and be certain
there ain't anyone above to let
anything drop as might hurt him. Michael's
Crag's where he likes best to stand, on the top


42
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

there by the Horse; he always chooses them
spots. In Malta it was San Mickayly; and in
Gibraltar it was the summit of
Europa Point, by the edge of the
Twelve Apostles' battery."
"How curious!" Le Neve ex-
claimed. "It's just the other
way on now, with my friend Mr.
Tyrrel. I'm stopping at Pen-
morgan, but Mr. Tyrrel won't
go on top of the cliffs for any-
thing. He says he's afraid he might let some-
thing drop by accident on the people below him."
The coastguard grew sud-
denly graver. "Like enough,"
he said, stroking his chin.
"Like enough; and right,
too, for him, sir. You see,
he's a Tyrrel, and he's bound
to be cautious.'
"Why so?" Le Neve asked,
somewhat puzzled. "Why a
Tyrrel more than the rest of us?"
The man hesitated and stared hard at him.


TREVENNACK.
43

"Well, it's like this, sir," he answered at last, with
the shamefaced air of the intelligent laboring
man who confesses to a super-
stition. "We Cornish are old-
fashioned, and we has our ideas.
The Tyrrels are new people
like, in Cornwall, as we say;
they came in only with Crom-
well's folk, when he fought the
Grenvilles; but it's well be-
known in the county bad luck
goes with them. You see, they're descended
from that Sir Walter Tyrrel you'll read about in
the history books, him as killed
King William Rufious in the
New Forest. You'll hear all
about it at Rufious' Stone,
where the king was killed; Sir
Walter, he drew, and he aimed
at a deer, and the king was
standing by; and the bullet, it
glanced aside — or maybe it was
afore bullets, and then it'd be an arrow; but any-
how, one or t'other, it hit the king, and he fell,


44
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
and died there. The stone's standing to this
day on the place where he fell, and I've seen it,
and read of it when I was in hospital at Net-

ley. But Sir Walter, he got clear
away, and ran across to France;
and ever since that time they've
called the eldest son of the Tyr-
rels Walter, same as they've called
the eldest son of the Trevennacks
Michael. But they say every
Walter Tyrrel that's born into
the world is bound, sooner or later, to kill his
man unintentional. So he do right to avoid
going too near the cliffs, I say. We shouldn't
tempt Providence. And the Tyrrels is all a
conscientious people."


CHAPTER III.
FACE TO FACE.
When Eustace Le Neve returned to lunch at
Penmorgan that day he was silent to his host
about Trevennack of Trevennack. To say the
truth, he was so much at-
tracted by Miss Cleer's ap-
pearance that he didn't feel
inclined to mention having
met her. But he wanted to
meet her again for all that,
and hoped he would do so.
Perhaps Tyrrel might know
the family, and ask them round to dine some
night. At any rate, society is rare at the Liz-
ard. Sooner or later, he felt sure, he'd knock
up against the mysterious stranger somewhere.
And that involved the probability of knocking
up against the mysterious stranger's beautiful
daughter.

(46)


46
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

Next morning after breakfast, however, he
made a vigorous effort to induce Walter Tyrrel
to mount the cliff and look at
the view from Penmorgan
Point toward the Rill and
Kynance. It was absurd, he
said truly, for the proprietor
of such an estate never to
- ^ have seen the most beautiful
"L&g^ mli^d spot in it. But Tyrrel was
^■■^^ obdurate. On the point of
actually mounting the cliff itself he wouldn't
yield one jot or tittle. Only, after much per-
suasion, he consented at last to
cross the headland by the fields
at the back and come out at the
tor above St. Michael's Crag,
provided always Eustace would
promise he'd neither go near the
edge himself nor try to induce
his friend to approach it.
Satisfied with this lame com-
promise — for he really wished his host to enjoy
that glorious view—Eustace Le Neve turned up


48
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
nack and his daughter both bowed in return.
"A glorious morning !" the engineer said, drink-
ing in to the full the lovely golden haze that
flooded and half-obscured the Land's End dis-
trict; and Trevennack assented gravely. "The
crag stands up well in this sunshine against the
dark water behind," he said, waving one gra-
cious hand toward the island
at his foot, and poising lighter
than ever.
"Oh, take care!" Walter
Tyrrel cried, looking up at
him, on tenterhooks. "It's so
dangerous up there! You
might tumble any minute."
"/ never tumble," Treven-
nack made answer with solemn gravity, spread-
ing one hand on either side as if to balance
himself like an acrobat. But he descended as
he spoke and took his place beside them.
Tyrrel looked at the view and looked at the
pretty girl. It was evident he was quite as
much struck by the one as by the other. In-
deed, of the two, Cleer seemed to attract the


FACE TO FACE.
49
larger share of his attention. For some minutes
they stood and talked, all five of them together,
without further introduction than their common
admiration for that exquisite bay, in which Tre-
vennack appeared to take an almost proprietary
interest. It gratified him, obviously, a Cornish
man, that these strangers (as he thought them)
should be so favorably im- "V
pressed by his native county.
But Tyrrel all the while
looked ill at ease, though he
sidled away as far as pos-
sible from the edge of the
cliff, and sat down near
Cleer at a safe distance from
the precipice. He was silent and preoccupied.
That mattered but little, however, as the rest
did all the talking, especially Trevennack, who
turned out to be indeed a perfect treasure-house
of Cornish antiquities and Cornish folk-lore.
"I generally stand below, on top of Michael's
Crag," he said to Eustace, pointing it out,
"when the tide allows it; but when it's high, as
it is now, such a roaring and seething scour sets

4


50
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

through the channel between the rock and the
mainland that no swimmer could stem it; and
then I come up here, and
look down from above upon
it. It's the finest point on all
our Cornish coast, this point
we stand on. It has the wid-
est view, the purest air, the
hardest rock, the highest and
most fantastic tor of any of
them."
"My husband's quite an enthusiast for this
particular place," Mrs. Trevennack interposed,
watching his face as she spoke
with a certain anxious and ill-
disguised wifely solicitude.
"He's come here for years. It
has many associations for us."
"Some painful and some
happy," Cleer added, half
aloud; and Tyrrel, nodding as-
sent, looked at her as if ex-
pecting some marked recognition.
"You should see it in the pilchard season,"


FACE TO FACE.
51

her father went on, turning suddenly to Eustace
with much animation in his voice. "That's the
time for Cornwall — a month
or so later than now — you
should see it then, for pictur-
esqueness and variety. 'When
the corn is in the shock,' says
our Cornish rhyme, 'Then the
fish are off the rock'—and the
rock's St. Michael's. The
huer, as we call him, for he gives the hue and
cry from the hill-top lookout when the fish are
coming, he stands on Michael's Crag just below
there, as I stand myself so
often, and when he sights the
shoals by the ripple on the
water, he motions to the boats
which way to go for the pil-
chards. Then the rowers in
the lurkers, as we call our
seine-boats, surround the shoal
with a tuck-net, or drag the
seine into Mullion Cove, all alive with a mass of
shimmering silver. The jowsters come down


52
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
with their carts on to the beach, and hawk them
about round the neighborhood — I've seen them
twelve a penny; while in the curing-houses
they're bulking them and pressing them as if for
dear life, to send away to Genoa, Leghorn, and
Naples. That's where all our fish go — to the
Catholic south. 'The Pope and the Pilchards,'

says our Cornish toast; for it's
the Friday fast that makes our
only market."
"You can see them on St
George's Island in Looe Har-
bor," Cleer put in quite inno-
cently. "They're like a sea of
silver there — on St. George's
Island."
"My dear," her father corrected with that
grave, old-fashioned courtesy which the coast-
guard had noted and described as at once so
haughty and yet so condescending, "how often
I've begged of you not to call it St. George's
Island! It's St Nicholas' and St. Michael's—
one may as well be correct — and till a very re-
cent date a chapel to St Michael actually stood


FACE TO FACE.
55
however, from the part he caught, that St.
Michael the Archangel had been from early
days a very important and powerful Cornish
personage, and that he clung to high places on
the tors and rocks because he had to fight and
subdue the Prince of the Air, whom he always
destroyed at last on some pointed pinnacle.
And now that he came to think
of it, Eustace vaguely recol-
lected he had always seen St.
Michael, in pictures or stained
glass windows, delineated just
so — with drawn sword and war-
rior's mien — in the act of tri-
umphing over his dragon-like
enemy on the airy summit of
some tall jagged crag or rock-bound precipice.
As for Mrs. Trevennack, she watched her hus-
band every moment he spoke with a close and
watchful care, which Le Neve hardly noticed,
but which didn't for a minute escape Walter
Tyrrel's more piercing and observant scrutiny.
At last, as the amateur lecturer was beginning
to grow somewhat prolix, a cormorant below


58
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
murder, surely. It would be accidental homi-
cide — unintentional, unwilled — a terrible result
of most culpable carelessness, of course; but it
wouldn't be quite murder; don't call it mur-
der. I can't allow that. Not that name by
any means. . . . Though to the end of your
life, Eustace, if you were to
kill a man so, you'd never
cease to regret it and mourn
over it daily; you'd never
cease to repent your guilty
carelessness in sackcloth and
ashes."
He spoke so seriously, so
earnestly, with such depth of
personal feeling, that Treven-
nack, starting back, stood and gazed at him
slowly with those terrible eyes, like one who
awakens by degrees from a painful dream to
some awful reality. Tyrrel winced before his
scrutiny. For a moment the elder man just
looked at him and stared. Then he took one
step forward. "Sir," he said, in a very low
voice, half broken with emotion, "I had a dear


FACE TO FACE.
59

son of my own once; a very dear, dear son. He
was killed by such an accident on this very spot.
No wonder I remember it."
Mrs.Trevennack and Cleer
both gave a start of sur-
prise. The man's words as-
tonished them; for never
before, during fifteen long
years, had that unhappy
father alluded in any way in
overt words' to his son's
tragic end. He had brooded
and mused over it in his crushed
and wounded spirit; he had revis-
ited the scene of his loss whenever
opportunity permitted him; he
had made of his sorrow a cher-
ished and petted daily companion;
but he had stored it up deep in his
own inmost heart, never uttering
a word of it even to his wife or
daughter. The two women knew
Michael Trevennack must be profoundly moved,
indeed, so to tear open the half-healed wound


FACE TO FACE.
61

on side by side across the open heathy moor.
Then, as they passed the first wall, Tyrrel
paused for a moment and spoke.
"Not a murderer!" he cried in
his anguish; "oh, no, not quite
as bad as a murderer, surely,
Eustace; but still, a culpable
homicide. Oh, God, how ter-
rible."
And even as he disappeared
across the moor to eastward, Trevennack, far
behind, seized his wife's arm spasmodically, and
clutching it tight in his iron
grip, murmured low in a voice
of supreme conviction, "Do
you see what that means, Lucy?
I can read it all now. It was
he who rolled down that cursed
stone. It was he who killed
our boy. And I can guess who
he is. He must be Tyrrel of
Penmorgan."
Cleer didn't hear the words. She was below,
gazing after them.



CHAPTER IV.
TYRREL'S REMORSE.
The two young men walked
back, without interchanging
another word, to the gate of the
manor-house. Tyrrel opened it
with a swing. Then, once with-
in his own grounds, and free
from prying eyes, he sat down forthwith upon a
little craggy cliff that over-
hung the carriage-drive, hur-
ried his face in his hands, and,
to Le Neve's intense astonish-
ment, cried long and silently.
He let himself go with a rush;
that's the Cornish nature.
Eustace Le Neve sat by his side, not daring to
speak, but in mute sympathy with his sorrow.
(W)


TYRREL'S REMORSE.
63

For many minutes neither uttered a sound.
At last Tyrrel looked up, and in an agony of
remorse, turned round to his
companion. "Of course you
understand," he said.
And Eustace answered
reverently, "Yes, I think I
understand. Having come
so near doing the same thing
myself, I sympathize with
you."
Tyrrel paused a moment
again. His face was like marble. Then he
added, in a tone of the profoundest anguish, "Till
this minute, Eustace, I've never told anybody.
And if it hadn't been forced
out of me by that poor man's
tortured and broken-hearted
face, I wouldn't have told you
now. But could I look at
him to-day and not break
down before him?"
"How did it all happen?" Le Neve asked,
leaning forward and clasping his friend's arm
with a brotherly gesture.


64
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

Tyrrel answered with a deep sigh, "Like this.
I'll make a clean breast of it all at last. I've
bottled it up too long. I'll
tell you now, Eustace.
"Nearly sixteen years ago
I was staying down here at
Penmorgan with my uncle.
The Trevennacks, as I learned
afterward, were in lodgings
at Gunwalloe. But, so far as
I can remember at present, I
never even saw them. To the best of my belief
I never set eyes on Michael Trevennack himself
before this very morning. If
I'd known who he was, you may
be pretty sure I'd have cut off
my right hand before I'd
allowed myself to speak to him.
"Well, one day that year I
was strolling along the top of
the cliff by Michael's Crag,
with my uncle beside me, who
owned Penmorgan. I was but
a boy then, and I walked by the edge more than


TYRREL'S REMORSE.
65
once, very carelessly. My uncle knew the cliffs,
though, and how dangerous they were; he knew
■men might any time be walking
below, digging launces in the
sand, or getting lobworms for
their lines, or hunting serpentine
to polish, or looking for sea-bird's
eggs among the half-way ledges.
Time after time he called out to
me, 'Walter, my boy, take care;
don't go so near the edge, you'll
tumble over presently.' And time after time I
answered him back, like a boy
that I was, 'Oh, I'm all right,
uncle. No fear about me. I
can take care of myself. These
cliffs don't crumble. They're a
deal too solid.'
"At last, when he saw it was
no good warning me that way
any longer, he turned round to
me rather sharply—he was a
Tyrrel, you see, and conscientious, as we all of us
are—it runs in the blood somehow—' If you don't


66
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

mind for yourself, at least mind for others. Who
can say who may be walking underneath those
rocks? If you let a loose stone fall
you may commit manslaughter.'
"I laughed, and thought ill of
him. He was such a fidget! I
was only a boy. I considered him
absurdly and unnecessarily par-
ticular. He had stalked on a yard
or two in front. I loitered behind,
and out of pure boyish deviltry, as
I was just above Michael's Crag, I loosened
some stones with my foot and showered them
over deliberately. Oh, heavens, I feel it yet;
how they rattled and rumbled!
"My uncle wasn't looking.
He walked on and left me be-
hind. He didn't see me push
them. He didn't see them
fall. He didn't hear them rat-
tle. But as they reached the
bottom I heard myself—or
thought I heard — a vague cry below. A cry as
of some one wounded. I was frightened at


TYRREL'S REMORSE. 67
that; I didn't dare to look down, but ran on to
my uncle. Not till some hours after did I know
t the whole truth, for we walked
along the cliffs all the way to
Kynance, and then returned in-
land by the road to the Lizard.
"That afternoon, late, there
was commotion at Penmorgan.
The servants brought us word
how a bit of the cliff near
Michael's Crag had foundered
unawares, and struck two people who were walk-
ing below—a Mr. Trevennack, in lodgings at
Gunwalloe, and his boy Michael. The father
wasn't much hurt, they said;
but the son — oh, Eustace ! the
son was dangerously wounded.
... I listened in terror. . . .
He lived out the night, and
died next morning."
Tyrrel leaned back in agony
as he spoke, and looked utterly
crushed. It was an awful memory. Le Neve
hardly knew what to say, the man's remorse was


68
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
so poignant. After all those years the boy's
thoughtless act seemed to weigh like a millstone
round the grown man's neck. Eustace held
his peace, and felt for him. By and by Tyrrel
went on again, rocking him-
self to and fro on his rough
seat as he spoke. "For fif-
teen years," he said, piteously,
"I've borne this burden in
my heart, and never told any-
body. I tell it now first of all
men to you. You're the only soul on earth who
shares my secret."
"Then your uncle didn't suspect it?" Eustace
asked, all breathless.
Walter Tyrrel shook his head. "On the con-
trary," he answered, "he said to me next day,
'How glad I am Walter, my boy, I called you
away from the cliff that moment! It was quite
providential. For if you'd loosened a stone, and
then this thing had happened, we'd both of us
have believed it was you that did it?' I was
too frightened and appalled to tell him it
was I. I thought they'd hang me. But from


TYRREL'S REMORSE.
69
that day to this — Eustace, Eustace, believe
me—I've never ceased to think of it! I've
never forgiven myself!"
"Yet it was an accident after all," Le Neve
said, trying to comfort him.
"No, no; not quite. I
should have been warned in
time. I should have obeyed
my uncle. But what would
you have? It's the luck of
the Tyrrels."
He spoke plaintively. Le
Neve pulled a piece of grass
and began bitting it to hide
his confusion. How near he
might have come to doing the same thing
himself. He thanked his stars it wasn't he.
He thanked his stars he hadn't let that stone
drop from the cliff that morning.
Tyrrel was the first to break the solemn
silence. "You can understand now," he said,
with an impatient gesture, "why I hate Pen-
morgan. I've hated it ever since. I shall
always hate it. It seems like a mute reminder


70
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

of that awful day. In my uncle's time I
never came near it. But as soon as it was
my own I felt I must live
upon it; and now, this terror
.-*|Jj of meeting Trevennack some
day has made life one long
burden to me. Sooner or
later I felt sure I should
run against him. They told
me how he came down here
from time to time to see where his son died,
and I knew I should meet him. Now you can
understand, too, why I hate the top of the cliffs
so much, and will walk at the bottom. I had
two good reasons for that. One I've told you
already; the other was the
fear of coming across Treven-
nack."
Le Neve turned to him
compassionately. "My dear
fellow," he said, "you take it
too much to heart. It was so
long ago, and you were only a child. The . . .
the accident might happen to any boy any day."


72
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
which he spoke that suggested far more than the
mere words themselves might perhaps have con-
veyed to him. "What do you mean?" he asked,
all eager, in a quick, low voice. "You've met
Miss Trevennack before? You've seen her?
You've spoken to her?"
For a second Tyrrel hesitated; then, with a
burst, he spoke out. "I may as
well tell you all," he cried, "now
I've told you so much. Yes,
I've met her before, I've seen
her, I've spoken to her."
"But she didn't seem to recog-
nize you," Le Neve objected,
taken aback.
Tyrrel shook his head de-
spondently. "That's the worst of it all," he
answered, with a very sad sigh. "She didn't
even remember me. . . . She was so much to
me; and to her—why, to her, Eustace—I was
less than nothing."
"And you knew who she was when you saw
her just now?" Le Neve asked, greatly puzzled.
"Yes and no. Not exactly. I knew she was


TYRREL'S REMORSE. 73
the person I'd seen and talked with, but I'd
never heard her name, nor connected her in any
way with Michael Trevennack. If I had, things
would be different. It's a terrible Nemesis. I'll
tell you how it happened. I may as well tell all.
But the worst point of the whole to me in this
crushing blow is to learn that
that girl is Michael Treven-
nack's daughter."
"Where and when did you
meet her then?" Le Neve
asked, growing curious.
"Quite casually, once only,
some time since, in a railway
carriage. It must be two years
ago now, and I was going from
Bath to Bournemouth. She traveled with me
in the same compartment as far as Temple
Combe, and I talked all the way with her; I can
remember every word of it. . . . Eustace, it's
foolish of me to acknowledge it, perhaps, but in
those two short hours I fell madly in love with
her. Her face has lived with me ever since;
I've longed to meet her. But I was stupidly


74 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
afraid to ask her name before she got out of the
train; and I had no clue at all to her home or
her relations. Yet, a thousand
times since I've said to myself, 'If
ever I marry I'll marry that girl
who went in the carriage from Bath
to Temple Combe with me.' I've
cherished her memory from that
day to this. You mayn't believe, I
dare say, in love at first sight; but
this I can swear to you was a
genuine case of it."
"I can believe in it very well," Le Neve
answered, most truthfully, "now I've seen Miss
Trevennack."
Tyrrel looked at him, and smiled sadly.
"Well, when I saw her again
this morning," he went on, after
a short pause, "my heart came
up into my mouth. I said to
myself, with a bound, 'It's she!
It's she! At last I've found

her.' And it dashed my best hopes to the
ground at once to see she didn't even remember
having met me."


CHAPTER V.
A STRANGE DELUSION.
Trevennack and his wife sat alone that night
in their bare rooms at Gunwalloe. Cleer had
gone out to see some girls of her acquaintance
who were lodging close by in
*a fisherman's house; and the
husband and wife were left for
a few hours by themselves to-
gether.
"Michael," Mrs. Trevennack
began, as soon as they were
alone, rising up from her
chair and coming over toward
him tenderly, "I was horribly afraid you were
going to break out before those two young
men on the cliff to-day. I saw you were just
on the very brink of it. But you resisted
bravely. Thank you so much for that.

(76)


A STRANGE DELUSION.
77
You're a dear good fellow. I was so pleased
with you and so proud of you."
"Break out about our poor
boy?" Trevennack asked, with
a dreamy air, passing his
bronzed hand wearily across
his high white forehead.
His wife seated herself side-
ways upon the arm of his
chair, and bent over him as
he sat, with wifely confidence.
"No, no, dear," she said, tak-
ing his hand in hers and soothing it with her soft
palm. "About —you know — well, of course,
that other thing."
At the mere hint, Treven-
nack leaned back and drew
himself up proudly to his full
height, like a soldier. He
looked majestic as he sat
there — every inch a St.
Michael, "Well, it's hard
to keep such a secret," he answered, laying his
free hand on his breast, "hard to keep such a


78
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

a secret; and I own, when they were talking
about it, I longed to tell them. But for Cleer's
sake I refrained, Lucy. For
Cleer's sake I always refrain.
You're quite right about that.
I know, of course, for Cleer's
sake I must keep it locked up
in my own heart forever."
The silver-haired lady bent
over him again, both caress-
ingly and proudly. "Michael,
dear Michael," she said, with
a soft thrill in her voice, "I love you
and honor you for it. I can feel what
it costs you. My darling, I know
how hard you have to fight against
it. I could see you fighting against
it to-day; and I was proud of the way
you struggled with it, single-handed,
till you gained the victory."
Trevennack drew himself up still
more haughtily than before. "And
who should struggle against the devil," he said,
"single-handed as you say, and gain the victory
at last, if not I, myself, Lucy?"


A STRANGE DELUSION.
79
He said it like some great one. His wife
soothed his hand again and repressed a sigh.
She was a great-hearted lady, that brave wife
and mother, who bore her own trouble without a
word spoken to anyone; but she must sigh, at
least, sometimes; it was such a relief to her
pent-up feelings. "Who indeed?"
she said, acquiescent. "Who in-
deed, if not you? And I love you
best when you conquer so, Michael."
Trevennack looked down upon
her with a strange tender look on
his face, in which gentleness and
condescension were curiously min-
gled. "Yes," he answered, musing;
"for dear Cleer's sake I will always
keep my peace about it. I'll say not a word.
I'll never tell anybody. And yet it's hard to
keep it in; very hard, indeed. I have to bind
myself round, as it were, with bonds of iron.
The secret will almost out of itself at times. As
this morning, for example, when that young
fellow wanted to know why St. Michael always
clung to such airy pinnacles. How jauntily he


A STRANGE DELUSION.
81
out of your mind; and you know how chary young
men are nowadays of marrying a girl when they
believe or even suspect there's insanity in the
family. You can talk of it as much and as
often as you like to me, dear Michael. I think
that does you good. It acts as a safety-valve.
It keeps you from bottling
your secret up in your own
heart too long, and brooding
over it, and worrying your-
self. I like you to talk to
me of it whenever you feel
inclined. But for heaven's
sake, darling, to nobody else.
Not a hint of it for worlds.
The consequences might be
terrible."
Trevennack rose and stood at his full height,
with his heels on the edge of the low cottage
fender. ''You can trust me, Lucy," he said, in a
very soft tone, with grave and conscious dignity.
"You can trust me to hold my tongue. I know
how much depends upon it."
The beautiful lady with the silvery hair sat
e


A STRANGE DELUSION. 83
forgive him!" She clasped her hands tight; she
looked up at him tearfully.

"It was the devil's work," her
husband answered, with a faint
frown on his high forehead, "and
my task in life, Lucy, is to fight
down the devil."
"Fight him down in your own
heart, then, dear," Mrs. Trevennack
said, gently. "Remember, we all
may fall. Lucifer did — and he
was once an archangel. Fight him
down in your own heart when he
suggests hateful thoughts to you.
For I know what you felt when
it came over you instinctively
that that young man had done
it. You wanted to fly straight
at his throat, dear Michael —
you wanted to fly at his throat,
and fling him over the precipice."
"I did," Trevennack answered,

making no pretense of denial. "But for Cleer's
sake I refrained. And for Cleer's sake, if you
wish it, I'll try to forgive him."


84
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

Mrs. Trevennack pressed his hand. Tears
stood in her dim eyes. She, too, had a terrible
battle to fight all the days of
her life, and she fought it
valiantly. "Michael," she
said, with an effort, "try to
avoid that young man. Try
to avoid him, I implore you.
Don't go near him in the
future. If you see him too
often, I'm afraid what the
result for you both may be.
You control yourself wonder-
fully, dear; you control your-
self, I know; and I'm grateful
to you for it. But if you see
too much of him, I dread an
outbreak. It may get the bet-
ter of you. And then — think
of Cleer! Avoid him! Avoid
him!"
For only that silver-headed
woman of all people on earth knew the terrible
truth, that Michael Trevennack's was a hopeless


A STRANGE DELUSION.
85
case of suppressed insanity. Well suppressed,
indeed, and kept firmly in check for his daughter's
sake, and by his brave wife's aid; but insanity,
none the less, of the profoundest monomaniacal
pattern, for all that. All day long, and every
day, in his dealings with the outer world, he kept
down his monomania. An able
and trusted government servant,
he never allowed it for one
moment to interfere with his pub-
lic duties. To his wife alone he
let out what he thought the in-
most and deepest secret of his real
existence — that he was the Arch-
angel Michael. To no one else did he ever allow
a glimpse of the truth, as he thought it, to
appear. He knew the world would call it mad-
ness; and he didn't wish the stigma of inherited
insanity to cling to his Cleer.
Not even Cleer herself for a moment sus-
pected it.
Trevennack was wise enough and cunning
enough, as madmen often are, to keep his own
counsel, for good and sufficient reason.


CHAPTER VI.
PURE ACCIDENT.
During the next week or so, as chance would
have it, Cleer Trevennack fell in more than
once on her walks with Eustace Le Neve and
Walter Tyrrel, They had picked
up acquaintance in an irregular
way, to be sure ; but Cleer hadn't
happened to be close by when
her father uttered those strange
words to his wife, "It was he
who did it; it was he who killed
our boy"; nor did she notice par-
ticularly the marked abruptness
of Tyrrel's departure on that unfortunate occa-
sion. So she had no such objection to meeting
the two young men as Trevennack himself not
unnaturally displayed; she regarded his evident
avoidance of Walter Tyrrel as merely one of

(86)


88
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
attracted to her. There was something about
the pretty Cornish girl so frank, so confiding, in
one word, so magnetic, that when once he came
near her he couldn't tear himself away as he felt
he ought to. Yet he could see very well, none
the less, it was for Eustace Le Neve that she
watched most eagerly, with the natural interest
of a budding girl in the man
who takes her pure maiden
fancy. Tyrrel allowed with a
sigh that this was well indeed;
for how could he ever dream,
now he knew who she was, of
marrying young Michael Tre-
vennack's sister?
One afternoon the two
friends were returning from a long ramble across
the open moor, when, near a little knoll of bare
and weathered rock that rose from a circling
belt of Cornish heath, they saw Cleer by herself,
propped against the huge boulders, with her
eyes fixed intently on a paper-covered novel.
She looked up and smiled as they approached;
and the young men, turning aside from their ill-


90
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
unately, papa's going to be transferred for a
permanence to England; he's to have charge of
a department that has something or other to do
with provisioning the Channel Squadron; I
don't quite understand what; but anyhow, he'll
have to be running about between Portsmouth
and Plymouth, and I don't know where else;
and mamma and I will have to
take a house for ourselves in
London."
Le Neve's face showed his
pleasure. "That's well," he
answered, briskly. "Then you
won't be quite lost! I mean,
there'll be some chance at least
when you go away from here
of one's seeing you sometimes."
A bright red spot rose deep on Cleer's cheek
through the dark olive-brown skin. "How kind
of you to say so," she answered, looking down.
"I'm sure mamma'll be very pleased, indeed, if
you'll take the trouble to call." Then, to hide
her confusion, she went on hastily, "And are you
going to be in England, too? I thought I


MICHAEL'S CRAG.
at the thought. She looked prettiest when she
blushed. Walter Tyrrel, a little behind, stood
and admired her all the while. But Eustace
was flattered she should think of wanting him to
remain in England.
"Thank you," he said, somewhat timidly, for

her bashfulness made him a
trifle bashful in return. "I
should like to very much —
for more reasons than one;"
and he looked at her mean-
ingly. "I'm getting tired, in
some ways, of life abroad.
I'd much prefer to come back
now and settle down in Eng-
land."
Cleer rose as he spoke. His frank admiration
made her feel self-conscious. She thought this
conversation had gone quite far enough for
them both for the present. After all, she knew
so little of him, though he was really very nice,
and he looked at her so kindly! But perhaps it
would be better to go and hunt up papa. "I
think I ought to be moving now," she said, with


PURE ACCIDENT.
93

a delicious little flush on her smooth, dark
cheek. "My father'll be waiting for me." And
she set her face across the moor in
the opposite direction from the gate
of Penmorgan.
"We may come with you, mayn't
we?" Eustace asked, with just an
undertone of wistfulness.
But Tyrrel darted a warning
glance at him. He, at least,
couldn't go to confront once more
that poor dead boy's father.
"I must hurry home," he
said, feebly, consulting his
watch with an abstracted air.
"It's getting so late. But don't
let me prevent you from accom-
panying Miss Trevennack."
Cleer shrank away, a little
alarmed. She wasn't quite
sure whether it would be per-
fectly right for her to walk
about alone on the moorland with only one
young man, though she wouldn't have minded


PURE ACCIDENT.
95
waves in the narrow channel that separate the
crag from the opposite mainland were running
high and boisterous, but Cleer had a sure foot,
and could leap, light as a gazelle, from rock to
rock. Not for nothing was she Michael Treven-
nack's daughter, well trained from her babyhood
to high and airy climbs. She chose an easy
spot where it was possible to
spring across by a series of
boulders, arranged accidentally
like stepping-stones; and in a
minute she was standing on the
main crag itself, a huge beetling
mass of detached serpentine
pushed boldly out as the ad-
vance-guard of the land into the assailing waves,
and tapering at its top into a pyramidal steeple.
The face of the crag was wet with spray in
places; but Cleer didn't mind spray; she was
accustomed to the sea in all its moods and tem-
pers. She clambered up the steep side — a
sheer wall of bare rock, lightly clad here and
there with sparse drapery of green samphire, or
clumps of purple sea-aster, rooted firm in the


96
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

crannies. Its front was yellow with great
patches of lichen, and on the peaks, overhead,
the gulls perched, chattering,
or launched themselves in long
curves upon the evening air.
Cleer paused half way up to
draw breath and admire the
familiar scene. Often as she
had gone there before, she
could never help gazing with
enchanted eyes on those brill-
iantly colored pinnacles, on that deep green sea,
on those angry white breakers
that dashed in ceaseless as-
sault against the solid black
wall of rock all round her.
Then she started once more
on her climb up the uncertain
path, a mere foothold in the
crannies, clinging close with
her tiny hands as she went
to every jutting corner or
weather-worn rock, and every woody stem of
weather-beaten sea plants.


PURE ACCIDENT.
97
At last, panting and hot, she reached the
sharp top, expecting to find Trevennack at his
^fifc accustomed post on the very tallest
C^9^^^ pinnacle of the craggy little islet.
'^^B But, to her immense surprise, her
■ father wasn't there. His absence
disquieted her. Cleer stood up
A on the fissured mass of orange-
m lichened rock that crowned the
very summit, dispossessing the
I gulls who flapped round her as she
mounted it; then, shading her eyes with her
hand, she looked down in every direction to see
if she could descry that missing figure in some
nook of the crag. He was
nowhere visible. "Father!"
she cried aloud, at the top
of her voice; "father!
father! father!" But the
only answer to her cry was
the sound of the sea on the
base, and the loud noise of
the gulls, as they screamed and fluttered in angry
surprise over their accustomed breeding-grounds.


98 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
Alarmed and irresolute, Cleer sat down on
the rock, and facing landwards for awhile,
waved her handkerchief to and fro to attract, if
possible, her father's attention. Then she
scanned the opposite cliffs, beyond the gap or
chasm that separated her from the mainland;
~\ but she could nowhere see him.
^T^kflfi* He must have forgotten her and
/ M gone home to dinner alone, she
JBr\ fancied now, for it was nearly
, M Mm seven o'clock. Nothing re-
3t IV. mained but to climb down again
JM A \ and follow him. It was getting
W \ ) full late to be out by herself on
y the island. And tide was com.
1 """N ing in, and the surf was getting
strong — Atlantic swell from the gale at sea
yesterday.
Painfully and toilsomely she clambered down
the steep path, making her foothold good, step
by step, in the slippery crannies, rendered still
more dangerous in places by the sticky spray
and the brine that dashed over them from tjie
seething channel. It was harder coming down,


PURE ACCIDENT.
99
a good deal, than going up, and she was accus-
tomed to her father's hand to guide her — to fit
her light foot on the little ledges
by the way, or to lift her down
^ over the steepest bits with unfail-
ing tenderness. So she found it
M \ rather difficult to descend by her-
self — both difficult and tedious.
■ At last, however, after one or two
I nasty slips, and a false step or so on
■L the way that ended in her grazing
» ^the tender skin on those white little
fingers, Cleer reached the base of the crag, and
stood face to face with the
final problem of crossing the
chasm that divided the islet
from the opposite mainland.
Then for the first time the
truth was borne in upon her
with a sudden rush that she
couldn't get back — she was
imprisoned on the island. She
had crossed over at almost the last moment pos-
sible. The sea now quite covered two or three


100
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
of her stepping-stones; fierce surf broke over
the rest with each advancing billow, and ren-
dered the task of jumping from one to the other
impracticable even for a strong and sure-footed
man, far more for a slight girl of Cleer's height
and figure.
In a moment the little prisoner took in the
full horror of the situation. It
was now about half tide, and
seven o'clock in the evening.
High water would therefore
fall between ten and eleven;
and it must be nearly two in
the morning, she calculated
hastily, before the sea had
gone down enough to let her cross over in
safety. Even then, in the dark, she dared
hardly face those treacherous stepping-stones.
She must stop there till day broke, if she meant
to get ashore again without unnecessary hazard.
Cleer was a Trevennack, and therefore brave;
but the notion of stopping alone on that deso-
late island, thronged with gulls and cormorants,
in the open air, through all those long dark


PURE ACCIDENT.
101
hours till morning dawned, fairly frightened and
appalled her. For a minute or two she crouched
and cowered in silence. Then, overcome by ter-
ror, she climbed up once more to the first plat-
form of rock, above the reach of the spray, and
shouted with all her might, "Father! father!
father!"
But 'tis a lonely coast, that
wild stretch by the Lizard.
Not a soul was within ear-
shot. Cleer sat there still, or
stood on top of the crag, for
many minutes together, shout-
ing and waving her handker-
chief for dear life itself; but
not a soul heard her. She
might have died there unnoticed; not a creat-
ure came near to help or deliver her. The
gulls and the cormorants alone stared at her
and wondered.
Meanwhile, tide kept flowing with incredible
rapidity. The gale in the Atlantic had raised
an unwonted swell; and though there was now
little wind, the breakers kept thundering in upon


CHAPTER VII.
PERIL BY LAND.
The Trevennacks dined in their lodgings at
Gunwalloe at half-past seven. But in the rough
open-air life of summer visitors on the Cornish
coast, meals as a rule are
very movable feasts; and
Michael Trevennack wasn't
particularly alarmed when he
reached home that evening to
find Cleer hadn't returned
before him. They had missed
one another, somehow, among
the tangled paths that led
down the gully; an easy enough thing to do
between those big boulders and bramble-bushes;
and it was a quarter to eight before Trevennack
began to feel alarmed at Cleer's prolonged
absence. By that time, however, he grew thor-


PERIL BY LAND.
105
masses of sharp rock, some above and some
below the surface, now separated them by fifty
yards or more from the island. It was growing
dark fast, for these were the closing days of
August twilight; and dense fog had drifted in,
half obliterating everything. They could barely
descry the dim outline of the
pyramidal rock in its lower half;
its upper part was wholly
shrouded in thick mist and
drizzle.
With a wild cry of despair,
Trevennack raised his voice, and
shouted aloud, "Cleer, Cleer!
where are you?"
That clarion voice, as of his
namesake angel, though raised against the wind,
could be heard above even the thud of the fierce
breakers that pounded the sand. On the high-
est peak above, where she sat, cold and shiver-
ing, Cleer heard it, and jumped up. "Here!
here! father!" she cried out, with a terrible
effort, descending at the same time down the
sheer face of the cliff as far as the dashing spray
and fierce wild waves would allow her.


PERIL BY LAND.
107
and there, to rescue her. But the workmen held
him back. "No, no, sir; you mustn't," they said.
"No harm can't come to the young lady if she
stops there. She've only got to sit on them
rocks there till morning, and the tide'll leave her
high and dry right enough, as it always do. But
nobody couldn't live in such a
sea as that — not Tim o' Truro.
The waves 'u'd dash him up
afore he knowed where he was,
and smash him all to pieces on
the side o1 the island."
Trevennack tried to break
from them, but the men held
him hard. Their resistance
angered him. He chafed under
their restraint. How dare these rough fellows
lay hands like that on the Prince of the Arch-
angels and a superior officer in Her Majesty's
Civil Service? But with the self-restraint that
was habitual to him, he managed to refrain, even
so, from disclosing his identity. He only strug-
gled ineffectually, instead of blasting them with
his hot breath, or clutching his strong arms
round their bare throats and choking them.


108
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

As he stood there and hesitated, half unde-
cided how to act, of a sudden a sharp cry arose
from behind. Trevennack
turned and looked. Through
the dark and the fog he could
just dimly descry two men hur-
rying up, with ropes and life
buoys. As they neared him, he
started in unspeakable horror.
For one of them, indeed, was
only Eustace Le Neve; but the
other — the other was that devil Walter Tyrrel,
who, he felt sure in his own heart,
had killed their dear Michael.
And it was his task in life to fight
and conquer devils.
For a minute he longed to leap
upon him and trample him under
foot, as long ago he had trampled
his old enemy, Satan. What was
the fellow doing here now? What
business had he with Cleer? Was
he always to be in at the death of a Trevennack?
But true to her trust, the silver-haired lady


PERIL BY LAND.
109
J
A
4^*
clutched his arm with tender watchfulness.
"For Cleer's sake, dear Michael!" she whis-
pered low in his ear; "for Cleer's sake — say
nothing; don't speak to him, don't notice him!"
The distracted father drew back a step, out of
reach of the spray. "But Lucy," he cried low
to her, "only think! only remember! If I cared
to go on the cliff and just
spread my wings, I could fly
across and save her — so in-
stantly, so easily!"
His wife held his hand hard.
That touch always soothed
him. "If you did, Michael,"
she said gently, with her fem-
inine tact, "they'd all declare
you were mad, and had no wings to fly with.
And Cleer's in no immediate danger just now,
I feel sure. Don't try, there's a dear man.
That's right! Oh, thank you."
Reassured by her calm confidence, Trevennack
fell back yet another step on the sands, and
watched the men aloof. Walter Tyrrel turned
to him. His heart was in his mouth. He spoke
1


110
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
in short, sharp sentences. "The coastguard's
wife told us," he said. "We've come down to
get her off. I've sent word direct to the Lizard
lifeboat. But I'm afraid it won't come. They
daren't venture out. Sea runs too high, and
these rocks are too dangerous."
As he spoke, he tore off his
coat, tied a rope round his
waist, flung his boots on the
sand, and girded himself rapidly
with an inflated life-buoy. Then,
before the men could seize him
or prevent the rash attempt, he
had dashed into the great waves
that curled and thundered on
the beach, and was struggling
hard with the sea in a life and death contest.
Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to
aid him in his endeavors. He had meant to
plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was before-
hand with him. He was no match in a race
against time for the fiery and impetuous Cornish
temperament. It wasn't long, however, before
the breakers proved themselves more than equal


PERIL BY LAND.
Ill

foes for Walter Tyrrel. In another minute he
was pounded and pummeled on the unseen rocks
under water by the great curling
billows. They seized him re-
sistlessly on their crests, tum-
bled him over like a child, and
dashed him, bruised and bleed-
ing, one limp bundle of flesh,
against the jagged and pointed
summits of the submerged
boulders.
With all his might, Eustace Le Neve held on
to the rope; then, in coat and boots as he stood,
he plunged into the waves and
lifted Walter Tyrrel in his
strong arms landward. He
was a bigger built and more
powerful man than his host,
and his huge limbs battled
harder with the gigantic waves.
But even so, in that swirling
flood, it was touch and go with
him. The breakers lifted him off his feet,
tossed him to and fro in their trough, flung him


MICHAEL'S CRAG.
down again forcibly against the sharp-edged
rocks, and tried to float off his half unconscious
burden. But Le Neve persevered in spite of
them, scrambling and tottering as he went, over
wet and slippery reefs, with Tyrrel still clasped
in his arms, and pressed tight to his breast, till
^ he landed him safe at last on
the firm sand beside him.
The squire was far too beaten
and bruised by the rocks to
make a second attempt against
> those resistless breakers. In-
deed, Le Neve brought him
ashore more dead than alive,
bleeding from a dozen wounds
on the face and hands, and with the breath
almost failing in his battered body. They laid
him down on the beach, while the fishermen
crowded round him, admiring his pluck, though
they deprecated his foolhardiness, for they
"knowed the squire couldn't never live ag'in it."
But Le Neve, still full of the reckless courage
of youth, and health, and strength, and man-
hood, keenly alive now to the peril of Cleer's


PERIL BY LAND.
113
lonely situation, never heeded their forebodings.
He dashed in once more, just as he stood, clothes
and all, in the wild and desper-
ate attempt to stem that fierce
flood and swim across to the
island.
In such a sea as then raged,
indeed, and among such broken
rocks, swimming, in the strict
sense, was utterly impossible.
By some mere miracle of dashing about, how-
ever — here, battered against the sharp rocks;
there, flung over them by the breakers; and
yonder, again, sucked down,
like a straw in an eddy, by the
fierce strength of the undertow
— Eustace found himself at
last, half unconscious and half
choked, carried round by the
swirling scour that set through
the channel to the south front
of the island. Next instant he
felt he was cast against the dead wall of rock
like an india rubber ball. He rebounded into


116
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
As he seized her hand and wrung it, Cleer
crying the while with delight and relief, it struck
him all at once, for the very first time, he had
done no good by coming, save to give her com-
panionship. It would be hopeless to try carry-
ing her through those intricate rock-channels
and that implacable surf, whence he himself had
emerged, alone and unbur-
dened, only by a miracle.
They two must stop alone
there on the rock till morning.
As for Cleer, too innocent
and too much of a mere
woman in her deadly peril
to think of anything but the
delightful sense of confidence
in a strong man at her side to guard and
protect her, she sat and held his hand still,
in a perfect transport of gratitude. "Oh, how
good of you to come!" she cried again and
again, bending over it in her relief, and half
tempted to kiss it. "How good of you to come
across like that to save me."


CHAPTER VIII.
SAFE AT LAST.
The night was long. The night was dark.
Slowly the fog closed them in. It grew rainier
and more dismal. But on the summit of the
crag Eustace Le Neve stood
aloft, and waved his arms, and
shouted. He lit a match and
shaded it. The dull glare of it
through the mist just faintly
reached the eyes of the anxious
watchers on the beach below.
From a dozen lips there rose
an answering shout. The pair on
the crag half heard its last
echoes. Eustace put his hands to his mouth
and cried aloud once more, in stentorian tones,
"All right. Cleer's heijiv- We can hold out till
morning."

(117)


118
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

Trevennack alone heard the words. But he
repeated them so instantly that his wife felt sure
it was true hearing, not in-
sane hallucination. The sea
was gaining on them now. It
had risen almost up to the
face of the cliffs. Reluctantly
they turned along the path by
the gully, and mounting the
rprecipice waited and watched
L- J till morning on the tor that
overlooks Michael's Crag from the Penmorgan
headland.
Every now and again, through that livelong
night, Trevennack whispered
in his wife's ear, "If only I
chose to spread my wings,
and launch myself, I could fly
across and carry her." And
each time that brave woman,
holding his hand in her own
and smoothing it gently, an-
swered in her soft voice, "But
then the secret would be out, and Cleer's life


SAFE AT LAST.
119
would be spoiled, and they'd call you a madman.
Wait till morning, dear Michael; do, do, wait
till morning."
And Trevennack, struggling hard with the
mad impulse in his heart, replied with all his
soul, "I will; I will; for Cleer's sake and yours,
I'll try to keep it down. I'll
not be mad. I'll be strong
and restrain it."
For he knew he was insane,
in his inmost soul, almost as
well as he knew his name was
Michael the Archangel.
On the island, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve
and Cleer Trevennack sat watching out the
weary night, and longing for the dawn to make
the way back possible. At least, Cleer did, for
as to Eustace, in spite of rain and fog and cold
and darkness, he was by no means insensible to
the unwonted pleasure of so long a tete-a-tete, in
such romantic circumstances, with the beautiful
Cornish girl. To be sure the waves roared, and
the drizzle dripped, and the seabirds flapped all
round them. But many waters will not quench


SAFE AT LAST.
123
other's standpoint. There are some situations
where you get to know people better in a few
half-hours together than you could get to know
them in months upon months of mere drawing-
room acquaintance. And this was one of them.
Before morning dawned, Eustace Le Neve and
Cleer Trevennack felt just as if
they had known one another
quite well for years. They
were old and trusted friends
already. Old friends — and
even something more than
that. Though no word of love
was spoken between them, each
knew of what the other was
thinking. Eustace felt Cleer loved him; Cleer
felt Eustace loved her. And in spite of rain and
cold and fog and darkness they were almost
happy—before dawn came to interrupt their
strange tUe-a-tbte on the islet.
As soon as day broke Eustace looked out
from their eyrie on the fissured peak, and down
upon the troubled belt of water below. The
sea was now ebbing, and the passage between


SAFE AT LAST. 125
r
nacks—"Stand fast, St. Michael's!"—under the
crest of the rocky islet, castled and mured, flam-
, . „^„ _ b0yant. Eustace reached
the bottom of the rock, and,
wading in the water himself,
or jumping into the deepest
parts, helped Cleer across
the stepping-stones. Mean-
while, the party on the cliff
had hurried down by the
gully path; and a minute
later Cleer was in her mother's arms, while Tre-
vennack held her hand, inarticulate with joy,
and bent over her eagerly.
"Oh, mother," Cleer cried, in her simple
girlish naivete, "Mr. Le Neve's
been so kind to me! I don't
know how I should ever have
got through the night without
him. It was so good of him
to come. He's been such a
help to me."
The father and mother both looked into
her eyes — a single searching glance—and


126
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

understood perfectly. They grasped Le Neve's
hand. Tears rolled down their cheeks. Not a
word was spoken, but in a cer-
tain silent way all four under-
stood one another.
"Where's Tyrrel?" Eustace
asked.
And Mrs. Trevennack an-
swered, "Carried home, severe-
ly hurt. He was bruised on
the rocks. But we hope not
dangerously. The doctor's been to see him, we
hear, and finds no bones broken. Still, he's
terribly battered about, in those
fearful waves, and it must be
weeks, they tell us, before he
can quite recover."
But Cleer, as was natural,
thought more of the man who
had struggled through and
reached her than of the man
who had failed in the attempt,
though he suffered all the more for it. This is
a world of the successful. In it, as in most


SAFE AT LAST.

other planets I have visited, people make a deal
more fuss over the smallest success than over
the noblest failure.
It was no moment for delay. Eustace turned
on his way at once, and ran
up to Penmorgan. And the
Trevennacks returned, very
wet and cold, in the dim gray
dawn to their rooms at Gun-
walloe.
As soon as they were
alone — Cleer put safely to
bed — Trevennack looked at his wife. "Lucy,"
he said, slowly, in a disappointed tone, "after
this, of course, come what
may, they must marry."
"They must," his wife an-
swered. "There's no other
way left And fortunately,
dear, I could see from the
very first, Cleer likes him,
and he likes her."
The father paused a moment. It wasn t quite
the match he had hoped for a Trevennack of


CHAPTER IX.
MEDICAL OPINION.
From that day forth, by some unspoken com-
pact, it was "Eustace" and "Cleer," wherever
they met, between them. Le Neve began it, by
coming round in the afternoon
of that self-same day, as soon as
he'd slept off the first effects of
his fatigue and chill, to inquire
of Mrs. Trevennack "how Cleer
was getting on " after her night's
exposure. And Mrs. Treven-
nack accepted the frank usurpa-
tion in very good part, as indeed
was no wonder, for Cleer had wanted to know
half an hour before whether " Eustace" had yet
been round to ask after her. The form of
speech told all. There was no formal engage-
ment, and none of the party knew exactly how

(130)


MEDICAL OPINION. 131
or when they began to take it for granted; but
from that evening on Michael's Crag it was a
Stacitly accepted fact between
Le Neve and the Treven-
nacks that Eustace was to
marry Cleer as soon as he
could get a permanent ap-
pointment anywhere.
Engineering, however, is an
overstocked profession. In
that particular it closely re-
sembles most other callings.
The holidays passed away, and Walter Tyrrel
recovered, and the Trevennacks returned to
town for the head of the house to take up his
new position in the Admiralty
service; but Eustace Le Neve
heard of no opening anywhere
for an energetic young man
with South American experi-
ence. Those three years he
had passed out of England, in-
deed, had made him lose touch with other mem-
bers of his craft. People shrugged their shoul-


132
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

ders when they heard of him, and opined, with
a chilly smile, he was the sort of young man
who ought to go to the colonies.
That's the easiest way of shelv-
ing all similar questions. The
colonies are popularly regarded
in England as the predestined
dumping-ground for all the fools
and failures of the mother-coun-
try. So Eustace settled down in
lodgings in London, not far from
the Trevennacks, and spent more
of his time, it must be confessed,
in going round to see Cleer than
in perfecting himself in the knowl-
edge of his chosen art. Not that
he failed to try every chance that
lay open to him — he had far too
much energy to sit idle in his
chair and let the stream of promo-
tion flow by unattempted; but
chances were few and applicants
were many, and month after month passed away
to his chagrin without the clever young engineer


134
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
practical intelligence. Indeed, no man could
talk with more absolute common sense about his
daughter's future, or the duties and functions of
an Admiralty official, than Michael Trevennack.
It was only to his wife in his most confidential
moments that he ever admitted the truth as to
his archangelic character; to all others whom he
met he was simply a distin-
guished English civil servant
of blameless life and very solid
judgment. The heads of his
I department placed the most
M implicit trust in Trevennack's
opinion; there was no man
about the place who could de-
cide a knotty point of detail off-hand like Mi-
chael Trevennack. What was his poor wife to
do, then? Was it her place to warn Eustace
that Cleer's father might at any moment unex-
pectedly develop symptoms of dangerous insan-
ity? Was she bound thus to wreck her own
daughter's happiness? Was she bound to speak
out the very secret of her heart which she had
spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack


136
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
drawing-room at Bayswater, Eustace Le Neve
happened to let drop a casual remark which cut
poor Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife
at her heart. He was talking of some friend of
his who had lately got engaged. "It's a ter-
rible thing," he said, seriously. "There's insan-
ity in the family. I wouldn't marry into such a
family as that — no, not if I loved a girl to
what an inheritance to hand on to one's inno-
cent children!"
Trevennack took no open notice of what he
said. But Mrs. Trevennack winced, grew sud-
denly pale, and stammered out some conven-
tional none-committing platitude. His words
entered her very soul. They stung and galled
her. That night she lay awake and thought
more bitterly to herself about the matter than
ever. Next morning early, as soon as Treven-

distraction, Mrs. Trevennack.
The father's in a mad-house,
you know; and the girl's very
nice now, but one never can tell
when the tendency may break
out. And then—just think!


MEDICAL OPINION.
137
nack had set off to catch the fast train from
Waterloo to Portsmouth direct (he was fre-
quently down there on Admiralty
business), she put on her cloak and
bonnet, without a word to Cleer,
and set out in a hansom all alone
to Harley Street
The house to which she drove
was serious-looking and profes-
sional — in point of fact, it was
Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-
known specialist on mental dis-
eases. She sent up no card and gave no name.
On the contrary, she kept her veil down — and
it was a very thick one. But Dr. Yate-West-
bury made no comment on this reticence; it was
a familiar occurrence with him
— people are often ashamed to
have it known they consult a
mad-doctor.
"I want to ask you about my
husband's case," Mrs. Treven-
nack began, trembling. And the great specialist,
all attention, leaned forward and listened to her.


138 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
Mrs. Trevennack summoned up courage, and
started from the very beginning. She described
how her husband, who was a government serv-
ant, had been walking below a cliff on the sea-
shore with their only son, some fifteen years
earlier, and how a shower of stones from the top
had fallen on their heads and killed their poor
boy, whose injuries were the
more serious. She could men-
tion it all now with compara-
tively little emotion; great sor-
rows since had half obliterated
that first and greatest one.
But she laid stress upon the
point that her husband had
been struck, too, and was very gravely hurt —
so gravely, indeed, that it was weeks before he
recovered physically.
"On what part of the head?" Yate-Westbury
asked, with quick medical insight.
And Mrs. Trevennack answered, "Here," lay-
her small gloved hand on the center of the left
temple.
The great specialist nodded. "Go on," he


MEDICAL OPINION.
139

said, quietly. "Fourth frontal convolution!
And it was a month or two, I have no doubt,
before you noticed any seri-
ous symptoms supervening?"
"Exactly so," Mrs. Treven-
nack made answer, very much
relieved. "It was all of a
month or two. But from
that day forth — from the
very beginning, I mean — he
had a natural horror of going beneath a cliff, and
he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to
be perfectly sure there was nobody at all any-
where above to hurt him." And then she went
on to describe in short but graphic phrase how
he loved to return to the
place of his son's accident,
and to stand for hours on
lonely sites overlooking the
spot, and especially on a crag
which was dedicated to St.
Michael.
The specialist caught at what was coming
with the quickness, she thought, of long expe-


MEDICAL OPINION.
141
believes quite firmly he's St. Michael the
Archangel."
Yate-Westbury nodded once more. "Pre-
cisely the development I should expect to
occur," he said, "after such an accident."
Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her
seat in her relief. "Then you attribute it to the
accident first of all?" she asked, eagerly.
"Not a doubt about it," the specialist an-
swered. "The region you in-
dicate is just the one where
similar illusory ideas are apt
to arise from external injuries.
The bruise gave the cause, and
circumstances the form. Be-
sides, the case is normal —
quite normal altogether. Does he have frequent
outbreaks?"
Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had
any. Except to herself, and that but seldom,
he never alluded to the subject in any way.
Yate-Westbury bit his lip. "He must have
great self-control," he answered, less confidently.
"In a case like that, I'm bound to admit, my


MEDICAL OPINION.
143
She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed
out with it without reserve. Yate-Westbury

gazed at her compassionately.
He was a kind-hearted man.
"No; certainly not," he an-
swered, with emphasis. "Not
the very slightest reason in any
way to fear it. The sanest
man, coming from the very
sanest and healthiest stock on
earth, would almost certainly be subject to delu-
sions under such circumstances. This is acci-
dent, not disease — circumstance, not tempera-
ment. The injury to the brain is the result of a
special blow. Grief for the
loss of his son, and brooding
over the event, no doubt con-
tributed to the particular shape
the delusion has assumed. But
the injury's the main thing. I
don't doubt there's a clot of
blood formed just here on the

brain, obstructing its functions in part, and dis-
turbing its due relations. In every other way,


144
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
you say, he's a good man of business. The very
apparent rationality of the delusion — the way
it's been led up to by his habit
of standing on cliffs, his name,
his associations, his family,
everything — is itself a good
sign that the partial insanity is
due to a local and purely acci-
dental cause. It simulates rea-
son as closely as possible. Dis-
miss the question altogether from your mind, as
far as your daughter's future is concerned. Its
no more likely to be inherited than a broken leg
or an amputated arm is."
Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous
tears. "Then all I have to do,"
she sobbed out, "is to keep
him from an outbreak until
after my daughter's married."
Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded.
"That's all you have to do,"
he answered, sympathetically.
"And I'm sure Mrs. Trevennack —" he paused
with a start and checked himself.


MEDICAL OPINION.
145

"Why, how do you know my name?" the
astonished mother cried, drawing back with a
little shudder of half super-
stitious alarm at such surpris-
ing prescience.
Dr. Yate-Westbury made a
clean breast of it. "Well, to
tell the truth," he said, "Mr.
Trevennack himself called
round here yesterday, in the afternoon, and
stated the whole case to me from his own point
of view, giving his name in full — as a man
would naturally do — but never describing to
me the nature of his delu-
sion. He said it was too
sacred a thing for him to so
much as touch upon; that
he knew he wasn't mad, but
that the world would think
him so; and he wanted to
know, from something he'd
heard said, whether madness
caused by an injury of the sort would or would
not be considered by medical men as inheritable.

10


146
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
And I told him at once, as I've told you to-day,
there was not the faintest danger of it. But I
never made such a slip in my life before as
blurting out the name. I could only have done
it to you. Trust me, your secret is safe in my
keeping. I have hundreds in my head." He
took her hand in his own as
he spoke. "Dear madam,"
he said, gently, "I under-
stand; I feel for you."
"Thank you," Mrs. Tre-
vennack answered low, with
tears standing in her eyes.
"I'm — I'm so glad you've
seen him. It makes your
opinion so much more valuable to me. But
you thought his delusion wholly due to the
accident, then?"
"Wholly due to the accident, dear lady.
Yes, wholly, wholly due to it. You may go
home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears
are groundless. Miss Trevennack may marry
with a clear conscience."


CHAPTER X.
A BOLD ATTEMPT.
During the next ten or eleven months poor
Mrs. Trevennack had but one abiding terror —
that a sudden access of irrepressible insanity
might attack her husband before
Cleer and Eustace could manage to
get married. Trevennack, however,
with unvarying tenderness, did his
best in every way to calm her fears.
Though no word on the subject
passed between them directly, he let
her feel with singular tact that he
meant to keep himself under proper
control. Whenever a dangerous
topic cropped up in conversation, he would look
across at her affectionately, with a reassuring
smile. "For Cleer's sake," he murmured often,
if she was close by his side; "for Cleer's sake,


148
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
dearest!" and his wife, mutely grateful, knew at
once what he meant, and smiled approval sadly.
Ten months passed away, however, and Eus-
tace Le Neve didn't seem to get much nearer
any permanent appointment than ever. He
began to tire at last of applying
unsuccessfully for every passing
vacancy. Now and then he got
odd jobs, to be sure; but odd
jobs won't do for a man to
marry upon; and serious work
seemed always to elude him.
Walter Tyrrel did his best, no

doubt, to hunt up all the directors of all the
companies he knew; but no posts fell vacant on

Her heart was very full; her
part was a hard one to play
with fitting cheerfulness; but
in his very madness itself she
couldn't help loving, admiring,
and respecting that strong,
grave husband who fought so
hard against his own profound
convictions.


A BOLD ATTEMPT.
151
If only Walter Tyrrel could have got his friend
to accept such terms, indeed, he would gladly,
for Cleer's sake, have asked Le Neve to marry
on an allowance of half the Penmorgan rent-roll.
But in this commercial age, such quixotic
arrangements are simply impossible. So Tyrrel
set to work with fiery zeal to
find out what openings were just
then to be had; and first of all
for that purpose he went to call
on a parliamentary friend of his,
Sir Edward Jones, the fat and
good-natured chairman of the
Great North Midland Railway.
Tyrrel was a shareholder whose
vote was worth considering, and
he supported the Board with unwavering loyalty.
Sir Edward was therefore all attention, and
listened with sympathy to Tyrrel's glowing
account of his friend's engineering energy and
talent. When he'd finished his eulogy, however,
the practical railway magnate crossed his fat
hands and put in, with very common-sense dry-
ness, "If he's so clever as all that, why doesn't
he have a shot at this Wharfedale Viaduct?"


A BOLD ATTEMPT.
153
slowly. "Youth has ideas; middle age has
experience. In a matter like this, my own belief
is, the ideas count for most. Yes, if I were
you, Tyrrel, I'd ask your friend to consider it."
"You would?" Walter cried, brightening up.
"Aye, that I would," the great railway-man
answered, still more confidently than before,
rubbing his fat hands reflect-
ively. "It's a capital opening.
Erasmus Walker'll be in for
it, of course; and Erasmus
Walker'll get it. But don't
you tell your fellow that. It'll
only discourage him. You
just send him down to
Yorkshire to reconnoiter the
ground; and if he's good for anything, when
he's seen the spot he'll make a plan of his own,
a great deal better than Walker's. Not that
that'll matter, don't you know, as far as this
viaduct goes. The company'll take Walker's, no
matter how good any other fellow's may be, and
how bad Walker's — because Walker has a
great name, and because they think they can't


154
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
go far wrong if they follow Walker. But still,
if your friend's design is a good one, it'll attract
attention — which is always something; and
after they've accepted Walker's, and flaws begin
to be found in it — as experts can always find
flaws in anything, no matter how well planned—
your friend can come forward and make a fuss

in the papers (or what's better
still, you can come forward and
make it for him) to say these
flaws were strikingly absent
from his very superior and
scientific conception. There'll
be flaws in your friend's as
well, of course, but they won't
be the same ones, and nobody'll have the same
interest in finding them out and exposing them.
And that'll get your man talked about in the
papers and the profession. It's better, anyhow,
than wasting his time doing nothing in London
here."
"He shall do it!" Walter cried, all on
fire. "I'll take care he shall do it. And Sir
Edward, I tell you, I'd give five thousand


A BOLD ATTEMPT.
155
pounds down if only he could get the job
away from Walker."
. "Got a grudge against Walker,
JjeP S tnen?" Sir Edward cried quickly,
)9w puckering up his small eyes.
"Oh, no," Tyrrel answered, smil-
W ing; that was not much in his line.
"But I've got strong reasons of my
own, on the other hand, for wishing
to do a good turn to Le Neve in
» this business."
And he went home, reflecting in
his own soul on the way that
many thousands would be as
dross in the pan to him if
only he could make Cleer
Trevennack happy.
But that very same evening
Trevennack came home from
the Admiralty in a most ex-
cited condition.
"Lucy!" he cried to his
wife, as soon as he was alone in the room with
her, "who do you think I saw to-day — there,


156
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
alive in the flesh, standing smiling on the steps
of Sir Edward Jones' house? — that brute
Walter Tyrrel, who killed our poor boy for us!"
"Hush! hush, Michael!" his wife cried in
answer. "It's so long ago now, and he was such
a boy at the time; and he repents it bitterly —

I'm sure he repents it. You prom-
ised you'd try to forgive him. For
Cleer's sake, dear heart, you must
keep your promise."
Trevennack knit his brows.
"What does he mean, then, by
dogging my steps?" he cried.
"What does he mean by coming
after me up to London like this?
What does he mean by tempting
me? I can't stand the sight of him. I won't be
challenged, Lucy; I don't know whether it's the
devil or not, but when I saw the fellow to-day I
had hard work to keep my hands off him. I
wanted to spring at his throat. I would have
liked to throttle him!"
The silver-haired lady drew still closer to the
excited creature, and held his hands with a


A BOLD ATTEMPT.
157
gentle pressure. "Michael," she said, earnestly,
this is the devil. This is the greatest temptation
of all. This is what I dread
most for you. Remember, it's
Satan himself that suggests such
thoughts to you. Fight the
devil within, dearest. Fight
him within, like a man. That's
the surest place, after all, to
conquer him."
Trevennack drew himself up
proudly, and held his peace for a time. Then
he went on in another tone:
"I shall get leave," said
he quietly, becoming pure
human once more. "I
shall get leave of absence.
I can't stop in town while
this creature's about. I'd
have to spring at him if I
saw him again. I can't keep
my hands off him. I'll fly

from temptation. I must go down into the
country."


158
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

"Not to Cornwall!" Mrs. Trevennack cried,
in deep distress; for she dreaded the effect of
those harrowing associations for
him.
Trevennack shook his head
gravely. "No, not to Cornwall,"
he answered. "I've another plan
this time. I want to go to Dart-
moor. It's lonely enough there.
Not a soul to distract me.
You know, Lucy, when one
means to fight the devil, there's nothing
for it like the wilderness;
and Dartmoor's wilderness
enough for me. I shall go
to Ivybridge, for the tors
and the beacons."
Mrs. Trevennack assented
gladly. If he wanted to fight
the devil, it was best at any
rate he should be out of reach
of Walter Tyrrel while he did
it. And it was a good thing to get him away,
too, from St. Michael's Mount, and St. Michael's


MICHAEL'S CRAG.
medieval chapel. It was on this sacred
site of his antique cult that
Trevennack wished to fight
the internal devil. And he
would fight it with a will,
on that he was resolved; fight
and, as became his angelic
reputation, conquer.


162
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
the north, the Trevennacks for Devonshire
Cleer needed a change indeed; she'd spent the
best part of a year in London.
And for Cleer, that was a
wild and delightful holiday.
Though Eustace wasn't there,
to be sure, he wrote hopefully
from the north; he was matur-
ing his ideas; he was evolving a plan; the sense
of the magnitude of his stake in this attempt
had given him an unwonted outburst of inspira-
tion. As she wandered with her father among
those boggy uplands, or stood on
the rocky tors that so strangely
crest the low flat hill-tops of the
great Devonian moor. She felt a
marvelous exhilaration stir her
blood — the old Cornish freedom
making itself felt through all the
restrictions of our modern civili-
zation. She was to the manner
born, and she loved the Celtic West Country.
But to Michael Trevennack it was life, health,
vigor. He hated London. He hated officialdom.


BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.
163
He hated the bonds of red tape that enveloped
him. It's hard to know yourself an archangel—
"One of the seven who nearest to the throne
Stand ready at command, and are as eyes
That run through all the heavens, or down to the earth,"
and yet to have to sit at a desk all day long,
with a pen in your hand, in obedience to the
orders of the First Lord of
the Admiralty! It's hard to
know you can
"Bear swift errands over moist and
dry,
O'er sea and land,"
as his laureate Milton puts it,
and yet be doomed to keep
still hour after hour in a stuffy office, or to
haggle over details of pork and cheese in a
malodorous victualing yard. Trevennack knew
his "Paradise Lost" by heart — it was there,
indeed, that he had formed his main ideas of the
archangelic character; and he repeated the sono-
rous lines to himself, over and over again, in a
ringing, loud voice, as he roamed the free moor
or poised light on the craggy pinnacles. This


BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.
165
in stout shoes and coarse blue serge gown—.
for Dartmoor is by no means a place to be
Eapproached by those who, like
Agag, "walk delicately"—even
Cleer didn't know that this
craggy peak, jagged and point-
ed like some Alpine or dolo-
mitic aiguille, was known to
all the neighboring shepherds
around as St. Michael's Tor,
from its now forgotten chapel.
A few wild Moorland sheep
grazed now and again on the short herbage at
its base; but for the most part
father and daughter found
themselves alone amid that
gorse-clad solitude. There Mi-
chael Trevennack would stand
erect, with head bare and brows
knit, in the full eye of the sun,
for hour after hour at a time,
fighting the devil within him.
And when he came back at night, tired out with
his long tramp across the moor and his internal

s


166 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
struggle, he would murmur to his wife, "I've
conquered him to-day. It was a hard, hard
fight! But I conquered! I conquered him!"
Up in the north, meanwhile, Eustace Le
Neve worked away with a will at the idea for
his viaduct. As he rightly wrote to Cleer, the
need itself inspired him. Love
is a great engineer, and Eus-
tace learned fast from him.
He was full of the fresh orig-
inality of youth; and the place
took his fancy and impressed
itself upon him. Gazing at it
each day, there rose up slowly
by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the picture
of a great work on a new and startling princi-
ple— a modification of the cantilever to the
necessities of the situation. Bit by bit he
worked it out, and reduced his first floating con-
ception to paper; then he explained it to Walter
Tyrrel, who listened hard to his explanations,
and tried his best to understand the force of
the technical arguments. Enthusiasm is catch-
ing; and Le Neve was enthusiastic about his


BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.
167

imaginary viaduct, till Walter Tyrrel in turn
grew almost as enthusiastic as the designer
himself over its beauty and
utility. So charmed was he
with the idea, indeed, that
when Le Neve had at last
committed it all to paper, he
couldn't resist the temptation
of asking leave to show it to
Sir Edward Jones, whom he
had already consulted as to
Eustace's prospects.
Eustace permitted him, somewhat reluctantly,
to carry the design to the great
railway king, and on the very first
day of their return to London, in
the beginning of October, Tyrrel
took the papers round to Sir Ed-
ward's house in Onslow Gardens.
The millionaire inspected it at
first with cautious reserve. He
was a good business man, and
he hated enthusiasm — except in
money matters. But gradually, as Walter Tyrrel


168
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
explained to him the various points in favor of
the design, Sir Edward thawed. He looked
into it carefully. Then he went over the calcu-
lations of material and expense with a critical
eye. At the end he leant back in his study
chair, with one finger on the elevation and one
keen delight, as anxious for Cleer's sake as if
the design were his own. "You think they may
take it?"
"Oh dear, no," Sir Edward answered, confi-
dently, with a superior smile. "Not the slight-
est chance in the world of that. They'd never
even dream of it. It's novel, you see, novel,
while Walker's is conventional. And they'll
take the conventional one. But its a first rate
design for all that, I can tell you. I never saw
a better one."

eye on the figures, while he
observed with slow emphasis:
"This is a very good de-
sign. Why, man, its just
about twenty times better
than Erasmus Walker's."
"Then you think it may
succeed?" Tyrrel cried, with


BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.
169
"Well, but how do you know what Walker's
is like?" Tyrrel asked, somewhat dismayed at
the practical man's coolness.
"Oh, he showed it me last night," Sir Edward
answered, calmly. "A very decent design, on
the familiar lines, but not fit to hold a candle to
Le Neve's, of course; any jour-
neyman could* have drafted it.
Still, it has Walker's name to it,
don't you see — it has Walker's
name to it; that means every-
thing."
"Is it cheaper than this would
be," Tyrrel asked, for Le Neve
had laid stress on the point that
for economy of material, com-
bined with strength of weight-resisting power,
his own plan was remarkable.
"Cheaper!" Sir Edward echoed. "Oh dear,
no. By no means. Nothing could very well be
cheaper than this. There's genius in its con-
struction, don't you see? It's a new idea, intel-
ligently applied to the peculiarities and difficult-
ies of a very unusual position, taking advantage


172
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

►
t
to last longest, to be freest from danger, to give
rise in the end to least and fewest accidents?"
"Why, your friend Le
Neve's, of course," the mill-
ionaire answered, without a
moment's hesitation.
"You think so?"
nTOBB "I don't think so at all,
my dear fellow, I know it.
Hsl I'm sure of it. Look here,"
and he pulled out a design
from a pigeon-hole in his desk; "this is in con-
fidence, you understand. I oughtn't to show it
to you; but I can trust your
honor. Here's Walker's idea.
It isn't an idea at all, in fact, it's
just the ordinary old stone via-
duct, with the ordinary dangers,
and the ordinary iron girders —
nothing in any way new or orig-
inal. It's respectable mediocrity.
On an affair like that, and with
this awkward curve, too, just behind taking-off
point, the liability to accident is considerably


BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.
175

"But it can't be," Sir Edward answered, with
brisk promptitude. "Walker's a money-grub-
bing chap. If he sees a chance
of making a few thousands more
anywhere, depend upon it he'll
make 'em. He's a martyr to
«^ money, he is. He toils and
H^BSgS slaves for £ s. d. all his life.
He has no other interests."
"What can he want with it?" Tyrrel ex-
claimed. "He's a bachelor, isn't he, without
wife or child? What can a man like that want
to pile up filthy lucre for?"
"Can't say, I'm sure," Sir Edward answered,
good humoredly. "I have
my quiver full of them my-
self, and every guinea I get
I find three of my children
are quarreling among them-
selves for ten and sixpence
apiece of it. But what Wal-
ker can want with money
heaven only knows. If / were a bachelor, now,
and had an estate of my own in Cornwall, say,


A HARD BARGAIN.
179

Tyrrel could see, was thick, black, and decisive.
Altogether the kind of man on whose brow it
was written in legible charac-
ters that it's dogged as does
it. The delicately organized
Cornishman felt an instinctive
dislike at once for this great
coarse mountain of a bullying
Teuton. Yet for Cleer's sake
he knew he mustn't rub him
the wrong way. He must put
up with Erasmus Walker and
all his faults, and try to approach him by the
most accessible side — if in-
deed any side were access-
ible at all, save the waist-
coat pocket.
At last, however, the en-
gineer paused a moment in
his headlong course through
sentence after sentence, held
his pen half irresolute over a
a new blank sheet, and turning round to Tyrrel,
without one word of apology, said, in a quick,


180
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
decisive voice, "This is business, I suppose,
business? for if not, I've no time. I'm very
pressed this morning. Very pressed, indeed.
Very pressed and occupied."
"Yes, it is business," Tyrrel answered,
promptly, taking his cue with Celtic quickness.
"Business that may be worth a good deal
of money." Erasmus Walker
ADnrriANc* pricked up his ears at that
XCEP7 M
business welcome sound, and let the
pen drop quietly into the rack
by his side. "Only I'm afraid
I must ask for a quarter of
an hour or so of your valuable
time. You will not find it
thrown away. You can name
your own price for it."
"My dear sir," the engineer replied, taking
up his visitor's card again and gazing at it hard
with a certain inquiring scrutiny, "if it's busi-
ness, and business of an important character, of
course I need hardly say I'm very glad to attend
to you. There are so many people who come
bothering me for nothing, don't you know —
LP
EXCEPT
f


A HARD BARGAIN.
181

charitable appeals or what not — that I'm
obliged to make a hard and fast rule about in-
terviews. But if it's business
you mean, I'm your man at
once. I live for public works.
Go ahead. I'm all attention."
He wheeled round in his
revolving chair, and faced
Tyrrel in an attitude of sharp
practical eagerness. His eye
was all alert. It was clear,
the man was keen on every
passing chance of a stray hundred or two extra.
His keenness disconcerted the conscientious and
idealistic Cornishman. For a
second or two Tyrrel debated
how to open fire upon so un-
wonted an enemy. At last
he began, stammering, "I've
a friend who has made a
design for the Wharfedale
Viaduct."
"Exactly," Erasmus Walker answered, pounc-
ing down upon him like a hawk. "And I've


184
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

pay for it. I know very well it's an article at a
discount in the City. Still, to me, it means
money's worth, and I'm pre-
pared to give money down to a
good tune to humor it. Let
me explain the situation. I'll
do so as briefly and as simply
as I can, if only you'll listen to
me. A friend of mine, as I
said, one Eustace Le Neve,
who has been constructing engineer of the Ro-
sario and Santa Fe, in the Argentine Confed-
eracy, has made a design for the Wharfedale
Viaduct. It's a very good design, and a prac-
tical design ; and Sir Edward Jones,
who has seen it, entirely approves
of it."
"Jones is a good man," Mr.
Walker murmured, nodding his
head in acquiescence. "No dashed
nonsense about Jones. Head
screwed on the right way. Jones
is a good man and knows what he's talking
about."


188
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

on the right way. But has your friend any
interest with the directors— that's the question?
Have you reason to think, if he
sends it in, and I hold back
mine, his is the plan they'd be
likely to pitch upon?"
"I go upon its merits," Wal-
ter Tyrrel said, quietly.
"The very worst thing on earth any man can
ever possibly go upon," the man of business re-
torted, with cynical confidence. "If that's all
you've got to say, my dear sir, it wouldn't be fair
of me to make money terms
with you. I won't discuss my
price in the matter till I've
some reason to believe this idea
of yours is workable."
"I have the designs here all
ready," Walter Tyrrel replied,
holding them out. "Plans,
elevations, specifications, esti
mates, sections, figures, every-
thing. Will you do me the favor to look at
them? Then, perhaps, you'll be able to see
whether or not the offer's genuine."


A HARD BARGAIN.
189
The great engineer took the roll with a smile.
He opened it hastily, in a most skeptical humor.
Walter Tyrrel leant over him, and tried just at
first to put in a word or two of explanation, such
as Le Neve had made to himself; but an occa-
sionally testy "Yes, yes; I see," was all the
thanks he got for his pains and trouble. After a
minute or two he found out it was better to let
the engineer alone. That prac- ^
ticed eye picked out in a mo-
ment the strong and weak points 49 Wp^m
of the whole conception. Grad- M
ually, however, as Walker went
on, Walter Tyrrel could see he
paid more and more attention
to every tiny detail. His whole manner altered.
The skeptical smile faded away, little by little,
from those thick, sensuous lips, and a look of
keen interest took its place by degrees on the
man's eager features. "That's good !" he mur-
mured more than once, as he examined more
closely some section or enlargement. "That's
good! very good! knows what he's about, this
Eustace Le Neve man!" Now and again he


192
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

also exceptionally safe as regards the lives and
limbs of passengers and employes?" Tyrrel
inquired once more, with anx-
ious particularity. His tender
conscience made him afraid to
do anything in the matter un-
less he was quite sure in his
own mind he was doing no
wrong in any way either to shareholders, com-
petitors, or the public generally.
"My dear sir," Mr. Walker replied, fingering
the papers lovingly, "it's an admirable design
— sound, cheap, and practical.
It's as good as it can be. To
tell you the truth, I admire it
immensely."
"Well, then," Tyrrel said at
last, all his scruples removed —
"let's come to business. I put
it plainly. How much will
you take to withdraw your own
design, and to throw your
weight into the scale in favor of my friend's
here?"


200
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
sound escaped him; for Cleer was in the car-
riage, and the man was Eustace's friend. Tre-
vennack accepted Eustace perforce, after that
night on Michael's Crag; for he knew it was
politic; and indeed, he liked the young man
himself well enough — there was nothing against
him after all, beyond his
friendship with Tyrrel; but
had it not been for the need
for avoiding scandal after the
adventure on the rock, he
would never have allowed
Cleer to speak one word to
any friend or acquaintance of
her brother's murderer.
As it was, however, he
never alluded to Tyrrel in any way before Cleer.
He had learnt to hold his tongue. Madman
though he was, he knew when to be silent.
That evening at home, Cleer had a visit from
Eustace, who came round to tell her how Tyrrel
had been to see the great engineer, Erasmus
Walker; and how it was all a mistake that
Walker was going to send in plans for the


ANGEL AND DEVIL.
201
Wharfedale Viaduct — nay, how the big man
had approved of his own design, and promised

to give it all the support in his
power. For Tyrrel was really
an awfully kind friend, who
had pushed things for him like
a brick, and deserved the very
best they could both of them
say about him.
But of course Eustace hadn't
the faintest idea himself by
what manner of persuasion
Walter Tyrrel had commended
his friend's designs to Erasmus
Walker. If he had, needless
to say, he would never have
accepted the strange arrange-
ment.
"And now, Cleer," Eustace
cried, jubilant and radiant with
the easy confidence of youth
and love, "I do believe I shall

carry the field at last, and spring at a bound into
a first-rate position among engineers in Englami'";
r


203
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
"And then?" Cleer asked, nestling close to
his side.
"And then," Eustace went on, smiling tacitly
at her native simplicity, "as it
would mean permanent work in
superintending and so forth, I see
no reason why — we shouldn't get
married immediately."
They were alone in the break-
fast room, where Mrs. Trevennack
had left them. They were alone,
like lovers. But in the drawing-
room hard by, Trevennack himself
was saying to his wife with a face of suppressed
excitement, "I saw him again to-day, Lucy. I
saw him again, that devil — in a
hansom near Paddington. If he
stops in town, I'm sure I don't
know what I'm ever to do. I
came back from Devonshire,
having fought the devil hard, as
I thought, and conquered him. I
felt I'd got him under. I felt he was no match
•for: me. But when I see that man's face the

w


ANGEL AND DEVIL.
203
devil springs up at me again in full force, and
grapples with me. Is he Satan himself? I
believe he must be. For I feel I must rush at
him and trample him under foot, as I trampled
him long ago on the summit of Niphates."
In a tremor of alarm Mrs. Trevennack held
his hand. Oh, what would
she ever do if the outbreak
came . . . before Cleer was
married! She could see the
constant strain of holding
himself back was growing
daily more and more difficult
for her unhappy husband.
Indeed, she couldn't bear it
herself much longer. If Cleer
didn't marry soon, Michael would break out
openly — perhaps would try to murder that poor
man Tyrrel — and then Eustace would be afraid,
and all would be up with them.
By and by, Eustace came in to tell them the
good news. He said nothing about Tyrrel, at
least by name, lest he should hurt Trevennack;
he merely mentioned that a friend of his had


ANGEL AND DEVIL.
205
bridge across a miserable valley! Why, was it
not he and his kind of whom it was written that
they came
"Gliding through the even
On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star
In autumn thwarts the night?"
A viaduct indeed! a paltry human
viaduct! What need, with such
as him, to talk of bridges or
viaducts?
As Eustace left that evening,
Mrs. Trevennack followed him
out, and beckoned him mysteriously into the
dining-room at the side for a minute's conversa-
tion. The young man followed
her, much wondering what this
strange move could mean.
Mrs. Trevennack fell back,
half faint, into a chair, and
gazed at him with a frightened
look very rare on that brave
face of hers. "Oh, Eustace,"
she said, hurriedly, "do you know what's hap-
pened? Mr. Tyrrel's in town. Michael saw him


206
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
to-day. He was driving near Paddington. Now
do you think . . . you could do anything to
keep him out of Michael's way?
I dread their meeting. I don't
know whether you know it,
but Michael has some grudge
against him. For Cleer's sake
and for yours, do keep them
apart, I beg of you. If they
meet, I can't answer for what
harm may come of it."
Eustace was taken aback at her unexpected
words. Not even to Cleer had he ever hinted
in any way at the strange disclosure Walter
Tyrrel made to him that first
day at Penmorgan. He hes-
itated how to answer her
without betraying his friend's
secret. At last he said, as
calmly as he could, "I
guessed, to tell you the
truth, there was some cause

of quarrel. I'll do my very best to keep Tyrrel
out of the way, Mrs. Trevennack, as you wish it.


208 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
sure he'll try to avoid falling in with your hus-
band. He's my kindest of friends; and he'd cut
off his hand to serve me."
One word of sympathy
brought tears into Mrs. Tre-
vennack's eyes. She looked
up through them, and took the
young man's hand in hers. "It
was he who spoke to Erasmus
Walker, I suppose," she mur-
mured, slowly.
And Eustace, nodding assent, answered in a
low voice, "It was he, Mrs. Trevennack. He's
a dear good fellow."
The orphaned mother clasped
her hands. This was too, too
much. And Michael, if the fit
came upon him, would strangle
that young man, who was doing
his best after all for Cleer and
Eustace!
But that night in his bed Tre-
vennack lay awake, chuckling
grimly to himself in an access of mad triumph.
He fancied he was fighting his familiar foe, on a


ANGEL AND DEVIL.
209
tall Cornish peak, in archangelic fashion; and he
had vanquished his enemy, and was trampling
on him furiously. But the
face of the fallen seraph was
not the face of Michael An-
gelo's Satan, as he oftenest
figured it — for Michael An-
gelo, his namesake, was one
of Trevennack's very chiefest
admirations; — it was the face
of Walter Tyrrel, who killed

his dear boy, writhing horribly in the dust, and
crying for mercy beneath him.
14


CHAPTER XIV.
AT ARM'S LENGTH.
For three or four weeks Walter Tyrrel
remained in town, awaiting the result of the
Wharfedale Viaduct competition. With some
difficulty he raised and paid over
meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the
ten thousand pounds of blackmail
— for it was little else — agreed
upon between them. The great
engineer accepted the money with
as little compunction as men who
earn large incomes always display
in taking payment for doing noth-
ing. It is an enviable state of
mind, unattainable by most of us who work hard
for our living. He pocketed his check with a
smile, as if it were quite in the nature of things
that ten thousand pounds should drop upon him

(210)


AT ARM'S LENGTH.
211
from the clouds without rhyme or reason. To
Tyrrel, on the other hand, with his sensitive
conscience, the man's greed and callousness
seemed simply incomprehensible. He stood
aghast at such sharp practice. But for Cleer's
sake, and to ease his own soul, he paid it all
over without a single murmur.
And then the question came
up in his mind, "Would it
be effectual after all? Would
Walker play him false? Would
he throw the weight of his
influence into somebody else's
scale? Would the directors submit as tamely as
he thought to his direction or dictation?" It
would be hard on Tyrrel if, after his spending
ten thousand pounds without security of any
sort, Eustace were to miss the chance, and Cleer
to go unmarried.
At the end of a month, however, as Tyrrel sat
one morning in his own room at the Metropole,
which he mostly frequented, Eustace Le Neve
rushed in, full of intense excitement. Tyrrel's
heart rose in his mouth. He grew pale with


212
MICHAEL'S CRAG.

agitation. The question had been decided one
way or the other he saw.
"Well; which is it?" he
gasped out. "Hit or miss?
Have you got it?"
"Yes; I've got it!" Eustace
answered, half beside himself
with delight. I've got it! I've
got it! The chairman and
Walker have just been round
to call on me, and congratulate
me on my success. Walker
says my fortune's made. It's
a magnificent design. And in
any case it'll mean work for
me for the next four years;
after which I'll not want for
occupation elsewhere. So now,
of course, I can marry almost
immediately."
"Thank God!" Tyrrel mur-
mured, falling back into his
chair as he spoke, and turning deadly white.
He was glad of it, oh, so glad; and yet, in his


214 MICHAEL'S CRAG.
Michael Trevennack yet found the mad mood
within him more and more ungovernable with
each week that went by. As he put it to his
own mind he could feel his wings growing as if
they must burst through the skin; he could feel
it harder and ever harder as time went on to
conceal the truth, to pretend he was a mere
man, when he knew himself
to be really the Prince of
the Archangels, to busy him-
self about contracts for pork,
and cheese, and biscuits,
when he could wing his way
boldly over sea and land, or
stand forth before the world
in gorgeous gear, armed as of yore in the
adamant and gold of his celestial panoply!
So Michael Trevennack thought in his own
seething soul. But that strong, brave woman,
his wife, bearing her burden unaided, and watch-
ing him closely day and night with a keen eye
of mingled love and fear, could see that the
madness was gaining on him gradually. Oftener
and oftener now did he lose himself in his


AT ARM'S LENGTH.
217
upon. She had good reasons of her own for
wishing it to be early; for the twenty-ninth is
Michaelmas Day, and it was always with difficulty
that her husband could be prevented from break-
ing out before the eyes of the world on that
namesake feast of St. Michael and All Angels.
For, on that sacred day, when in every Church
in Christendom his importance
as the generalissimo of the
angelic host was remembered
and commemorated, it seemed
hard indeed to the seraph in
disguise that he must still
guard his incognito, still go
on as usual with his petty
higgling over corned beef and biscuits and the
price of jute sacking. "There was war in
heaven," said the gospel for the day — that
sonorous gospel Mrs. Trevennack so cordially
dreaded — for her husband would always go to
church at morning service, and hold himself
more erect than was his wont, to hear it —
"There was war in heaven; Michael and his
angels fought against the dragon; and the


AT ARM'S LENGTH.
219
On the day of Cleer's wedding, however, Wal-
ter Tyrrel came to town. He came on purpose.
He couldn't resist the temptation of seeing with
his own eyes the final success of his general
plan, even though it cost him the pang of watch-
ing the marriage of the one
girl he ever truly loved to
another man by his own
deliberate contrivance. But
he didn't forget Eustace Le
Neve's earnest warning, that
he should keep out of the
way of Michael Trevennack.
Even without Eustace, his
own conscience would have
urged that upon him. The constant burden of
his remorse for that boyish crime weighed hard
upon him every hour of every day that he lived.
He didn't dare on such a morning to face the
father of the boy he had unwittingly and half-
innocently murdered.
So, very early, as soon as the church was
opened, he stole in unobserved, and took a place
by himself in the farthest corner of the gallery.


CHAPTER XV.
ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE.
The wedding breakfast went off pleasantly,
without a hitch of any sort. Trevennack, always
dignified and always a grand seign-
eur, rose to the occasion with his
happiest spirit. The silver-haired
wife, gazing up at him, felt proud
of him as of old, and was for once
quite at her ease. For all was over
now, thank heaven, and dear Cleer
was married!
That same afternoon the bride
and bridegroom started off for their
honeymoon to the Tyrol and Italy. When Mrs.
Trevennack was left alone with her husband it
was with a thankful heart. She turned to him,
flowing over in soul with joy. "Oh, Michael,"
she cried, melting, "I'm so happy, so happy, so
happy."

(2*2)


ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE.
225
And he sank back in his chair, with his eyes
staring wildly.
For the next week or two, while Cleer wrote
home happy letters from Paris, Innsbruck, Milan,
Venice, Florence, poor Mrs. Trevennack was
tortured inwardly with another terrible doubt;
had Michael's state become so
dangerous at last that he must
be* put under restraint as a
measure of public security? For
Walter Tyrrel's sake, ought she
to make his condition known to
the world at large — and spoil
Cleer's honeymoon? She shrank
from that final necessity with a deadly shrinking.
Day after day she put the discovery off, and
solaced her soul with the best intentions — as
what true woman would not?
But we know where good intentions go. On
the morning of the twenty-ninth, which is
Michaelmas Day, the poor mother rose in fear
and trembling. Michael, to all outward appear-
ance, was as sane as usual. He breakfasted
and went down to the office, as was his wont.

s
16


230
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
his own tor — full in sight before him. He
would go up there this very evening, and before
the eyes of all the world, in his celestial armor,
taking Lucy's advice, do battle with and quell
this fierce devil within him.
No sooner thought than done. Fiery hot
within, he turned out of the gate,
and as the shades of autumn
evening began to fall, walked
swiftly up the moor toward the
tor and the uplands.
As he walked his heart beat
to a lilting rhythm within him.
"Go, Michael, of celestial armies
prince ! — Go, Michael! — Go,
Michael! Go, Michael, of celestial armies
prince — Go, Michael!—Go, Michael!"
The moor was draped in fog. It was a still,
damp evening. Swirling clouds rose slowly up,
and lifted at times and disclosed the peaty hol-
lows, the high tors, the dusky heather. But
Trevennack stumbled on, o'er bog or steep,
through strait, rough, dense, or rare, as chance
might lead him, clambering ever toward his


232
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
fiends from hell in serried phalanx broke
a loose to thwart him. He
"^^^^3p would reach the top at last;
^ reach the top; reach the top,
II and there fight that old ser-
flH B pent who lay in wait to destroy
him. At last he gained the
W ■ peak, and stood with feet firmly
■ planted on the little rocky
sJL^—W platform. Now, Satan, come
^■•"•c on! Ha, traitor, come, if you
dare! Your antagonist is ready for you!
Cr'r'r'k! as he stood there, j§
waiting, a terrible shock |
brought him to himself all at I
once with startling sudden- 1
ness. Trevennack drew back j
aghast and apalled. Even
in his mad exaltation this
strange assault astonished?
him. He had expected a j
struggle, indeed; he had ex- ■
pected a conflict, but with a i
spiritual foe; to meet his adversary in so bodily


ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE. 233
a form as this, wholly startled and surprised him.
For it was a fierce earthly shock he received
upon his right leg as he mounted the rocky plat-
form. Satan had been lying in wait for him
then, expecting him, waylaying him, and in cor-
poreal presence too. For this was a spear of
good steel! This was a solid
Thing that assaulted him as
he rose — assaulted him with
frantic rage and uncontrollable
fury!
For a moment Trevennack
was stunned—the sharpness of
the pain and the suddenness
of the attack took both breath
and sense away from him. He stood there one
instant, irresolute, before he knew how to com-
port himself. But before he could make up his
mind — cr'r'k, a second time — the Presence had
assailed him again, fighting with deadly force,
and in a white heat of frenzy. Trevennack had
no leisure to think what this portent might
mean. Man or fiend, it was a life-and-death
struggle now between them. He stood face to


ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE.
turn and yield to the deadly assaults of the Evil
One! He rushed on blindly once more, and the
Adversary stooped to oppose him. Again, a
terrible shock, it almost broke both his knees;
but by sheer strength of nerve he withstood it,
still struggling. Then they closed in a final
grapple. It was a tooth-and-
nail conflict. They fought
one another with every weap-
on they possessed; each
hugged each in their fury;
they tilted, and tore, and
wrestled, and bit, and butted.
Trevennack's coat was in ribbons, his arm was
ripped and bleeding; but he grasped the Adver-
sary still, he fought blindly to the end. Down,
Satan, I defy thee!
It was-a long, fierce fight! At last, bit by bit,
the Enemy began to yield. Trevennack had
dashed him against the crag time after time like
a log, till he too was torn and hurt and bleeding.
His flesh was like pulp. He could endure the
unequal fight no longer. He staggered and
gave way. A great joy rose up tremulous in


ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE.
239
He raised both arms above his head, and
spread them out as if for flight. His knees
trembled fearfully. His fin-
gers quivered. Then he
launched himself on the air
and fell. His eyes closed
half-way. He lost con-
sciousness. He fainted.
Before he had reached the
bottom he was wholly in-
sensible.
Next day it was known
before noon in London that
a strange and inexplicable accident had befallen
Mr. Michael Trevennack C. M. G., the well-
known Admiralty official, on the moor near Ivy-
bridge. Mr. Trevennack, it
seemed, had started by the
Cornish express for Fal-
mouth, on official business;
but the line being blocked
between Ivybridge and Ply-
mouth, he had changed his plans and set out to
walk, as was conjectured, by a devious path


240
MICHAEL'S CRAG.
across the moor to Tavistock. Deceased knew
the neighborhood well, and was an enthusiastic b
admirer of its tors and uplands. But fog coming
on, the unfortunate gentleman, it was believed,
had lost his way, and tried to shelter himself for
a time behind a tall peak of rock which he used
frequently to visit during his
summer holidays. There he
was apparently attacked by a
savage moorland ram — one of
that wild breed of mountain
sheep peculiar to Dartmoor,
and famous for the strength and ferocity often
displayed by the fathers of the flock. Mr. Tre-
vennack was unarmed, and a terrible fight
appeared to have taken place between these ill-
matched antagonists on the summit of the rocks,
full details of which, the Telegram said in its
curt business-like way, were too ghastly for
publication. After a long and exhausting strug-
gle, however, the combatants must either have
slipped on the wet surface and tumbled over the
edge of the rocks together in a deadly grapple,
or else, as seemed more probable from the


MICHAEL'S CRAG.

Yate-Westbury looked in by Mrs. Trevennack's
special request, and performed
an informal and private exami-
nation of the brain and nervous
system. At the close of the
autopsy he came down to the
drawing-room where the silver-
haired lady sat pale and tearful,
but courageous. "It is just as
I thought," he said; "a clot of
blood, due to external injury, has pressed for
years above the left frontal region,
causing hallucinations and irregulari-
ties of a functional character only.
You needn't have the slightest fear of
its proving hereditary. It's as purely
accidental as a sprain or a wound.
Your daughter, Mrs. Le Neve, couldn't
possibly suffer for it."
And neither Cleer nor Le Neve nor
anyone else ever shared that secret of
Trevennack's delusions with his wife and the
doctor. £Vp £ 7 %" 7