PART I.

PIPES IN ARCADY.

I hardly can bring myself to part with this story, it has been

such a private joy to me. Moreover, that I have lain awake in the

night to laugh over it is no guarantee of your being passably

amused. Yourselves, I dare say, have known what it is to awake in

irrepressible mirth from a dream which next morning proved to be flat

and unconvincing. Well, this my pet story has some of the qualities

of a dream; being absurd, for instance, and almost incredible, and

even a trifle inhuman. After all, I had better change my mind, and

tell you another--

But no; I will risk it, and you shall have it, just as it befel.

I had taken an afternoon's holiday to make a pilgrimage: my goal

being a small parish church that lies remote from the railway, five

good miles from the tiniest of country stations; my purpose to

inspect--or say, rather, to contemplate--a Norman porch, for which it

ought to be widely famous. (Here let me say that I have an unlearned

passion for Norman architecture--to enjoy it merely, not to write

about it.)

To carry me on my first stage I had taken a crawling local train

that dodged its way somehow between the regular expresses and the

"excursions" that invade our Delectable Duchy from June to October.

The season was high midsummer, the afternoon hot and drowsy with

scents of mown hay; and between the rattle of the fast trains it

seemed that we, native denizens of the Duchy, careless of

observation or applause, were executing a _tour de force_ in that

fine indolence which has been charged as a fault against us. That we

halted at every station goes without saying. Few sidings--however

inconsiderable or, as it might seem, fortuitous--escaped the

flattery of our prolonged sojourn. We ambled, we paused, almost

we dallied with the butterflies lazily afloat over the meadow-sweet

and cow-parsley beside the line; we exchanged gossip with

station-masters, and received the congratulations of signalmen on the

extraordinary spell of fine weather. It did not matter.

Three market-women, a pedlar, and a local policeman made up with me

the train's complement of passengers. I gathered that their business

could wait; and as for mine--well, a Norman porch is by this time

accustomed to waiting.

I will not deny that in the end I dozed at intervals in my empty

smoking compartment; but wish to make it clear that I came on the

Vision (as I will call it) with eyes open, and that it left me

staring, wide-awake as Macbeth.

Let me describe the scene. To the left of the line as you travel

westward there lies a long grassy meadow on a gentle acclivity, set

with three or four umbrageous oaks and backed by a steep plantation

of oak saplings. At the foot of the meadow, close alongside the

line, runs a brook, which is met at the meadow's end by a second

brook which crosses under the permanent way through a culvert.

The united waters continue the course of the first brook, beside the

line, and maybe for half a mile farther; but, a few yards below their

junction, are partly dammed by the masonry of a bridge over which a

country lane crosses the railway; and this obstacle spreads them into

a pool some fifteen or twenty feet wide, overgrown with the leaves of

the arrow-head, and fringed with water-flags and the flowering rush.

Now I seldom pass this spot without sparing a glance for it; first

because of the pool's still beauty, and secondly because many rabbits

infest the meadow below the coppice, and among them for two or three

years was a black fellow whom I took an idle delight in recognising.

(He is gone now, and his place knows him no more; yet I continue to

hope for sight of a black rabbit just there.) But this afternoon I

looked out with special interest because, happening to pass down the

line two days before, I had noted a gang of navvies at work on the

culvert; and among them, as they stood aside to let the train pass, I

had recognised my friend Joby Tucker, their ganger, and an excellent

fellow to boot.

Therefore my eyes were alert as we approached the curve that opens

the meadow into view, and--as I am a Christian man, living in the

twentieth century--I saw this Vision: I beheld beneath the shade of

the midmost oak eight men sitting stark naked, whereof one blew on a

flute, one played a concertina, and the rest beat their palms

together, marking the time; while before them, in couples on the

sward, my gang of navvies rotated in a clumsy waltz watched by a ring

of solemn ruminant kine!

I saw it. The whole scene, barring the concertina and the navvies'

clothes, might have been transformed straight from a Greek vase of

the best period. Here, in this green corner of rural England on a

workaday afternoon (a Wednesday, to be precise), in full sunlight, I

saw this company of the early gods sitting, naked and unabashed, and

piping, while twelve British navvies danced to their music. . . .

I saw it; and a derisive whistle from the engine told me that driver

and stoker saw it too. I was not dreaming, then. But what on

earth could it mean? For fifteen seconds or so I stared at the

Vision . . . and so the train joggled past it and rapt it from my

eyes.

I can understand now the ancient stories of men who, having by hap

surprised the goddesses bathing, never recovered from the shock but

thereafter ran wild in the woods with their memories.

At the next station I alighted. It chanced to be the station for

which I had taken my ticket; but anyhow I should have alighted there.

The spell of the vision was upon me. The Norman porch might wait.

It is (as I have said) used to waiting, and in fact it has waited.

I have not yet made another holiday to visit it. Whether or no the

market-women and the local policeman had beheld, I know not. I hope

not, but now shall never know. . . . The engine-driver, leaning in

converse with the station-master, and jerking a thumb backward, had

certainly beheld. But I passed him with averted eyes, gave up my

ticket, and struck straight across country for the spot.

I came to it, as my watch told me, at twenty minutes after five.

The afternoon sunlight still lay broad on the meadow. The place was

unchanged save for a lengthening of its oak-tree shadows. But the

persons of my Vision--naked gods and navvies--had vanished. Only the

cattle stood, knee-deep in the pool, lazily swishing their tails in

protest against the flies; and the cattle could tell me nothing.

Just a fortnight later, as I spent at St. Blazey junction the forty

odd minutes of repentance ever thoughtfully provided by our railway

company for those who, living in Troy, are foolish enough to travel,

I spied at some distance below the station a gang of men engaged in

unloading rubble to construct a new siding for the clay-traffic, and

at their head my friend Mr. Joby Tucker. The railway company was

consuming so much of my time that I felt no qualms in returning some

part of the compliment, and strolled down the line to wish Mr. Tucker

good day. "And, by the bye," I added, "you owe me an explanation.

What on earth were you doing in Treba meadow two Wednesdays ago--you

and your naked friends?"

Joby leaned on his measuring rod and grinned from ear to ear.

"You see'd us?" he asked, and, letting his eyes travel along the

line, he chuckled to himself softly and at length. "Well, now, I'm

glad o' that. 'Fact is, I've been savin' up to tell 'ee about it,

but (thinks I) when I tells Mr. Q. he won't never believe."

"I certainly saw you," I answered; "but as for believing--"

"Iss, iss," he interrupted, with fresh chucklings; "a fair knock-out,

wasn' it? . . . You see, they was blind--poor fellas!"

"Drunk?"

"No, sir--blind--'pity the pore blind'; three-parts blind, anyways,

an' undergoin' treatment for it."

"Nice sort of treatment!"

"Eh? You don't understand. See'd us from the train, did 'ee?

Which train?"

"The 1.35 ex Millbay."

"Wish I'd a-knowed you was watchin' us. I'd ha' waved my hat as you

went by, or maybe blawed 'ee a kiss--that bein' properer to the

occasion, come to think."

Joby paused, drew the back of a hand across his laughter-moistened

eyes, and pulled himself together, steadying his voice for the story.

"I'll tell 'ee what happened, from the beginnin'. A gang of us had

been sent down, two days before, to Treba meadow, to repair the

culvert there. Soon as we started to work we found the whole

masonry fairly rotten, and spent the first afternoon (that was

Monday) underpinnin', while I traced out the extent o' the damage.

The farther I went, the worse I found it; the main mischief bein' a

leak about midway in the culvert, on the down side; whereby the

water, perc'latin' through, was unpackin' the soil, not only behind

the masonry of the culvert, but right away down for twenty yards and

more behind the stone-facing where the line runs alongside the pool.

All this we were forced to take down, shorein' as we went, till we

cut back pretty close to the rails. The job, you see, had turned out

more serious than reported; and havin' no one to consult, I kept the

men at it.

"By Wednesday noon we had cut back so far as we needed, shorein' very

careful as we went, and the men workin' away cheerful, with the

footboards of the expresses whizzin' by close over their heads, so's

it felt like havin' your hair brushed by machinery. By the time we

knocked off for dinner I felt pretty easy in mind, knowin' we'd broke

the back o' the job.

"Well, we touched pipe and started again. Bein' so close to the line

I'd posted a fella with a flag--Bill Martin it was--to keep a look

out for the down-trains; an' about three o'clock or a little after he

whistled one comin'. I happened to be in the culvert at the time,

but stepped out an' back across the brook, just to fling an eye along

the embankment to see that all was clear. Clear it was, an'

therefore it surprised me a bit, as the train hove in sight around

the curve, to see that she had her brakes on, hard, and was slowin'

down to stop. My first thought was that Bill Martin must have taken

some scare an' showed her the red flag. But that was a mistake;

besides she must have started the brakes before openin' sight on

Bill."

"Then why on earth was she pulling up?" I asked. "It couldn't be

signals."

"There ain't no signal within a mile of Treba meadow, up or down.

She was stoppin' because--but just you let me tell it in my own way.

Along she came, draggin' hard on her brakes an' whistlin'.

I knew her for an excursion, and as she passed I sized it up for a

big school-treat. There was five coaches, mostly packed with

children, an' on one o' the coaches was a board--'Exeter to

Penzance.' The four front coaches had corridors, the tail one just

ord'nary compartments.

"Well, she dragged past us to dead-slow, an' came to a standstill

with her tail coach about thirty yards beyond where I stood, and, as

you might say, with its footboard right overhangin' the pool.

You mayn't remember it, but the line just there curves pretty sharp

to the right, and when she pulled up, the tail coach pretty well hid

the rest o' the train from us. Five or six men, hearin' the brakes,

had followed me out of the culvert and stood by me, wonderin' why the

stoppage was. The rest were dotted about along the slope of th'

embankment. And then the curiousest thing happened--about the

curiousest thing I seen in all my years on the line. A door of the

tail coach opened and a man stepped out. He didn't jump out, you

understand, nor fling hisself out; he just stepped out into air, and

with that his arms and legs cast themselves anyways an' he went down

sprawlin' into the pool. It's easy to say we ought t' have run then

an' there an' rescued him; but for the moment it stuck us up starin'

an',--Wait a bit! You han't heard the end.

"I hadn't fairly caught my breath, before another man stepped out!

He put his foot down upon nothing, same as the first, overbalanced

just the same, and shot after him base-over-top into the water.

"Close 'pon the second man's heels appeared a third. . . . Yes, sir,

I know now what a woman feels like when she's goin' to have the

scritches. I'd have asked someone to pinch me in the fleshy part o'

the leg, to make sure I was alive an' awake, but the power o' speech

was taken from us. We just stuck an' stared.

"What beat everything was the behaviour of the train, so to say.

There it stood, like as if it'd pulled up alongside the pool for the

very purpose to unload these unfort'nit' men; an' yet takin' no

notice whatever. Not a sign o' the guard--not a head poked out

anywheres in the line o' windows--only the sun shinin', an' the steam

escapin', an' out o' the rear compartment this procession droppin'

out an' high-divin' one after another.

"Eight of 'em! Eight, as I am a truth-speakin' man--but there! you

saw 'em with your own eyes. Eight! and the last of the eight scarce

in the water afore the engine toots her whistle an' the train starts

on again, round the curve an' out o' sight.

"She didn' leave us no time to doubt, neither, for there the poor

fellas were, splashin' an' blowin', some of 'em bleatin' for help,

an' gurglin', an' for aught we know drownin' in three-to-four feet o'

water. So we pulled ourselves together an' ran to give 'em first

aid.

"It didn' take us long to haul the whole lot out and ashore; and, as

Providence would have it, not a bone broken in the party. One or two

were sufferin' from sprains, and all of 'em from shock (but so were

we, for that matter), and between 'em they must ha' swallowed a bra'

few pints o' water, an' muddy water at that. I can't tell ezackly

when or how we discovered they was all blind, or near-upon blind.

It may ha' been from the unhandiness of their movements an' the way

they clutched at us an' at one another as we pulled 'em ashore.

Hows'ever, blind they were; an' I don't remember that it struck us as

anyways singular, after what we'd been through a'ready. We fished

out a concertina, too, an' a silver-mounted flute that was bobbin'

among the weeds.

"The man the concertina belonged to--a tall fresh-complexioned young

fella he was, an' very mild of manner--turned out to be a sort o'

leader o' the party; an' he was the first to talk any sense.

'Th-thank you,' he said. 'They told us Penzance was the next stop.'

"'Hey?' says I.

"'They told us,' he says again, plaintive-like, feelin' for his

spectacles an' not finding 'em, 'that Penzance was the next stop.'

"'Bound for Penzance, was you?' I asks.

"'For the Land's End,' says he, his teeth chatterin'. I set it down

the man had a stammer, but 'twas only the shock an' the chill of his

duckin'.

"'Well,' says I, 'this ain't the Land's End, though I dessay it feels

a bit like it. Then you wasn' _thrown_ out?' I says.

"'Th-thrown out?' says he. 'N-no. They told us Penzance was the

next stop.'

"'Then,' says I, 'if you got out accidental you've had a most

providential escape, an' me an' my mates don't deserve less than to

hear about it. There's bound to be inquiries after you when the

guard finds your compartment empty an' the door open. May be the

train'll put back; more likely they'll send a search-party; but

anyways you're all wet through, an' the best thing for health is to

off wi' your clothes an' dry 'em, this warm afternoon.'

"'I dessay,' says he, 'you'll have noticed that our eyesight is

affected.'

"'All the better if you're anyways modest,' says I. 'You couldn'

find a retirededer place than this--not if you searched: an' _we_

don't mind.'

"Well, sir, the end was we stripped 'em naked as Adam, an' spread

their clothes to dry 'pon the grass. While we tended on 'em the mild

young man told us how it had happened. It seems they'd come by

excursion from Exeter. There's a blind home at Exeter, an' likewise

a cathedral choir, an' Sunday school, an' a boys' brigade, with other

sundries; an' this year the good people financin' half a dozen o'

these shows had discovered that by clubbin' two sixpences together a

shillin' could be made to go as far as eighteenpence; and how, doin'

it on the co-op, instead of an afternoon treat for each, they could

manage a two days' outin' for all--Exeter to Penzance an' the Land's

End, sleepin' one night at Penzance, an' back to Exeter at some

ungodly hour the next. It's no use your askin' me why a man

three-parts blind should want to visit the Land's End. There's an

attraction about that place, an' that's all you can say. Everybody

knows as 'tisn' worth seein', an' yet everybody wants to see it.

So why not a blind man?

"Well, this Happy Holiday Committee (as they called themselves) got

the Company to fix them up with a special excursion; an' our blind

friends--bein' sensitive, or maybe a touch above mixin' wi' the

schoolchildren an' infants--had packed themselves into this rear

compartment separate from the others. One of 'em had brought his

concertina, an' another his flute, and what with these an' other ways

of passin' the time they got along pretty comfortable till they came

to Gwinear Road: an' there for some reason they were held up an' had

to show their tickets. Anyways, the staff at Gwinear Road went along

the train collectin' the halves o' their return tickets. 'What's the

name o' this station?' asks my blind friend, very mild an' polite.

'Gwinear Road,' answers the porter;' Penzance next stop.' Somehow

this gave him the notion that they were nearly arrived, an' so, you

see, when the train slowed down a few minutes later an' came to a

stop, he took the porter at his word, an' stepped out. Simple,

wasn't it? But in my experience the curiousest things in life are

the simplest of all, once you come to inquire into 'em."

"What I don't understand," said I, "is how the train came to stop

just there."

Mr. Tucker gazed at me rather in sorrow than in anger. "I thought,"

said he, "'twas agreed I should tell the story in my own way.

Well, as I was saying, we got those poor fellas there, all as naked

as Adam, an' we was helpin' them all we could--some of us wringin'

out their underlinen an' spreading it to dry, others collectin' their

hats, an' tryin' which fitted which, an' others even dredgin' the

pool for their handbags an' spectacles an' other small articles, an'

in the middle of it someone started to laugh. You'll scarce believe

it, but up to that moment there hadn't been so much as a smile to

hand round; an' to this day I don't know the man's name that started

it--for all I can tell you, I did it myself. But this I do know,

that it set off the whole gang like a motor-engine. There was a sort

of 'click,' an' the next moment--

"Laugh? I never heard men laugh like it in my born days. Sort of

recoil, I s'pose it must ha' been, after the shock. Laugh?

There was men staggerin' drunk with it and there was men rollin' on

the turf with it; an' there was men cryin' with it, holdin' on to a

stitch in their sides an' beseechin' everyone also to hold hard.

The blind men took a bit longer to get going; but by gosh, sir! once

started they laughed to do your heart good. O Lord, O Lord! I wish

you could ha' see that mild-mannered spokesman. Somebody had fished

out his spectacles for en, and that was all the clothing he stood

in--that, an' a grin. He fairly beamed; an' the more he beamed the

more we rocked, callin' on en to take pity an' stop it.

"Soon as I could catch a bit o' breath, 'Land's End next stop!'

gasped I. 'O, but this _is_ the Land's End! This is what the Land's

End oughter been all the time, an' never was yet. O, for the Lord's

sake,' says I, 'stop beamin', and pick up your concertina an' pitch

us a tune!'

"Well, he did too. He played us 'Home, sweet home' first of all--

'mid pleasure an' palaces--an' the rest o' the young men sat around

en an' started clappin' their hands to the tune; an' then some fool

slipped an arm round my waist. I'm only thankful he didn't kiss me.

Didn't think of it, perhaps; couldn't ha' been that he wasn't

capable. It must ha' been just then your train came along.

An' about twenty minutes later, when we was gettin' our friends back

into their outfits, we heard the search-engine about half a mile

below, whistlin' an' feelin' its way up very cautious towards us.

"They was sun-dried an' jolly as sandhoppers--all their eight

of 'em--as we helped 'em on board an' wished 'em ta-ta!

The search-party couldn' understand at all what had happened--in so

short a time, too--to make us so cordial; an' somehow we didn'

explain--neither we nor the blind men. I reckon the whole business

had been so loonatic we felt it kind of holy. But the pore fellas

kept wavin' back to us as they went out o' sight around the curve,

an' maybe for a mile beyond. I never heard," Mr. Tucker wound up

meditatively, "if they ever reached the Land's End. I wonder?"

"But, excuse me once more," said I. "How came the train to stop as

it did?"

"To be sure. I said just now that the curiousest things in life

were, gen'rally speakin', the simplest. One o' the schoolchildren in

the fore part of the train--a small nipper of nine--had put his head

out o' the carriage window and got his cap blown away. That's all.

Bein' a nipper of some resource, he wasted no time, but touched off

the communicatin' button an' fetched the whole train to a standstill.

George Simmons, the guard, told me all about it last week, when I

happened across him an' asked the same question you've been askin'.

George was huntin' through the corridors to find out what had gone

wrong; that's how the blind men stepped out without his noticin'.

He pretended to be pretty angry wi' the young tacker. 'Do 'ee know,'

says George, 'it's a five pound fine if you stop a train without good

reason?' 'But I _had_ a good reason,' says the child. 'My mother

gave 'levenpence for that cap, an' 'tis a bran' new one.'"

OUR LADY OF GWITHIAN.

"Mary, mother, well thou be!

Mary, mother, think on me;

Sweete Lady, maiden clean,

Shield me from ill, shame, and teen;

Shield me, Lady, from villainy

And from all wicked company!"

Speculum Christiani.

Here is a little story I found one day among the legends of the

Cornish Saints, like a chip in porridge. If you love simplicity, I

think it may amuse you.

Lovey Bussow was wife of Daniel Bussow, a tin-streamer of Gwithian

Parish. He had brought her from Camborne, and her neighbours agreed

that there was little amiss with the woman if you overlooked her

being a bit weak in the head. They set her down as "not exactly."

At the end of a year she brought her husband a fine boy. It happened

that the child was born just about the time of year the tin-merchants

visited St. Michael's Mount; and the father--who streamed in a small

way, and had no beast of burden but his donkey, or "naggur"--had to

load up panniers and drive his tin down to the shore-market with the

rest, which for him meant an absence of three weeks, or a fortnight

at the least.

So Daniel kissed his wife and took his leave; and the neighbours, who

came to visit her as soon as he was out of the way, all told her the

same story--that until the child was safely baptised it behoved her

to be very careful and keep her door shut for fear of the Piskies.

The Piskies, or fairy-folk (they said), were themselves the spirits

of children that had died unchristened, and liked nothing better than

the chance to steal away an unchristened child to join their nation

of mischief.

Lovey listened to them, and it preyed on her mind. She reckoned that

her best course was to fetch a holy man as quickly as possible to

baptise the child and make the cross over him. So one afternoon, the

mite being then a bare fortnight old, she left him asleep in his

cradle and, wrapping a shawl over her head, hurried off to seek

Meriden the Priest.

Meriden the Priest dwelt in a hut among the sandhills, a bowshot

beyond St. Gwithian's Chapel on the seaward side, as you go out to

Godrevy. He had spent the day in barking his nets, and was spreading

them out to dry on the short turf of the towans; but on hearing

Lovey's errand, he good-naturedly dropped his occupation and, staying

only to fill a bottle with holy water, walked back with her to her

home.

As they drew near, Lovey was somewhat perturbed to see that the door,

which she had carefully closed, was standing wide open. She guessed,

however, that a neighbour had called in her absence, and would be

inside keeping watch over the child. As she reached the threshold,

the dreadful truth broke upon her: the kitchen was empty, and so was

the cradle!

It made her frantic for a while. Meriden the Priest offered what

consolation he could, and suggested that one of her neighbours had

called indeed, and finding the baby alone in the cottage, had taken

it off to her own home to guard it. But this he felt to be a forlorn

hope, and it proved a vain one. Neither search nor inquiry could

trace the infant. Beyond a doubt the Piskies had carried him off.

When this was established so that even the hopefullest of the

good-wives shook her head over it, Lovey grew calm of a sudden and

(as it seemed) with the calm of despair. She grew obstinate too.

"My blessed cheeld!" she kept repeating. "The tender worm of 'en!

But I'll have 'en back, if I've to go to the naughty place to fetch

'en. Why, what sort of a tale be I to pitch to my Dan'l, if he comes

home and his firstborn gone?"

They shook their heads again over this. It would be a brave blow for

the man, but (said one to another) he that marries a fool must look

for thorns in his bed.

"What's done can't be undone," they told her. "You'd best let a

two-three of us stay the night and coax 'ee from frettin'. It's bad

for the system, and you so soon over child-birth."

Lovey opened her eyes wide on them.

"Lord's sake!" she said, "you don't reckon I'm goin' to sit down

under this? What?--and him the beautifullest, straightest cheeld

that ever was in Gwithian Parish! Go'st thy ways home, every wan.

Piskies steal my cheeld an' Dan'l's, would they? I'll pisky 'em!"

She showed them forth--"put them to doors" as we say in the Duchy--

every one, the Priest included. She would have none of their

consolation.

"You mean it kindly, naybors, I don't say; but tiddn' what I happen

to want. I wants my cheeld back; an' I'll _have'n_ back, what's

more!"

They went their ways, agreeing that the woman was doited. Lovey

closed the door upon them, bolted it, and sat for hours staring at

the empty cradle. Through the unglazed window she could see the

stars; and when these told her that midnight was near, she put on her

shawl again, drew the bolt, and fared forth over the towans.

At first the stars guided her, and the slant of the night-wind on her

face; but by and by, in a dip between the hills, she spied her mark

and steered for it. This was the spark within St. Gwithian's Chapel,

where day and night a tiny oil lamp, with a floating wick, burned

before the image of Our Lady.

Meriden the Priest kept the lamp filled, the wick trimmed, year in

and year out. But he, good man, after remembering Lovey in his

prayers, was laid asleep and snoring within his hut, a bowshot away.

The chapel-door opened softly to Lovey's hand, and she crept up to

Mary's image, and abased herself before it.

"Dear Aun' Mary," she whispered, "the Piskies have taken my cheeld!

You d'knaw what that means to a poor female--you there, cuddlin' your

liddle Jesus in the crook o' your arm. An' you d'knaw likewise what

these Piskies be like; spiteful li'l toads, same as you or I might be

if happen we'd died unchristened an' hadn' no share in heaven nor

hell nor middle-earth. But that's no excuse. Aun' Mary, my dear, I

want my cheeld back!" said she. That was all Lovey prayed. Without

more ado she bobbed a curtsy, crept from the chapel, closed the door,

and way-to-go back to her cottage.

When she reached it and struck a light in the kitchen she more than

half expected to hear the child cry to her from his cradle. But, for

all that Meriden the Priest had told her concerning the Virgin and

her power, there the cradle stood empty.

"Well-a-well!" breathed Lovey. "The gentry are not to be hurried, I

reckon. I'll fit and lie down for forty winks," she said; "though I

do think, with her experience Mary might have remembered the poor

mite would be famished afore this, not to mention that the milk in me

is beginnin' to hurt cruel."

She did off some of her clothes and lay down, and even slept a little

in spite of the pain in her breasts; but awoke a good two hours

before dawn, to find no baby restored to her arms, nor even (when she

looked) was it back in its cradle.

"This'll never do," said Lovey. On went her shawl again, and once

again she faced the night and hurried across the towans to St.

Gwithian's Chapel. There in her niche stood Our Lady, quite as

though nothing had happened, with the infant Christ in her arms and

the tiny lamp burning at her feet.

"Aun' Mary, Aun' Mary," said Lovey, speaking up sharp, "this iddn' no

sense 't all! A person would think time was no objic, the way you

stick there starin', ain' my poor cheeld leary with hunger afore

now--as you, bein' a mother, oft to knaw. Fit an' fetch 'en home to

me quick. Aw, do'ee co', that's a dear soul!"

But Our Lady stood there and made no sign.

"I don't understand 'ee 't all," Lovey groaned. "'Tiddn' the way

I'd behave in your place, and you d'knaw it."

Still Our Lady made no sign.

Lovey grew desperate.

"Aw, very well, then!" she cried. "Try what it feels like without

your liddle Jesus!"

And reaching up a hand, she snatched at and lifted the Holy Child

that fitted into a stone socket on Our Lady's arm. It came away in

her grasp, and she fled, tucking it under her shawl.

All the way home Lovey looked for the earth to gape and swallow her,

or a hand to reach down from heaven and grip her by the hair; and all

the way she seemed to hear Our Lady's feet padding after her in the

darkness. But she never stopped nor stayed until she reached home;

and there, flinging in through the door and slamming to the bolt

behind her, she made one spring for the bed, and slid down in it,

cowering over the small stone image.

_Rat-a-tat! tat!_--someone knocked on the door so that the cottage

shook.

"Knock away!" said Lovey. "Whoever thee be, thee 'rt not my cheeld."

_Rat-a-tat! tat!_

"My cheeld wouldn' be knockin': he's got neither strength nor sproil

for it. An' you may fetch Michael and all his Angels, to tear me in

pieces," said Lovey; "but till I hear my own cheeld creen to me, I'll

keep what I have!"

Thereupon Lovey sat up, listening. For outside she heard a feeble

wail.

She slipped out of bed. Holding the image tight in her right arm,

she drew the bolt cautiously. On the threshold at her feet, lay her

own babe, nestling in a bed of bracken.

She would have stooped at once and snatched him to her. But the

stone Christling hampered her, lying so heavily in her arm. For a

moment, fearing trickery, she had a mind to hurl it far out of doors

into the night. . . . It would fall without much hurt into the soft

sand of the towans. But on a second thought she held it forth gently

in her two hands.

"I never meant to hurt 'en, Aun' Mary," she said. "But a firstborn's

a firstborn, be we gentle or simple."

In the darkness a pair of invisible hands reached forward and took

her hostage.

When it was known that the Piskies had repented and restored Lovey

Bussow's child to her, the neighbours agreed that fools have most of

the luck in this world; but came nevertheless to offer their

congratulations. Meriden the Priest came also. He wanted to know

how it had happened; for the Piskies do not easily surrender a child

they have stolen.

Lovey--standing very demure, and smoothing her apron down along her

thighs--confessed that she had laid her trouble before Our Lady.

"A miracle, then!" exclaimed his Reverence. "What height! What

depth!"

"That's of it," agreed Lovey. "Aw, b'lieve me, your Reverence, we

mothers understand wan another."

PILOT MATTHEY'S CHRISTMAS.

Pilot Matthey came down to the little fishing-quay at five p.m. or

thereabouts. He is an elderly man, tall and sizable, with a grizzled

beard and eyes innocent-tender as a child's, but set in deep

crow's-feet at the corners, as all seamen's eyes are. It comes of

facing the wind.

Pilot Matthey spent the fore-half of his life at the fishing.

Thence he won his way to be a Trinity pilot, and wears such portions

of an old uniform as he remembers to don. He has six sons and four

daughters, all brought up in the fear of the Lord, and is very much

of a prophet in our Israel. One of the sons works with him as

apprentice, the other five follow the fishing.

He came down to the quay soon after tea-time, about half an hour

before the luggers were due to put out. Some twenty-five or thirty

men were already gathered, dandering to and fro with hands in

pockets, or seated on the bench under the sea wall, waiting for the

tide to serve. About an equal number were below in the boats,

getting things ready.

There was nothing unusual about Matthey, save that, although it was a

warm evening in August, he wore a thick pea-jacket, and had turned

the collar up about his ears. Nor (if you know Cornish fishermen)

was there anything very unusual in what he did, albeit a stranger

might well have thought it frantic.

For some time he walked to and fro, threading his way in and out of

the groups of men, walking much faster than they--at the best they

were strolling--muttering the while with his head sunk low in his

jacket collar, turning sharply when he reached the edge of the quay,

or pausing a moment or two, and staring gloomily at the water.

The men watched him, yet not very curiously. They knew what was

coming.

Of a sudden he halted and began to preach. He preached of Redemption

from Sin, of the Blood of the Lamb, of the ineffable bliss of

Salvation. His voice rose in an agony on the gentle twilight: it

could be heard--entreating, invoking, persuading, wrestling--far

across the harbour. The men listened quite attentively until the

time came for getting aboard. Then they stole away by twos and

threes down the quay steps. Meanwhile, and all the while,

preparations on the boats had been going forward.

He was left alone at length. Even the children had lost interest in

him, and had run off to watch the boats as they crept out on the

tide. He ceased abruptly, came across to the bench where I sat

smoking my pipe, and dropped exhausted beside me. The fire had died

out of him. He eyed me almost shamefacedly at first, by and by more

boldly.

"I would give, sir," said Pilot Matthey, "I would give half my

worldly goods to lead you to the Lord."

"I believe you," said I. "To my knowledge you have often risked more

than that--your life--to save men from drowning. But tell me--you

that for twenty minutes have been telling these fellows how Christ

feels towards them--how can you know? It is hard enough, surely, to

get inside any man's feelings. How can you pretend to know what

Christ feels, or felt--for an instance, in the Judgment Hall, when

Peter denied?"

"Once I did, sir," said Pilot Matthey, smoothing the worn knees of

his trousers. "It was just that. I'll tell you:"

"It happened eighteen or twenty years ago, on the old _Early and

Late_--yes, twenty years come Christmas, for I mind that my eldest

daughter was expectin' her first man-child, just then. You saw him

get aboard just now, praise the Lord! But at the time we was all

nervous about it--my son-in-law, Daniel, bein' away with me on the

East Coast after the herrings. I'd as good as promised him to be

back in time for it--this bein' my first grandchild, an' due (so well

as we could calculate) any time between Christmas an' New Year.

Well, there was no sacrifice, as it happened, in startin' for home--

the weather up there keepin' monstrous, an' the catches not worth the

labour. So we turned down Channel, the wind strong an' dead foul--

south at first, then west-sou'-west--headin' us all the way, and

always blowin' from just where 'twasn't wanted. This lasted us down

to the Wight, and we'd most given up hope to see home before

Christmas, when almost without warnin' it catched in off the land--

pretty fresh still, but steady--and bowled us down past the Bill and

halfway across to the Start, merry as heart's delight. Then it fell

away again, almost to a flat calm, and Daniel lost his temper.

I never allowed cursin' on board the Early and Late--nor, for that

matter, on any other boat of mine; but if Daniel didn't swear a bit

out of hearin', well then--poor dear fellow, he's dead and gone these

twelve years (yes, sir--drowned)--well then I'm doin' him an

injustice. One couldn't help pitying him, neither. Didn't I know

well enough what it felt like? And the awe of it, to think it's

happenin' everywhere, and ever since world began--men fretting for

the wife and firstborn, and gettin' over it, and goin' down to the

grave leavin' the firstborn to fret over _his_ firstborn! It puts me

in mind o' the old hemn, sir: 'tis in the Wesley books, and I can't

think why church folk leave out the verse--

"The busy tribes o' flesh and blood,

With all their cares and fears--"

Ay, 'cares and fears'; that's of it--

"Are carried downward by the flood,

And lost in followin' years."

"Poor Daniel--poor boy!"

Pilot Matthey sat silent for a while, staring out over the water in

the wake of the boats that already had begun to melt into the shadow

of darkness.

"'Twas beautiful sunshiny weather, too, as I mind," he resumed. "One

o' those calm spells that happen, as often as not, just about

Christmas. I remember drawin' your attention to it, sir, one

Christmas when I passed you the compliments of the season; and you

put it down to kingfishers, which I thought strange at the time."

"Kingfishers?" echoed I, mystified for the moment. "Oh, yes"--as

light broke on me--"Halcyon days, of course!"

"That's right," Pilot Matthey nodded. "That's what you called 'em.

. . . It took us a whole day to work past the tides of the Start.

Then, about sunset, a light draught off the land helped us to Bolt

Tail, and after that we mostly drifted all night, with here and there

a cat's-paw, down across Bigbury Bay. By five in the morning we were

inside the Eddystone, with Plymouth Sound open, and by twelve noon we

was just in the very same place. It was Christmas Eve, sir.

"I looked at Daniel's face, and then a notion struck me. It was

foolish I hadn't thought of it before.

"'See here, boys,' I says. (There was three. My second son, Sam,

Daniel, and Daniel's brother, Dick, a youngster of sixteen or so.)

'Get out the boat,' I says,' and we'll tow her into Plymouth.

If you're smart we may pluck her into Cattewater in time for Daniel

to catch a train home. Sam can go home, too, if he has a mind, and

the youngster can stay and help me look after things. I've seen a

many Christmasses,' said I, 'and I'd as lief spend this one at

Plymouth as anywhere else. You can give 'em all my love, and turn up

again the day after Boxin' Day--and mind you ask for excursion

tickets,' I said.

"They tumbled the boat out fast enough, you may be sure. Leastways

the two men were smart enough. But the boy seemed ready to cry, so

that my heart smote me. 'There!' said I, 'and Dicky can go too, if

he'll pull for it. I shan't mind bein' left to myself. A redeemed

man's never lonely--least of all at Christmas time.'

"Well, sir, they nipped into the boat, leavin' me aboard to steer;

and they pulled--pulled--like as if they'd pull their hearts out.

But it happened a strongish tide was settin' out o' the Sound, and

long before we fetched past the breakwater I saw there was no chance

to make Cattewater before nightfall, let alone their gettin' to the

railway station. I blamed myself that I hadn't thought of it

earlier, and so, steppin' forward, I called out to them to ease up--

we wouldn't struggle on for Cattewater, but drop hook in Jennycliff

Bay, somewhere inside of the Merchant Shipping anchorage. As things

were, this would save a good hour--more likely two hours. 'And,'

said I, 'you can take the boat, all three, and leave her at Barbican

steps. Tell the harbour-master where she belongs, and where I'm

laying. He'll see she don't take no harm, and you needn't fear but

I'll get put ashore to her somehow. There's always somebody passin'

hereabouts.'

"'But look 'ee here, father,' said the boys--good boys they were,

too--'What's to happen if it comes on to blow from south or

sou'-west, same as it blew at the beginning of the week?'

"''Tisn't goin' to do any such thing,' said I, for I'd been studyin'

the weather. 'And, even if it should happen, I've signals aboard.

'Tisn't the first time, sonnies, I've sat out a week-end on board a

boat, alone wi' the Redeemer.'

"That settled it, sir. It relieved 'em a bit, too, when they spied

another lugger already lyin' inside the anchorage, and made her out

for a Porthleven boat, the_ Maid in Two Minds_, that had been after

the herrings with the rest of us up to a fortni't ago, or maybe three

weeks: since when we hadn't seen her. As I told you, the weather had

been cruel, and the catches next to nothing; and belike she'd given

it up earlier than we and pushed for home. At any rate, here she

was. We knowed her owners, as fishermen do; but we'd never passed

word with her, nor with any of her crew. I'd heard somewhere--but

where I couldn't recollect--that the skipper was a blasphemous man,

given to the drink, and passed by the name of Dog Mitchell; but 'twas

hearsay only. All I noted, or had a mind to note, as we dropped

anchor less than a cable length from her, was that she had no boat

astern or on deck (by which I concluded the crew were ashore), and

that Dog Mitchell himself was on deck. I reckernised him through the

glass. He made no hail at all, but stood leanin' by the mizen and

smokin', watchin' what we did. By then the dark was comin' down.

"Well, sir, I looked at my watch, and there was no time to be choice

about position; no time even for the lads to get aboard and pack

their bags. I ran forward, heaved anchor, cast off tow-line, an'

just ran below, and came up with an armful o' duds which I tossed

into the boat as she dropped back alongside. I fished the purse out

of my pocket, and two sovereigns out o' the purse. 'That'll take 'ee

home and back,' said I, passin' the money to Daniel. 'So long,

children! You haven't no time to spare.'

"Away they pulled, callin' back, 'God bless 'ee, father!' and the

like; words I shan't forget. . . . Poor Daniel! . . . And there, all

of a sudden, was I, left to spend Christmas alone: which didn't

trouble me at all.

"'Stead o' which, as you might say, havin' downed sail and made

things pretty well shipshape on deck, I went below and trimmed and

lit the riding light. When I came on deck with it the _Maid in Two

Minds_ was still in darkness. 'That's queer,' thought I; but maybe

the _Early and Late's_ light reminded Dog Mitchell of his, for a few

minutes later he fetched it up and made it fast, takin' an uncommon

long time over the job and mutterin' to himself all the while.

(For I should tell you that, the weather bein' so still and the

distance not a hundred yards, I could hear every word.)

"'Twas then, I think, it first came into my mind that the man was

drunk, and five minutes later I was sure of it: for on his way aft he

caught his foot and tripped over something--one o' the deck-leads

maybe--and the words he ripped out 'twould turn me cold to repeat.

His voice was thick, too, and after cursin' away for half a minute it

dropped to a sort of growl, same as you'll hear a man use when he's

full o' drink and reckons he has a grudge against somebody or

something--he doesn't quite know which, or what. Thought I, ''Tis a

risky game o' those others to leave a poor chap alone in that state.

He might catch the boat afire, for one thing: and, for another, he

might fall overboard.' It crossed my mind, too, that if he fell

overboard I hadn't a boat to pull for him.

"He went below after that, and for a couple of hours no sound came

from the _Maid in Two Minds_. 'Likely enough,' thought I, 'he's

turned in, to sleep it off; and that's the best could happen to him';

and by and by I put the poor fellow clean out o' my head. I made

myself a dish o' tea, got out supper, and ate it with a thankful

heart, though I missed the boys; but, then again, I no sooner missed

them than I praised God they had caught the train. They would be

nearin' home by this time; and I sat for a while picturin' it: the

kitchen, and the women-folk there, that must have made up their minds

to spend Christmas without us; particularly Lisbeth Mary--that's my

daughter, Daniel's wife--with her mother to comfort her, an' the

firelight goin' dinky-dink round the cups and saucers on the

dresser. I pictured the joy of it, too, when Sam or Daniel struck

rat-tat and clicked open the latch, or maybe one o' the gals pricked

up an ear at the sound of their boots on the cobbles. I 'most hoped

the lads hadn't been thoughtful enough to send on a telegram.

My mind ran on all this, sir; and then for a moment it ran back to

myself, sittin' there cosy and snug after many perils, many joys;

past middle-age, yet hale and strong, wi' the hand o' the Lord

protectin' me. 'The Lord is my shepherd; therefore can I lack

nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture, and lead me forth

beside the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul . . .'

"I don't know how it happened, sir, but of a sudden a well o' warmth

ran through me and all over me, just like a spring burstin'. 'Waters

o' Comfort?' Ay, maybe . . . maybe. Funny things happen on

Christmas Eve, they say. My old mother believed to her last day that

every Christmas Eve at midnight the cattle in their challs went down

on their knees, throughout the land . . .

"But the feelin', if you understand me, wasn't Christmas-like at all.

It had started with green pastures: and green pastures ran in my

head, with brooks, and birds singin' away up aloft and bees hummin'

all 'round, and the sunshine o' the Lord warmin' everything and

warmin' my heart . . . I felt the walls of the cuddy chokin' me of a

sudden, an' went on deck.

"A fine night it was, up there. Very clear with a hint o' frost--no

moon. As I remember, she was in her first quarter and had gone down

some while. The tide had turned and was makin' in steady. I could

hear it clap-clappin' past the _Maid in Two Minds_--she lay a little

outside of us, to seaward, and we had swung so that her ridin' light

come over our starboard how. Out beyond her the lighthouse on the

breakwater kept flashin'--it's red over the anchorage--an' away

beyond that the 'Stone. Astern was all the half-circle o' Plymouth

lights--like the front of a crown o' glory. And the stars overhead,

sir!--not so much as a wisp o' cloud to hide 'em.

"'Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His

star in the east . . .'I'd always been curious about that star,

sir,--whether 'twas an ordinary one or one sent by miracle: and,

years before, I'd argued it out that the Lord wouldn't send one like

a flash in the pan, but--bein' thoughtful in all things--would leave

it to come back constant every year and bring assurance, if ye looked

for it. After that, I began to look regularly, studying the sky from

the first week of December on to Christmas: and 'twasn't long before

I felt certain. 'Tis a star--they call it Regulus in the books, for

I've looked it out--that gets up in the south-east in December month:

pretty low, and yet full high enough to stand over a cottage; one o'

the brightest too, and easily known, for it carries five other stars

set like a reap-hook just above it.

"Well, I looked to the south-east, and there my star stood blazin',

just over the dark o' the land, with its reap-hook over its forehead.

'The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light . . .'

"While I stood staring at it, thinkin' my thoughts, there came a

noise all of a sudden from the other lugger, as if someone had kicked

over a table down below, and upset half a dozen pots and pans.

Then, almost before I had time to wonder, I heard Dog Mitchell

scramble forth on deck, find his feet in a scrufflin' way, and start

travisin' forth and back, forth and back, talkin' to himself all the

while and cursin'. He was fairly chewin' curses. I guessed what was

the matter. He had been down below toppin' things up with a last

soak of neat whisky, and now he had the shakes on him, or the

beginnings of 'em.

"You know the sayin', 'A fisherman's walk--two steps, an' overboard'?

. . . I tell you I was in misery for the man. Any moment he might

lurch overboard, or else throw himself over--one as likely as another

with a poor chap in that state. Yet how could I help--cut off,

without boat or any means to get to him?

"Forth and back he kept goin', in his heavy sea-boots. I could hear

every step he took, and when he kicked against the hatchway-coamin'

(he did this scores o' times) and when he stood still and spat

overboard. Once he tripped over the ship's mop--got the handle

a-foul of his legs, and talked to it like a pers'nal enemy.

Terrible language--terrible!

"It struck me after a bit"--here Pilot Matthey turned to me with one

of those shy smiles which, as they reveal his childish, simple heart,

compel you to love the man. "It struck me after a bit that a

hemn-tune mightn't come amiss to a man in that distress of mind.

So I pitched to sing that grand old tune, 'Partners of a glorious

hope,' a bit low at first, but louder as I picked up confidence.

Soon as he heard it he stopped short, and called out to me to shut my

head. So, findin' that hemns only excited him, I sat quiet, while he

picked up his tramp again.

"I had allowed to myself that 'twould be all right soon after eleven,

when the publics closed, and his mates would be turnin' up, to take

care of him. But eleven o'clock struck, back in the town; and the

quarters, and then twelve; and still no boat came off from shore.

Then, soon after twelve, he grew quiet of a sudden. The trampin'

stopped. I reckoned he'd gone below, though I couldn't be certain.

But bein' by this time pretty cold with watchin', and dog-tired, I

tumbled below and into my bunk. I must have been uneasy though, for

I didn't take off more'n my boots.

"What's more I couldn't have slept more than a dog's sleep. For I

woke up sudden to the noise of a splash--it seemed I'd been waitin'

for it--and was up on deck in two shakes.

"Yes, the chap was overboard, fast enough--I heard a sort of gurgle

as he came to the surface, and some sort of attempt at a cry.

Before he went under again, the tide drifted his head like a little

black buoy across the ray of our ridin' light. So overboard I

jumped, and struck out for him."

At this point--the exciting point--Pilot Matthey's narrative halted,

hesitated, grew meagre and ragged.

"I got a grip on him as he rose. He couldn't swim better'n a few

strokes at the best. (So many of our boys won't larn to swim--they

say it only lengthens things out when your time comes.) . . . The man

was drownin', but he had sproil enough to catch at me and try to pull

me under along with him. I knew that trick, though, luckily. . . .

I got him round on his back, with my hands under his armpits, and

kicked out for the _Maid in Two Minds_.

"'Tisn't easy to climb straight out o' the water and board a lugger--

not at the best of times, when you've only yourself to look after;

and the _Maid in Two Minds_ had no accommodation-ladder hung

out . . . But, as luck would have it, they'd downed sail anyhow and,

among other things, left the out-haul of the mizen danglin' slack and

close to the water. I reached for this, shortened up on it till I

had it taut, and gave it into his hand to cling by--which he had the

sense to do, havin' fetched back some of his wits. After that I

scrambled on to the mizen-boom somehow and hauled him aboard mainly

by his collar and seat of his trousers. It was a job, too; and the

first thing he did on deck was to reach his head overside and be

vi'lently sick.

"He couldn't have done better. When he'd finished I took charge,

hurried him below--my! the mess down there!--and got him into

somebody's dry clothes. All the time he was whimperin' and

shiverin'; and he whimpered and shivered still when I coaxed him into

his bunk and tucked him up in every rug I could find. There was a

bottle of whisky, pretty near empty, 'pon the table. Seein' how

wistful the poor chap looked at it, and mindin' how much whisky and

salt water he'd got rid of, I mixed the dregs of it with a little hot

water off the stove, and poured it into him. Then I filled up the

bottle with hot water, corked it hard, and slipped it down under the

blankets, to warm his feet.

"'That's all right, matey,' said he, his teeth chatterin' as I

snugged him down. 'But cut along and leave me afore the others

come.'

"Well, that was sense in its way, though he didn't seem to take

account that there was only one way back for me--the way I'd come.

"'You'll do, all right?' said I.

"'I'll do right enough now,' said he. 'You cut along.'

"So I left him. I was that chilled in my drippin' clothes, the

second swim did me more good than harm. When I got to the _Early and

Late_, though, I was pretty dead beat, and it cost me half a dozen

tries before I could heave myself on to the accommodation-ladder.

Hows'ever, once on board I had a strip and a good rub-down, and

tumbled to bed glowin' like a babby.

"I slept like a top, too, this time. What woke me was a voice close

abeam, hailin' the _Early and Late_; and there was a brisk,

brass-bound young chap alongside in a steam-launch, explainin' as

he'd brought out the boat, and why the harbour-master hadn't sent her

out last night. 'As requested by your crew, Cap'n.' 'That's very

polite o' them and o' you, and o' the harbour-master,' said I; 'and I

wish you the compliments o' the season.' For I liked the looks of

him there, smiling up in an obliging way, and Plymouth bells behind

him all sounding to Church together for Christmas. 'Same to you,

Cap'n!' he called out, and sheered off with a wave o' the hand,

having made the boat fast astern.

"I stared after him for a bit, and then I turned my attention to the

_Maid in Two Minds_. Her boat, too, lay astern of her; and one of

her crew was already on deck, swabbin' down. After a bit, another

showed up. But Dog Mitchell made no appearance.

"Nat'rally enough my thoughts ran on him durin' breakfast; and, when

'twas done, I dressed myself and pulled over to inquire. By this

time all three of his mates were on deck, and as I pulled close they

drew together--much as to ask what I wanted.

"'I came across,' says I, 'to ask after the boss. Is he all right

this morning?'

"'Why not?' asked one o' the men, suspicious-like, with a glance at

the others. They were all pretty yellow in the gills after their

night ashore.

"'What's up?' says Dog Mitchell's own voice on top o' this: and the

man heaved himself on deck and looked down on me.

"'It's the skipper of the _Early and Late_,' said one of the fellows

grinning; 'as seems to say he has the pleasure o' your acquaintance.'

"'Does he?' said Dog Mitchell slowly, chewing. The man's eyes were

bleared yet, but the drink had gone out of him with his shock: or the

few hours' sleep had picked him round. He hardened his eyes on me,

anyway, and says he--'Does he? Then he's a bloody liar!'

"I didn't make no answer, sir. I saw what he had in mind--that I'd

come off on the first opportunity, cadgin' for some reward. I turned

the boat's head about, and started to pull back for the _Early and

Late_. The men laughed after me, jeering-like. And Dog Mitchell, he

laughed, too, in the wake o' them, with a kind of challenge as he saw

my lack o' pluck. And away back in Plymouth the bells kept on

ringing.

"That's the story. You asked how I could tell what the blessed Lord

felt like when Peter denied. I don't know. But I seemed to feel

like it, just that once."

THE MONT-BAZILLAC.

I have a sincere respect and liking for the Vicar of Gantick--"th'

old Parson Kendall," as we call him--but have somewhat avoided his

hospitality since Mrs. Kendall took up with the teetotal craze.

I say nothing against the lady's renouncing, an she choose, the light

dinner claret, the cider, the port (pale with long maturing in the

wood) which her table afforded of yore: nor do I believe that the

Vicar, excellent man, repines deeply--though I once caught the faint

sound of a sigh as we stood together and conned his cider-apple

trees, un-garnered, shedding their fruit at random in the long

grasses. For his glebe contains a lordly orchard, and it used to be

a treat to watch him, his greenish third-best coat stuck all over

with apple-pips and shreds of pomace, as he helped to work the press

at the great annual cider-making. But I agree with their son, Master

Dick, that "it's rough on the guests."

Master Dick is now in his second year at Oxford; and it was probably

for his sake, to remove temptation from the growing lad, that Mrs.

Kendall first discovered the wickedness of all alcoholic drink.

Were he not an ordinary, good-natured boy--had he, as they say, an

ounce of vice in him--I doubt the good lady's method might go some

way towards defeating her purpose. As things are, it will probably

take no worse revenge upon her solicitude than by weaning him

insensibly away from home, to use his vacation-times in learning to

be a man.

Last Long Vacation, in company with a friend he calls Jinks, Master

Dick took a Canadian canoe out to Bordeaux by steamer, and spent six

adventurous weeks in descending the Dordogne and exploring the

Garonne with its tributaries. On his return he walked over to find

me smoking in my garden after dinner, and gave me a gleeful account

of his itinerary.

". . . And the next place we came to was Bergerac," said he, after

ten minutes of it.

"Ah!" I murmured. "Bergerac!"

"You know it?"

"Passably well," said I. "It lies toward the edge of the claret

country; but it grows astonishing claret. When I was about your age

it grew a wine yet more astonishing."

"Hallo!" Master Dick paused in the act of lighting his pipe and

dropped the match hurriedly as the flame scorched his fingers.

"It was grown on a hill just outside the town--the Mont-Bazillac. I

once drank a bottle of it."

"Lord! You too? . . . _Do_ tell me what happened!"

"Never," I responded firmly. "The Mont-Bazillac is extinct, swept

out of existence by the phylloxera when you were a babe in arms.

_Infandum jubes renovare--_ no one any longer can tell you what that

wine was. They made it of the ripe grape. It had the raisin flavour

with something--no more than a hint--of Madeira in it: the leathery

tang--how to describe it?"

"You need not try, when I have two bottles of it at home, at this

moment!"

"When I tell you--" I began.

"Oh, but wait till you've heard the story!" he interrupted. "As I

was saying, we came to Bergerac and put up for the night at the

_Couronne d'Or_--first-class cooking. Besides ourselves there were

three French bagmen at the _table d'hote_. The usual sort. Jinks,

who talks worse French than I do (if that's possible), and doesn't

mind, got on terms with them at once. . . . For my part I can always

hit it off with a commercial--it's the sort of mind that appeals to

me--and these French bagmen _do_ know something about eating and

drinking. That's how it happened. One of them started chaffing us

about the _ordinaire_ we were drinking--quite a respectable tap, by

the way. He had heard that Englishmen drank only the strongest wine,

and drank it in any quantities. Then another said: 'Ah, messieurs,

if you would drink for the honour of England, _justement_ you should

match yourselves here in this town against the famous Mont-Bazillac.'

'What is this Mont-Bazillac?' we asked: and they told us--well,

pretty much what you told me just now--adding, however, that the

landlord kept a few precious bottles of it. They were quite fair in

their warnings."

"Which, of course, you disregarded."

"For the honour of England. We rang for the landlord--a decent

fellow, Sebillot by name--and at first, I may tell you, he wasn't at

all keen on producing the stuff; kept protesting that he had but a

small half-dozen left, that his daughter was to be married in the

autumn, and he had meant to keep it for the wedding banquet.

However, the bagmen helping, we persuaded him to bring up two

bottles. A frantic price it was, too--frantic for _us_.

Seven francs a bottle."

"It was four francs fifty even in my time."

"The two bottles were opened. Jinks took his, and I took mine.

We had each _arrosed_ the dinner with about a pint of Bordeaux;

nothing to count. We looked at each other straight. I said, 'Be a

man, Jinks! _A votre sante messieurs!_' and we started. . . . As you

said just now, it's a most innocent-tasting wine."

"As a matter of fact, I didn't say so. Still, you are right."

"The fourth and fifth glasses, too, seemed to have no more kick in

them than the first. . . . Nothing much seemed to be happening,

except that Sebillot had brought in an extra lamp--at any rate, the

room was brighter, and I could see the bagmen's faces more distinctly

as they smiled and congratulated us. I drank off the last glass

'to the honour of England,' and suggested to Jinks--who had kept pace

with me, glass for glass--that we should take a stroll and view the

town. There was a fair (as I had heard) across the bridge. . . .

We stood up together. I had been feeling nervous about Jinks, and it

came as a relief to find that he was every bit as steady on his legs

as I was. We said good evening to the bagmen and walked out into the

street. 'Up the hill or down?' asked Jinks, and I explained to him

very clearly that, since rivers followed the bottoms of their

valleys, we should be safe in going downhill if we wanted to find the

bridge. And I'd scarcely said the words before it flashed across me

that I was drunk as Chloe.

"Here's another thing.--I'd never been drunk before, and I haven't

been drunk since: but all the same I knew that this wasn't the least

like ordinary drunkenness: it was too--what shall I say?--too

brilliant. The whole town of Bergerac belonged to me: and, what was

better, it was lit so that I could steer my way perfectly, although

the street seemed to be quite amazingly full of people, jostling and

chattering. I turned to call Jinks's attention to this, and was

saying something about a French crowd--how much cheerfuller it was

than your average English one--when all of a sudden Jinks wasn't

there! No, nor the crowd! I was alone on Bergerac bridge, and I

leaned with both elbows on the parapet and gazed at the Dordogne

flowing beneath the moon.

"It was not an ordinary river, for it ran straight up into the sky:

and the moon, unlike ordinary moons, kept whizzing on an axis like a

Catherine-wheel, and swelled every now and then and burst into

showers of the most dazzling fireworks. I leaned there and stared at

the performance, feeling just like a king--proud, you understand, but

with a sort of noble melancholy. I knew all the time that I was

drunk; but that didn't seem to matter. The bagmen had told me--"

I nodded again.

"That's one of the extraordinary things about the Mont-Bazillac," I

corroborated. "It's all over in about an hour, and there's not (as

the saying goes) a headache in a hogshead."

"I wouldn't quite say that," said Dick reflectively. "But you're

partly right. All of a sudden the moon stopped whizzing, the river

lay down in its bed, and my head became clear as a bell. 'The

trouble will be,' I told myself, 'to find the hotel again.' But I

had no trouble at all. My brain picked up bearing after bearing.

I worked back up the street like a prize Baden-Powell scout, found

the portico, remembered the stairway to the left, leading to the

lounge, went up it, and recognising the familiar furniture, dropped

into an armchair with a happy sigh. My only worry, as I picked up a

copy of the _Gil Blas_ and began to study it, was about Jinks.

But, you see, there wasn't much call to go searching after him when

my own experience told me it would be all right.

"There were, maybe, half a dozen men in the lounge, scattered about

in the armchairs and smoking. By and by, glancing up from my

newspaper, I noticed that two or three had their eyes fixed on me

pretty curiously. One of them--an old boy with a grizzled

moustache--set down his paper, and came slowly across the room.

'Pardon, monsieur,' he said in the politest way, 'but have we the

honour of numbering you amongst our members?' 'Good Lord!' cried I,

sitting up, 'isn't this the _Couronne d'Or?_' 'Pray let monsieur not

discommode himself,' said he, with a quick no-offence sort of smile,

'but he has made a little mistake. This is the _Cercle Militaire_.'

"I must say those French officers were jolly decent about it:

especially when I explained about the Mont-Bazillac. They saw me

back to the hotel in a body; and as we turned in at the porchway, who

should come down the street but Jinks, striding elbows to side, like

a man in a London-to-Brighton walking competition! . . . He told me,

as we found our bedrooms, that '_of course_, he had gone up the hill,

and that the view had been magnificent.' I did not argue about it,

luckily: for--here comes in another queer fact--_there was no moon at

all that night_. Next morning I wheedled two more bottles of the

stuff out of old Sebillot--which leaves him two for the wedding.

I thought that you and I might have some fun with them. . . . Now

tell me _your_ experience."

"That," said I, "must wait until you unlock my tongue; if indeed you

have brought home the genuine Mont-Bazillac."

As it happened, Master Dick was called up to Oxford unexpectedly, a

week before the beginning of term, to start practice in his college

"four." Our experiment had to be postponed; with what result you

shall hear.

About a fortnight later I read in our local paper that the Bishop

had been holding a Confirmation service in Gantick Parish Church.

The paragraph went on to say that "a large and reverent congregation

witnessed the ceremony, but general regret was expressed at the

absence of our respected Vicar through a temporary indisposition.

We are glad to assure our readers that the reverend gentleman is well

on the way to recovery, and indeed has already resumed his

ministration in the parish, where his genial presence and quick

sympathies, etc."

This laid an obligation upon me to walk over to Gantick and inquire

about my old friend's health: which I did that same afternoon.

Mrs. Kendall received me with the information that her husband was

quite well again, and out-and-about; that in fact he had started,

immediately after luncheon, to pay a round of visits on the outskirts

of the parish. On the nature of his late indisposition she showed

herself reticent, not to say "short" in her answers; nor, though the

hour was four o'clock, did she invite me to stay and drink tea with

her.

On my way back, and just within the entrance-gate of the vicarage

drive, I happened on old Trewoon, who works at odd jobs under the

gardener, and was just now busy with a besom, sweeping up the first

fall of autumn leaves. Old Trewoon, I should tell you, is a

Wesleyan, and a Radical of the sardonic sort; and, as a jobbing man,

holds himself free to criticise his employers.

"Good afternoon!" said I. "This is excellent news that I hear about

the Vicar. I was afraid, when I first heard of his illness, that it

might be something serious--at his age--"

"Serious?" Old Trewoon rested his hands on the besom-handle and eyed

me, with a twist of his features. "Missus didn' tell you the natur'

of the complaint, I reckon?"

"As a matter of fact she did not."

"I bet she didn'. Mind you, _I_ don't know, nuther." He up-ended his

besom and plucked a leaf or two from between the twigs before adding,

"And what, makin' so bold, did she tell about the Churchwardens?"

"The Churchwardens?" I echoed.

"Aye, the Churchwardens: Matthey Hancock an' th' old Farmer Truslove.

They was took ill right about the same time. Aw, my dear"--Mr.

Trewoon addresses all mankind impartially as "my dear"--"th' hull

parish knaws about _they_. Though there warn't no concealment, for

that matter."

"What about the Churchwardens?" I asked innocently, and of a sudden

became aware that he was rocking to and fro in short spasms of inward

laughter.

"--It started wi' the Bishop's motor breakin' down; whereby he and

his man spent the better part of two hours in a God-forsaken lane

somewhere t'other side of Hen's Beacon, tryin' to make her go.

He'd timed hisself to reach here punctual for the lunchin' the Missus

always has ready on Confirmation Day: nobody to meet his Lordship but

theirselves and the two Churchwardens; an' you may guess that Hancock

and Truslove had turned up early in their best broadcloth, lookin' to

have the time o' their lives.

"They were pretty keen-set, too, by one o'clock, bein' used to eat

their dinners at noon sharp. One o'clock comes--no Bishop: two

o'clock and still no Bishop. 'There's been a naccydent,' says the

Missus: 'but thank the Lord the vittles is cold!' 'Maybe he've forgot

the day,' says the Vicar; 'but any way, we'll give en another

ha'f-hour's grace an' then set-to,' says he, takin' pity on the

noises old Truslove was makin' inside his weskit. . . . So said, so

done. At two-thirty--service bein' fixed for ha'f-after-three--they

all fell to work.

"You d'know, I dare say, what a craze the Missus have a-took o' late

against the drinkin' habit. Sally, the parlourmaid, told me as how,

first along, th' old lady set out by hintin' that the Bishop, bein' a

respecter o' conscience, wouldn' look for anything stronger on the

table than home-brewed lemonade. But there the Vicar struck; and

findin' no way to shake him, she made terms by outin' with two

bottles o' wine that, to her scandal, she'd rummaged out from a

cupboard o' young Master Dick's since he went back to Oxford College.

She decanted 'em [chuckle], an' th' old Vicar allowed, havin' tasted

the stuff, that--though he had lost the run o' wine lately, an' didn'

reckernise whether 'twas port or what-not--seemin' to him 'twas a

sound wine and fit for any gentleman's table. 'Well, at any rate,'

says the Missus, 'my boy shall be spared the temptation: an' I hope

'tis no sign he's betaken hisself to secret drinkin'!'

"Well, then, it was decanted: an' Hancock and Truslove, nothin'

doubtful, begun to lap it up like so much milk--the Vicar helpin',

and the Missus rather encouragin' than not, to the extent o' the

first decanter; thinkin' that 'twas good riddance to the stuff and

that if the Bishop turned up, he wouldn't look, as a holy man, for

more than ha'f a bottle. I'm tellin' it you as Sally told it to me.

She says that everything went on as easy as eggs in a nest until she

started to hand round the sweets, and all of a sudden she didn' know

what was happenin' at table, nor whether she was on her head or her

heels. . . . All I can tell you, sir, is that me and Battershall"--

Battershall is the vicarage gardener, stableman, and factotum--"was

waitin' in the stables, wonderin' when in the deuce the Bishop would

turn up, when we heard the whistle blown from the kitchen: which was

the signal. Out we ran; an' there to be sure was the Bishop comin'

down the drive in a hired trap. But between him and the house--

slap-bang, as you might say, in the middle of the lawn--was our two

Churchwardens, stripped mother-naked to the waist, and sparring: and

from the window just over the porch th' old Missus screaming out to

us to separate 'em. No, nor that wasn't the worst: for, as his

Lordship's trap drove up, the two tom-fools stopped their boxin' to

stand 'pon their toes and blow kisses at him!

"I must say that Battershall showed great presence o' mind.

He shouted to me to tackle Truslove, while he ran up to Matthey

Hancock an' butted him in the stomach; an' together we'd heaved the

two tom-fools into the shrubbery almost afore his Lordship could

believe his eyes. I won't say what had happened to the Vicar, for I

don't rightways know. All I can get out o' Sally--she's a modest

wench--is that--that--_he wanted to be a Statoo!_ . . ."

"Quite so," I interrupted, edging towards the gate and signifying

with a gesture of the hand that I had heard enough.

Old Trewoon's voice followed me.

"I reckon, sir, we best agree, for the sake o' the dear old fella,

that such a sight as them two Churchwardens was enough to make any

gentleman take to his bed. But"--as the gate rang on its hasp and

rang again--"I've been thinkin' powerful _what might ha' happened if

his Lordship had turned up in due time to partake_."

Master Dick is a good boy; and when we met in the Christmas vacation

no allusion was made to the Mont-Bazillac. On my part, I am absolved

from my promised confession, and my lips shall remain locked.

That great, that exhilarating, that redoubtable wine, has--with the

nuptials of M. Sebillot's daughter--perished finally from earth.

I wonder what happened in Bergerac on that occasion, and if it had a

comparable apotheosis!

THE THREE NECKLACES.

"A great nation!" said the little Cure. "But yes, indeed, the

English are a very great nation. And now I have seen them at home!

But it passes expression, monsieur, what a traveller I find myself!"

We stood together on the deck of the steamer, watching--after an

eight hours' passage from Plymouth--the Breton coast as it loomed

out of the afternoon haze. Our crossing had been smooth, yet

sea-sickness had prostrated all his compatriots on board--five or six

priests, as many religieuses, and maybe a dozen peasants, whom I

supposed to be attached in some way to the service of the religious

orders the priests represented. (Of late years, since the French

Government expelled them, quite a number of these orders have found a

home in our West Country.) On my way to the docks that morning I had

overtaken and passed them straggling by twos and threes to the

steamer, the men in broad-brimmed hats with velvet ribbons, the women

coifed and bodiced after the fashion of their country, each group

shepherded by a priest; and I had noted how strange and almost

forlorn a figure they cut in the grey English streets. If some of

the strangeness had worn off, they certainly appeared no less forlorn

as they sat huddled in physical anguish, dumb, immobile, staring at

the sea.

The little Cure, however, was vivacious enough for ten. It was

impossible to avoid making friends with him. He had nothing to do,

he told me, with his companions, but was just a plain parish priest

returning from an errand of business.

He announced this with a fine roll of the voice.

"Of business," he repeated. "The English are a great nation for

business. But how warm of heart, notwithstanding!"

"That is not always reckoned to us," said I.

"But _I_ reckon it . . . _Tenez_, that will be Ile Vierge--there,

with the lighthouse standing white--as it were, beneath the cliffs;

but the cliffs belong in fact to the mainland. . . . And now in a few

minutes we come abreast of _my_ parish--the Ile Lezan. . . . See,

see!" He caught my arm as the tide raced us down through the Passage

du Four. "My church--how her spire stands up!" He turned to me, his

voice shaking with emotion. "You English are accustomed to travel.

Probably you do not guess, monsieur, with what feelings I see again

Ile Lezan--I, who have never crossed the Channel before nor indeed

have visited any foreign land. But I am glad: it spreads the mind."

Here he put his hands together and drew them apart as though

extending a concertina. "I have seen you English at home.

If monsieur, who is on tour, could only spare the time to visit me on

Ile Lezan!"

Well, the end of it was that before we parted on the quay at Brest I

found myself under half a promise, and a week later, having (as I put

it to myself) nothing better to do, I took the train to a little

wind-swept terminus, whence a ramshackle cart jolted me to Port

Lezan, on the coast, whence again by sail and oar a ferry-boat

conveyed me over to the Island.

My friend the Cure greeted me with something not far short of

ecstasy.

"But this is like you English--you keep your word. . . . You will

hardly believe," he confided, as I shared his admirable dejeuner--

soup, langouste, an incomparable omelet, stuffed veal, and I forget

what beside--"you will hardly believe with what difficulty I bring

myself back to this horizon." He waved a hand to the blue sea-line

beyond his window. "When one has tasted progress--" He broke off.

"But, thanks be to God, we too, on Ile Lezan, are going to progress.

You will visit my church and see how much we have need."

He took me to it: a bleak, decayed building, half ruinated, the

slated pavement uneven as the waves of the sea, the plastered walls

dripping with saline ooze. From the roof depended three or four

rudely carved ships, hung there _ex voto_ by parishioners preserved

from various perils of the deep. He narrated their histories at

length.

"The roof leaks," he said, "but we are to remedy that. At length the

blessed Mary of Lezan will be housed, if not as befits her, at least

not shamefully." He indicated a niched statue of the Virgin, with

daubed red cheeks and a robe of crude blue overspread with blotches

of sea-salt. "Thanks to your England," he added.

"Why 'thanks to England'?"

He chuckled--or perhaps I had better say chirruped.

"Did I not say I had been visiting your country on business? Eh?

You shall hear the story--only I tell no names."

He took snuff.

"We will call them," he said, "only by their Christian names, which

are Lucien and Jeanne. . . . I am to marry them next month, when

Lucien gets his relief from the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant.

"They are an excellent couple. As between them, the wits are with

Lucien, who will doubtless rise in his profession. He has been

through temptation, as you shall hear. For Jeanne, she is _un coeur

simple_, as again you will discover; not clever at all--oh, by no

means!--yet one of the best of my children. It is really to Jeanne

that we owe it all. . . . I have said so to Lucien, and just at the

moment Lucien was trying to say it to me.

"They were betrothed, you understand. Lucien was nineteen, and

Jeanne maybe a year younger. From the beginning, it had been an

understood thing: to this extent understood, that Lucien, instead of

sailing to the fishery (whither go most of the young men of Ile Lezan

and the coast hereabouts) was destined from the first to enter the

lighthouse service under Government. The letters I have written to

Government on his behalf! . . . I am not one of those who quarrel

with the Republic. Still--a priest, and in this out-of-the-way

spot--what is he?

"However, Lucien got his appointment. The pay? Enough to marry on,

for a free couple. But the families were poor on both sides--long

families, too. Folk live long on Ile Lezan--women-folk especially;

accidents at the fishery keep down the men. Still, and allowing for

that, the average is high. Lucien had even a great-grandmother

alive--a most worthy soul--and on Jeanne's side the grandparents

survived on both sides. Where there are grandparents they must be

maintained.

"No one builds on Ile Lezan. Luden and Jeanne--on either side their

families crowded to the very windows. If only the smallest hovel

might fall vacant! . . . For a week or two it seemed that a cottage

might drop in their way; but it happened to be what you call

picturesque, and a rich man snapped it up. He was a stranger from

Paris, and called himself an artist; but in truth he painted little,

and that poorly--as even _I_ could see. He was fonder of planning

what he would have, and what not, to indulge his mood when it should

be in the key for painting. Happening here just when the cottage

fell empty, he offered a price for it far beyond anything Lucien

could afford, and bought it. For a month or two he played with this

new toy, adding a studio and a veranda, and getting over many large

crates of furniture from the mainland. Then by and by a restlessness

overtook him--that restlessness which is the disease of the rich--and

he left us, yet professing that it delighted him always to keep his

little _pied-a-terre_ in Ile Lezan. He has never been at pains to

visit us since.

"But meanwhile Lucien and Jeanne had no room to marry and set up

house. It was a heavy time for them. They had some talk together of

crossing over and finding a house on the mainland; but it came to

nothing. The parents on both sides would not hear of it, and in

truth Jeanne would have found it lonely on the mainland, away from

her friends and kin; for Lucien, you see, must in any case spend half

his time on the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant. So many weeks on duty,

so many weeks ashore--thus it works, and even so the loneliness wears

them; though our Bretons, being silent men by nature, endure it

better than the rest.

"Lucien and Jeanne must wait--wait for somebody to die. In plain

words it came to that. Ah, monsieur! I have heard well-to-do folk

talk of our poor as unfeeling. That is an untruth. But suppose it

were true. Where would the blame lie in such a story as this?

Like will to like, and young blood is hot. . . . Lucien and Jeanne,

however, were always well conducted. . . . Yes, yes, my story?

Six months passed, and then came word that our rich artist desired to

sell his little _pied-a-terre_; but he demanded the price he had

given for it, and, moreover, what he called compensation for the

buildings he had added. Also he would only sell or let it with the

furniture; he wished, in short, to disencumber himself of his

purchase, and without loss. This meant that Lucien less than ever

could afford to buy; and there are no money-lenders on Ile Lezan.

The letter came as he was on the point of departing for another six

weeks on Ile Ouessant: and that evening the lovers' feet took them to

the nest they had so often dreamed of furnishing. There is no

prettier cottage on the island--I will show it to you on our way

back. Very disconsolately they looked at it, but there was no cure.

Lucien left early next morning.

"That was last autumn, a little before the wreck of your great

English steamship the _Rougemont Castle_. Days after, the tides

carried some of the bodies even here, to Ile Lezan; but not many--

four or five at the most--and we, cut off from shore around this

corner of the coast, were long in hearing the terrible news.

Even the lighthouse-keepers on Ile Ouessant knew nothing of it until

morning, for she struck in the night, you remember, attempting to run

through the Inner Passage and save her time.

"I believe--but on this point will not be certain--that the alarm

first came to Lucien, and in the way I shall tell you. At any rate

he was walking alone in the early morning, and somewhere along the

shore to the south of the lighthouse, when he came on a body lying on

the seaweed in a gully of the rocks.

"It was the body of a woman, clad only in a nightdress. As he

stooped over her, Lucien saw that she was exceeding beautiful; yet

not a girl, but a well-developed woman of thirty or thereabouts, with

heavy coils of dark hair, well-rounded shoulders, and (as he

described it to me later on) a magnificent throat.

"He had reason enough to remark her throat, for as he turned the body

over--it lay on its right side--to place a hand over the heart, if

perchance some life lingered, the nightdress, open at the throat,

disclosed one, two, three superb necklaces of diamonds. There were

rings of diamonds on her fingers, too, and afterwards many fine gems

were found sewn within a short vest or camisole of silk she wore

under her nightdress. But Lucien's eyes were fastened on the three

necklaces.

"Doubtless the poor lady, aroused in her berth as the ship struck,

had clasped these hurriedly about her throat before rushing on deck.

So, might her life be spared, she would save with it many thousands

of pounds. They tell me since that in moments of panic women always

think first of their jewels.

"But here she lay drowned, and the jewels--as I said, Lucien could

not unglue his eyes from them. At first he stared at them stupidly.

Not for some minutes did his mind grasp that they represented great

wealth; and even when the temptation grew, it whispered no more than

that here was money--maybe even a hundred pounds--but enough, at all

events, added to his savings, to purchase the cottage at home, and

make him and Jeanne happy for the rest of their lives.

"His fingers felt around to the clasps. One by one he detached the

necklaces and slipped them into his trousers' pocket.

"He also managed to pull off one of the rings; but found this a more

difficult matter, because the fingers were swollen somewhat with the

salt water. So he contented himself with one, and ran back to the

lighthouse to give the alarm to his comrades.

"When his comrades saw the body there was great outcry upon the

jewels on its fingers; but none attempted to disturb them, and Lucien

kept his own counsel. They carried the poor thing to a store-chamber

at the base of the lighthouse, and there before nightfall they had

collected close upon thirty bodies. There was much talk in the

newspapers afterwards concerning the honesty of our poor Bretons, who

pillaged none of the dead, but gave up whatever they found.

The relatives and the great shipping company subscribed a fund, of

which a certain small portion came even to Ile Lezan to be

administered by me.

"The poor lady with the necklaces? If you read the accounts in the

newspapers, as no doubt you did, you will already have guessed her

name. Yes, in truth, she was your great soprano, whom they called

Madame Chiara, or La Chiara: so modest are you English, at least in

all that concerns the arts, that when an incomparable singer is born

to you she must go to Italy to borrow a name. She was returning from

South Africa, where the finest of the three necklaces had been

presented to her by subscription amongst her admirers. They say her

voice so ravished the audiences at Johannesburg and Pretoria that she

might almost, had she willed, have carried home the great diamond

they are sending to your King. But that, no doubt, was an invention

of the newspapers.

"For certain, at any rate, the necklace was a superb one; nor do I

speak without knowledge, as you shall hear. Twenty-seven large

stones--between each a lesser stone--and all of the purest water!

The other two were scarcely less magnificent. It was a brother who

came over and certified the body; for her husband she had divorced in

America, and her father was an English clergyman, old and infirm,

seldom travelling beyond the parish where he lives in a chateau and

reigns as a king. It seems that these things happen in England.

At first he was only a younger son, and dwelt in the rectory as a

plain parish priest, and there he married and brought up his family;

but his elder brother dying, he became seigneur of the parish too,

and moved into a great house, yet with little money to support it

until his only daughter came back from studying at Milan and

conquered London. The old gentleman speaks very modestly about it.

Oh, yes, I have seen and talked with him. And what a garden!

The azaleas! the rhododendrons! But he is old, and his senses

somewhat blunted. He lives in the past--not his own, but his

family's rather. He spoke to me of his daughter without emotion, and

said that her voice was undoubtedly derived from three generations

back, when an ancestor--a baronet--had married with an opera-singer.

"But we were talking of the necklaces and of the ring which Lucien

had taken. . . . He told his secret to nobody, but kept them ever in

his trousers' pocket. Only, when he could escape away from his

comrades to some corner of the shore, he would draw the gems forth

and feast his eyes on them. I believe it weighed on him very little

that he had committed a crime or a sin. Longshore folk have great

ease of conscience respecting all property cast up to them by the

sea. They regard all such as their rightful harvest: the feeling is

in their blood, and I have many times argued in vain against it.

Once while I argued, here in Ile Lezan, an old man asked me, 'But,

Father, if it were not for such chances, why should any man choose to

dwell by the sea?' If, monsieur, you lived among them and knew their

hardships, you would see some rude sense in that question.

"To Lucien, feasting his eyes by stealth on the diamonds and counting

the days to his relief, the stones meant that Jeanne and happiness

were now close within his grasp. There would be difficulty, to be

sure, in disposing of them; but with Jeanne's advice--she had a

practical mind--and perhaps with Jeanne's help, the way would not be

hard to find. He was inclined to plume himself on the ease with

which, so far, it had been managed. His leaving the rings, and the

gems sewn within the camisole--though to be sure these were not

discovered for many hours--had been a masterstroke. He and his

comrades had been complimented together upon their honesty.

"The relief came duly; and in this frame of mind--a little sly,

but more than three parts triumphant--he returned to Ile Lezan and

was made welcome as something of a hero. (To do him credit, he had

worked hard in recovering the bodies from the wreck.) At all times

it is good to arrive home after a spell on the lighthouse.

The smell of nets drying and of flowers in the gardens, the faces on

the quay, and the handshakes, and the first church-going--they all

count. But to Lucien these things were for once as little compared

with the secret he carried. His marriage now was assured, and that

first evening--the Eve of Noel--he walked with Jeanne up the road to

the cottage, and facing it, told her his secret. They could be

married now. He promised it, and indicated the house with a wave of

the hand almost proprietary.

"But Jeanne looked at him as one scared, and said: 'Shall I marry a

thief?'

"Then, very quietly, she asked for a look at the jewels, and he

handed them to her. She had never set eyes on diamonds before, but

all women have an instinct for jewels, and these made her gasp.

'Yes,' she owned, 'I could not have believed that the world contained

such beautiful things. I am sorry thou hast done this wickedness,

but I understand how they tempted thee.'

"'What is this you are chanting?' demanded Lucien. 'The stones were

nothing to me. I thought only that by selling them we two could set

up house as man and wife.'

"'My dear one,' said Jeanne, 'what happiness could we have known with

this between us?' What with the diamonds in her hand and the little

cottage there facing her, so long desired, she was forced to shut her

eyes for a moment; but when she opened them again her voice was quite

firm. 'We must restore them where they belong. It may be that Pere

Thomas can help us; but I must think of a way. Give them to me, and

let me keep them while I think of a way.'

"'You do not love me as I love you,' said Lucien in his anger and

disappointment; but he knew, all the same, that he spoke an untruth.

"Jeanne took the diamonds home with her, to her bedroom, and sat for

some time on the edge of her bed, thinking out a way. In the midst

of her thinking she stood up, walked over to the glass, and clasped

the finest of the necklaces about her throat. . . . I suppose no

woman of this country ever wore the like of it--no, not in the days

when there were kings and queens of Leon. . . . Jeanne was not

beautiful, but she gazed at herself with eyes like those of a patient

in a fever. . . . Then of a sudden she felt the stones burning her as

though they had been red-hot coals. She plucked them off, and cast

herself on her knees beside the bed."

"You will remember that this was the Eve of Noel, when the children

of the parish help me to deck the _creche_ for the infant Christ. We

take down the images--see, there is St. Joseph, and there yonder Our

Lady, in the side chapel; the two oxen and a sheep are put away in

the vestry, in a cupboard full of camphor. We have the Three Kings

too. . . . In short, we put our hearts into the dressing-up.

By nightfall all is completed, and I turn the children out, reserving

some few last touches which I invent to surprise them when they come

again on Christmas morning. Afterwards I celebrate the Mass for the

Vigil, and then always I follow what has been a custom in this

parish, I believe, ever since the church was built. I blow out all

the candles but two, and remain here, seated, until the day breaks,

and the folk assemble to celebrate the first Mass of Noel. Eh?

It is discipline, but I bring rugs, and I will not say that all the

time my eyes are wide open.

"Certainly I closed them on this night of which I am telling. For I

woke up with a start, and almost, you might say, in trepidation, for

it seemed to me that someone was moving in the church. My first

thought was that some mischievous child had crept in, and was playing

pranks with my _creche_, and to that first I made my way. Beyond the

window above it rode the flying moon, and in the rays of it what did

I see?

"The figures stood as I had left them. But above the manger, over

the shoulders of the Virgin, blazed a rope of light--of diamonds such

as I have never seen nor shall see again--all flashing green and blue

and fieriest scarlet and piercing white. Of the Three Kings, also

each bore a gift, two of them a necklace apiece, and the third a

ring. I stood before the miracle, and my tongue clave to the roof of

my mouth, and then a figure crept out of the shadows and knelt in the

pool of moonlight at my feet. It was Jeanne. She caught at the

skirt of my soutane, and broke into sobbing.

"'My father, let the Blessed One wear them ever, or else help me to

give them back!'

"You will now guess, monsieur, on what business I have been visiting

England. It is a great country. The old clergyman sat among his

azaleas and rhododendrons and listened to all my story. Then he took

the box that held his daughter's jewels, and, emptying it upon the

table, chose out one necklace and set it aside. 'This one,' said he,

'shall be sold, my friend, and with the money you shall, after giving

this girl a marriage portion, re-adorn your church on Ile Lezan to

the greater glory of God!'"

On our way back to his lodging the little Cure halted me before the

cottage. Gay curtains hung in the windows, and the veranda had been

freshly painted.

"At the end of the month Lucien gets his relief, and then they are to

be married," said the little Cure.

THE WREN.

A LEGEND.

Early on St. Stephen's Day--which is the day after Christmas--young

John Cara, son of old John Cara, the smith of Porthennis, took down

his gun and went forth to kill small birds. He was not a sportsman;

it hurt him to kill any living creature. But all the young men in

the parish went slaughtering birds on St. Stephen's Day; and the

Parson allowed there was warrant for it, because, when St. Stephen

had almost escaped from prison, a small bird (by tradition a wren)

had chirped, and awakened his gaolers.

Strange to say, John Cara's dislike of gunning went with a singular

aptitude for it. He had a quick sense with birds; could guess their

next movements just as though he read their minds; and rarely missed

his aim if he took it without giving himself time to think.

Now the rest of youths, that day, chose the valley bottoms as a

matter of course, and trooped about in parties, with much whacking of

bushes. But John went up to Balmain--which is a high stony moor

overlooking the sea--because he preferred to be alone, and also

because, having studied their ways, he knew this to be the favourite

winter haunt of the small birds, especially of the wrens and the

titlarks.

His mother had set her heart on making a large wranny-pie (that is,

wren-pie, but actually it includes all manner of birdlings). It was

to be the largest in the parish. She was vain of young John's

prowess, and would quote it when old John grumbled that the lad was

slow as a smith. "And yet," said old John, "backward isn't the word

so much as foolish. Up to a point he understands iron 'most so well

as I understand it myself. Then some notion takes him, and my back's

no sooner turned than he spoils his job. Always trying to make iron

do what iron won't do--that's how you may put it." The wife, who was

a silly woman, and (like many another such) looked down on her

husband's trade, maintained that her boy ought to have been born a

squire, with game of his own.

Young John went up to Balmain; and there, sure enough, he found

wrens and titlarks flitting about everywhere, cheeping amid the

furze-bushes on the low stone hedges and the granite boulders,

where the winter rains had hollowed out little basins for themselves,

little by little, working patiently for hundreds of years.

The weather was cold, but still and sunny. As he climbed, the sea at

first made a blue strip beyond the cliff's edge on his right, then

spread into a wide blue floor, three hundred feet below him, and all

the width of it twinkling. Ahead and on his left all the moorland

twinkled too, with the comings and goings of the birds. The wrens

mostly went about their business--whatever that might be--in a sharp,

practical way, keeping silence; but the frail note of the titlarks

sounded here, there, everywhere.

Young John might have shot scores of them. But, as he headed for the

old mine-house of Balmain and the cromlech, or Main-Stone, which

stands close beside it--and these are the only landmarks--he did not

even trouble to charge his gun. For the miracle was happening

already.

It began--as perhaps most miracles do--very slowly and gently,

without his perceiving it; quite trivially, too, and even absurdly.

It started within him, upon a thought that wren-pie was a foolish

dish after all! His mother, who prided herself upon making it, did

but pretend to enjoy it after it was cooked. His father did not even

pretend: the mass of little bones in it cheated his appetite and

spoiled his temper. From this, young John went on to consider.

"Was it worth while to go on killing wrens and shamming an appetite

for them, only because a wren had once informed against St. Stephen?

How were _these_ wrens guilty? And, anyway, how were the titlarks

guilty?" Young John reasoned it out in this simple fashion. He came

to the Main-Stone, and seating himself on the turf, leaned his back

against one of the blocks which support the huge monolith. He sat

there for a long while, puckering his brows, his gun idle beside him.

At last he said to himself, but firmly and aloud:

"Parson and the rest say 'tis true. But I can't believe it, and

something inside says 'tis wrong. . . . There! I won't shoot another

bird--and that settles it!"

"Halleluia!" said a tiny voice somewhere above him.

The voice, though' tiny, was shrill and positive. Young John

recognised, and yet did not recognise it. He stared up at the wall

of the old mine-house from which it had seemed to speak, but he could

see no one. Next he thought that the word must have come from his

own heart, answering a sudden gush of warmth and happiness that set

his whole body glowing. It was as if winter had changed to summer,

within him and without, and all in a moment. He blinked in the

stronger sunshine, and felt it warm upon his eyelids.

"Halleluia!" said the voice again. It certainly came from the wall.

He looked again, and, scanning it in this strange, new light, was

aware of a wren in one of the crevices.

"Will he? will he?" piped another voice, pretty close behind his ear.

Young John, now he had learnt that wrens can talk, had no difficulty

in recognising this other voice: it was the half-hearted note of the

titlark. He turned over on his side and peered into the shadow of

the Main-Stone; but in vain, for the titlark is a hesitating, unhappy

little soul that never quite dares to make up its mind. It used to

be the friend of a race that inhabited Cornwall ages ago. It builds

in their cromlechs, and its song remembers them. It is the bird,

too, in whose nest the cuckoo lays; so it knows all about losing

one's children and being dispossessed.

"We will give him a gift," chirruped the wren, "and send him about

his business. He is the first man that has the sense to leave us to

ours."

"But will he?--will he?" the titlark piped back ghostlily. "One can

never be sure. I have known men long, long before ever you came

here. I knew King Arthur. This rock was his table, and he dined

here with seven other kings on the night after they had beaten the

Danes at Vellandruchar. I hid under the stone and listened to them

passing the cups, and between their talk you could hear the stream

running down the valley--it turned the two mill-wheels, Vellandruchar

and Vellandreath, with blood that night. Even at daybreak it ran

high over the legs of the choughs walking on the beach below--that is

why the choughs go red-legged to this day. . . . They are few now,

but then they were many: and next spring they came and built in the

rigging of the Danes' ships, left ashore--for not a Dane had escaped.

But King Arthur had gone his way. Ah, he was a man!"

"Nevertheless," struck in the wren, "this is a good fellow too; and a

smith, whose trade is as old as your King Arthur's. We will prosper

him in it."

"What will you give him?" asked the titlark.

"He is lying at this moment on the trefoil that commands all metals.

Let him look to his gun when he awakes."

"Ah!" said the titlark, "I told you that secret. I was with Teague

the Smith when he discovered it. . . . But he discovered it too late;

and, besides, he was a dreamer, and used it only to make crosses and

charms and womanish ornaments."

"It's no use to _us_, anyhow," said the practical wren. "So let us

give it away. I hate waste."

"I doubt," said the titlark, "it will be much profit to him,

wonderful though it is."

"Well," said the wren, "a present's a present. Folks with a living

to get must give what they can afford."

It is not wise, as a rule, to sleep on the bare ground in December.

But Young John awoke warm and jolly as a sandboy. He picked up his

gun. It was bent and curiously twisted in the barrel. "Hallo!" said

he, and peered closely into the short turf where it had lain. . . .

When he reached home his mother cried out joyfully, seeing his

game-bag and how it bulged. She cried out to a different tune when

he showed her what it contained--clods and clumps of turf, matted

over with a tiny close-growing plant that might have been any common

moss for aught she knew (or recked) of the difference.

"But where are all the birds you promised me?"

He held out his gun--he had promised no birds, but that mattered

nothing. His father took it to the lamp and glanced at it; put on

his horn spectacles slowly, and peered at it. He was silent for a

long while. Young John had turned inattentively from his mother's

reproaches, and stood watching him.

The old man swung about at length. "When did ye contrive this?" he

asked, rubbing the twist of the gun-barrel with his thumb. "And the

forge not heated all this day!"

"We'll heat it to-night after supper," said Young John.

In the Church of Porthennis, up to twenty-five years ago, there

stood a screen of ironwork--a marvel of arabesques and intricate

traceries, with baskets of flowers, sea-monsters, Cherubim, tying the

filigree-work and looping it together in knots and centres.

One panel had for subject a spider midmost in a web, to visit which

smiths came hundreds of miles, from all over the country, and

wondered. For it was impossible to guess how iron had ever been

beaten to such thinness or drawn so ductile. But unhappily-and

priceless as was the secret Young John Cara had chosen to let die

with him--the art of it was frail, frail as the titlark's song.

His masterpiece, indeed, had in it the corruption of Celtic art.

It could not endure its native weather, and rusted away almost to

nothingness. When the late Sir Gilbert Aubyn, the famous neo-Gothic

architect, was called in (1885) to restore Porthennis Church--or, as

we say in Cornwall, to "restroy" it--he swept the remnants away.

But the legend survives, _ferro perennius_.

NOT HERE, O APPOLLO!

A CHRISTMAS STORY HEARD AT MIDSUMMER.

We sat and talked in the Vicarage garden overlooking Mount's Bay.

The long summer day lingered out its departure, although the full

moon was up and already touching with a faint radiance the towers on

St. Michael's Mount--'the guarded Mount'--that rested as though at

anchor in the silver-grey offing. The land-breeze had died down

with sunset; the Atlantic lay smooth as a lake below us, and melted,

league upon league, without horizon into the grey of night.

Between the Vicar's fuchsia-bushes we looked down on it, we three--

the Vicar, the Senior Tutor and I.

I think the twilit hour exactly accorded with our mood, and it did

not need the scent of the Vicar's ten-week stocks, wafted across the

garden, to touch a nerve of memory. For it was twenty years since we

had last sat in this place and talked, and the summer night seemed to

be laden with tranquil thoughts, with friendship and old regard.

. . . Twenty years ago I had been an undergraduate, and had made one

of a reading-party under the Senior Tutor, who annually in the Long

Vacation brought down two or three fourth-year men to bathe and boat

and read Plato with him, for no pay but their friendship: and,

generation after generation, we young men had been made welcome in

this garden by the Vicar, who happened to be an old member of our

College and (as in time I came to see) delighted to renew his youth

in ours. There had been daughters, too, in the old days. . . .

But they had married, and the Vicarage nest was empty long since.

The Senior Tutor, too, had given up work and retired upon his

Fellowship. But every summer found him back at his old haunts; and

still every summer brought a reading-party to the Cove, in conduct

now of a brisk Junior Fellow, who had read with me in our time and

achieved a "first." In short, things at the Cove were pretty much

the same after twenty years, barring that a small colony of painters

had descended upon it and made it their home. With them the

undergraduates had naturally and quickly made friends, and the result

was a cricket match--a grand Two-days' Cricket Match. They were all

extremely serious about it, and the Oxford party--at their wits' end,

no doubt, to make up a team against the Artists--had bethought

themselves of me, who dwelt at the other end of the Duchy. They had

written--they had even sent a two-page telegram--to me, who had not

handled a bat for more years than I cared to count. It is delicious

to be flattered by youth, especially for gifts you never possessed or

possess no longer. I yielded and came. The season was Midsummer, or

a little after; the weather golden and glorious.

We had drawn stumps after the first day's play, and the evening was

to be wound up with a sing-song in the great tent erected--a marvel

to the "Covers," or native fishermen--on the cricket-field. But I no

longer take kindly to such entertainments; and so, after a bathe and

a quiet dinner at the inn, it came into my mind to take a stroll up

the hill and along the cliffs, and pay an evening call on the old

Vicar, wondering if he would remember me.

I found him in his garden. The Senior Tutor was there too--"the

grave man, nicknamed Adam"--and the Vicar's wife, seated in a

bee-hive straw chair, knitting. So we four talked happily for a

while, until she left us on pretence that the dew was falling; and

with that, as I have said, a wonderful silence possessed the garden

fragrant with memories and the night-scent of flowers. . .

Then I let fall the word that led to the Vicar's story. In old

rambles, after long mornings spent with Plato, my eyes (by mirage, no

doubt) had always found something Greek in the curves and colour of

this coast; or rather, had felt the want of it. What that something

was I could hardly have defined: but the feeling was always with me.

It was as if at each bend of the shore I expected to find a temple

with pillars, or a column crowning the next promontory; or, where the

coast-track wound down to the little haven, to happen on a votive

tablet erected to Poseidon or to "Helen's brothers, lucent stars";

nay, to meet with Odysseus' fisherman carrying an oar on his

shoulder, or even, in an amphitheatre of the cliffs, to surprise

Apollo himself and the Nine seated on a green plat whence a waterfall

gushed down the coombe to the sandy beach . . . . This evening on my

way along the cliffs--perhaps because I had spent a day bathing in

sunshine in the company of white-flannelled youths--the old sensation

had returned to haunt me. I spoke of it.

"'Not here, O Apollo--'" murmured the Senior Tutor.

"You quote against your own scepticism," said I. "The coast is right

enough; it _is_"

Where Helicon breaks down

In cliff to the sea.

"It was made to invite the authentic gods--only the gods never found

it out."

"Did they not?" asked the Vicar quietly. The question took us a

little aback, and after a pause his next words administered another

small shock. "One never knows," he said, "when, or how near, the

gods have passed. One may be listening to us in this garden,

to-night. . . . As for the Greeks--"

"Yes, yes, we were talking of the Greeks," the Senior Tutor (a

convinced agnostic) put in hastily. "If we leave out Pytheas, no

Greeks ever visited Cornwall. They are as mythical hereabouts as"--

he hesitated, seeking a comparison--"as the Cornish wreckers; and

_they_ never existed outside of pious story-books."

Said the Vicar, rising from his garden-chair, "I accept the omen.

Wait a moment, you two." He left us and went across the dim lawn to

the house, whence by and by he returned bearing a book under his arm,

and in his hand a candle, which he set down unlit upon the wicker

table among the coffee-cups.

"I am going," he said, "to tell you something which, a few years ago,

I should have scrupled to tell. With all deference to your opinions,

my dear Dick, I doubt if they quite allow you to understand the

clergy's horror of chancing a heresy; indeed, I doubt if either of

you quite guess what a bridle a man comes to wear who preaches a

hundred sermons or so every year to a rural parish, knowing that

nine-tenths of his discourse will assuredly be lost, while at any

point in the whole of it he may be fatally misunderstood. . . . Yet

as a man nears his end he feels an increasing desire to be honest,

neither professing more than he knows, nor hiding any small article

of knowledge as inexpedient to the Faith. The Faith, he begins to

see, can take care of itself: for him, it is important to await his

marching-orders with a clean breast. Eh, Dick?"

The Senior Tutor took his pipe from his mouth and nodded slowly.

"But what is your book?" he asked.

"My Parish Register. Its entries cover the years from 1660 to 1827.

Luckily I had borrowed it from the vestry box, and it was safe on my

shelf in the Vicarage on the Christmas Eve of 1870, the night when

the church took fire. That was in my second year as incumbent, and

before ever you knew these parts."

"By six months," said the Senior Tutor. "I first visited the Cove in

July, 1871, and you were then beginning to clear the ruins. All the

village talk still ran on the fire, with speculations on the cause of

it."

"The cause," said the Vicar, "will never be known. I may say that

pretty confidently, having spent more time in guessing than will ever

be spent by another man. . . . But since you never saw the old church

as it stood, you never saw the Heathen Lovers in the south aisle."

"Who were they?"

"They were a group of statuary, and a very strange one; executed, as

I first believed, in some kind of wax--but, pushing my researches

(for the thing interested me) I found the material to be a white

soapstone that crops out here and there in the crevices of our

serpentine. Indeed, I know to a foot the spot from which the

sculptor took it, close on two hundred years ago."

"It was of no great age, then?"

"No: and yet it bore all the marks of an immense age. For to begin

with, it had stood five-and-twenty years in this very garden, exposed

to all weathers, and the steatite (as they call it) is of all

substances the most friable--is, in fact, the stuff used by tailors

under the name of French chalk. Again, when, in 1719, my

predecessor, old Vicar Hichens, removed it to the church and set it

in the south aisle--or, at any rate, when he died and ceased to

protect it--the young men of the parish took to using it for a

hatstand, and also to carving their own and their sweethearts' names

upon it during sermon-time. The figures of the sculpture were two; a

youth and a maid, recumbent, and naked but for a web of drapery flung

across their middles; and they lay on a roughly carved rock, over

which the girl's locks as well as the drapery were made to hang limp,

as though dripping with water. . . . One thing more I must tell you,

risking derision; that to my ignorance the sculpture proclaimed its

age less by these signs of weather and rough usage than by the

simplicity of its design, its proportions, the chastity (there's no

other word) of the two figures. They were classical, my dear Dick--

what was left of them; Greek, and of the best period."

The Senior Tutor lit a fresh pipe, and by the flare of the match I

saw his eyes twinkling.

"Praxiteles," he jerked out, between the puffs, "and in the age of

Kneller! But proceed, my friend."

"And do you wait, my scoffer!" The Vicar borrowed the box of

matches, lit the candle--which held a steady flame in the still

evening air--opened the book, and laid it on his knee while he

adjusted his spectacles. "The story is here, entered on a separate

leaf of the Register and signed by Vicar Hichens' own hand.

With your leave--for it is brief--I am going to read it through to

you. The entry is headed:"

'_Concerning a group of Statuary now in the S. aisle of Lezardew

Parish Church: set there by me in witness of God's Providence in

operation, as of the corruption of man's heart, and for a warning to

sinners to amend their ways_.

'In the year 1694, being the first of my vicariate, there lived in

this Parish as hind to the farmer of Vellancoose a young man

exceeding comely and tall of stature, of whom (when I came to ask)

the people could tell me only that his name was Luke, and that as a

child he had been cast ashore from a foreign ship; they said, a

Portugal ship. [But the Portugals have swart complexions and are

less than ordinary tall, whereas this youth was light-coloured and

only brown by sunburn.] Nor could he tell me anything when I

questioned him concerning his haveage; which I did upon report that

he was courting my housemaiden Grace Pascoe, an honest good girl,

whom I was loth to see waste herself upon an unworthy husband.

Upon inquiry I could not discover this Luke to be any way unworthy,

saving that he was a nameless man and a foreigner and a backward

church-goer. He told me with much simplicity that he could not

remember to have had any parents; that Farmer Lowry had brought him

up from the time he was shipwrecked and ever treated him kindly; and

that, as for church-going, he had thought little about it, but would

amend in this matter if it would give me pleasure. Which I thought a

strange answer. When I went on to hint at his inclination for Grace

Pascoe, he confused me by asking, with a look very straight and

good-natured, if the girl had ever spoken to me on the matter; to

which I was forced to answer that she had not. So he smiled, and I

could not further press him.

'Yet in my mind they would have made a good match; for the girl too

was passing well-featured, and this Luke had notable gifts. He could

read and write. The farmer spoke well of him, saying, "He has

rewarded me many times over. Since his coming, thanks to the Lord,

my farm prospers: and in particular he has a wonderful way with the

beasts. Cattle or sheep, fowls, dogs, the wild things even, come to

him almost without a call." He had also (the farmer told me) a

wonderful knack of taking clay or mud and moulding it with his hands

to the likeness of living creatures, of all sorts and sizes. In the

kitchen by the great fire he would work at these images by hours

together, to the marvel of everyone: but when the image was made,

after a little while he always destroyed it; nor was it ever begged

by anyone for a gift, there being a belief that, being fashioned by

more than a man's skill, such things could only bring ill-luck to the

possessors of them.

'For months then I heard no more of Grace Pascoe's lover: nor (though

he now came every Sunday to church) did I ever see looks pass between

the Vicarage pew (where she sat) and the Vellancoose pew (where he).

But at the end of the year she came to me and told me she had given

her word to a young farmer of Goldsithney, John Magor by name. In a

worldly way this was a far better match for her than to take a

nameless and landless man. Nor knew I anything against John Magor

beyond some stray wildness natural to youth. He came of clean blood.

He was handsome, almost as the other; tall, broad of chest, a

prizewinner at wrestling-matches; and of an age when a good wife is

usually a man's salvation.

'I called their banns, and in due time married them. On the

wedding-day, after the ceremony, I returned from church to find the

young man Luke awaiting me by my house-door; who very civilly desired

me to walk over to Vellancoose with him, which I did. There, taking

me aside to an unused linhay, he showed me the sculpture, telling me

(who could not conceal my admiration) that he had meant it for John

and Grace Magor (as she now was) for a wedding-gift, but that the

young woman had cried out against it as immodest and, besides,

unlucky. On the first count I could understand her rejecting such a

gift; for the folk of these parts know nothing of statuary and count

all nakedness immodest. Indeed, I wondered that the bridegroom had

not taken Luke's freedom in ill part, and I said so: to which he

answered, smiling, that no man ever quarrelled with him or could

quarrel. "And now, sir," he went on, "my apprenticeship is up, and I

am going on a long journey. Since you find my group pleasing I would

beg you to accept it, or--if you had liefer--to keep it for me until

I come again, as some day I shall." "I do not wonder," said I, "at

your wish to leave Lezardew Parish for the world where, as I augur,

great fortune awaits you." He smiled again at this and said that,

touching his future, he had neither any hope nor any fear: and again

he pressed me to accept the statuary. For a time I demurred, and in

the end made it a condition that he altered the faces somewhat,

concealing the likeness to John and Grace Magor: and to this he

consented. "Yet," said he, "it will be the truer likeness when the

time comes."

'He was gone on the morrow by daybreak, and late that afternoon the

farmer brought me the statuary in his hay-wagon. I had it set in the

garden by the great filberd-tree, and there it has stood for near

five-and-twenty years. (I ought to say that he had kept his promise

of altering the faces, and thereby to my thinking had defaced their

beauty: but beneath this defacement I still traced their first

likeness.)

'Now to speak of the originals. My way lying seldom by Goldsithney,

I saw little of John and Grace Magor during the next few years, and

nothing at all of them after they had left Goldsithney (their

fortunes not prospering) and rented a smaller farm on the coast

southward, below Rosudgeon: but what news came to me was ever of the

same tenour. Their marriage had brought neither children nor other

blessings. There were frequent quarrels, and the man had yielded to

drinking; the woman, too, it was reported. She, that had been so

trim a serving-maid, was become a slut with a foul tongue. They were

cruelly poor with it all; for money does not always stick to unclean

hands. I write all this to my reproach as well as to theirs, for

albeit they dwelt in another parish it had been my Christian duty to

seek them out. I did not, and I was greatly to blame.

'To pass over many years and come to the 2nd of December last (1718).

That night, about 11 o'clock, I sat in my library reading. It was

blowing hard without, the wind W.N.W.; but I had forgotten the gale

in my book, when a sound, as it were a distant outcry of many voices,

fetched me to unbar the shutters and open the window to listen.

The sound, whatever it was, had died away: I heard but the wind

roaring and the surf on the beaches along the Bay: and I was closing

the window again when, close at hand, a man's voice called to me to

open the front door. I went out to the hall, where a lamp stood, and

opened to him. The light showed me the young man Luke, on whom I had

not set eyes for these four-and-twenty years: nor, amazed and

perturbed as I was, did it occur to me as marvellous that he had not

aged a day. "There is a wreck," said he, "in the Porth below here;

and you, sir, are concerned in it. Will you fetch a lantern and come

with me?" He put this as a question, but in his tone was a command:

and when I brought the lantern he took it from me and led the way.

We struck across the Home Parc southward, thence across Gew Down and

the Leazes, and I knew that he was making for the track which leads

down to the sea by Prah Sands. At the entry of the track he took off

his coat and wrapped the lantern in it, though just there its light

would have been most useful, or so I thought. But he led the way

easily, and I followed with scarce a stumble. "We shall not need

it," he said; "for see, there they are!" pointing to a small light

that moved on the sands below us. "But who are they?" I asked.

He strode down ahead of me, making swiftly for the light, and coming

upon them in the noise of the gale we surprised a man and a woman,

who at first cowered before us and then would have cast down their

light and run. But my companion, unwrapping the lantern, held it

high and so that the light shone on their faces. They were John

Magor and his wife Grace.

'Then I, remembering what cry of shipwrecked souls had reached to my

library in the Vicarage, and well guessing what work these wretches

had been at, lifted my voice to accuse them. But the young man Luke

stepped between us, and said he to them gently, "Come, and I will

show what you seek." He went before us for maybe two hundred yards

to the northern end of the beach, they behind him quaking, and I

shepherding them in my righteous wrath. "Behold you," said he, and

again lifted the lantern over a rock dark with seaweed (and yet the

weed shone in the light)--"Behold you, what you have wrecked."

'On their backs along the flat of the rock lay two naked bodies, of a

youth and a maid, half-clasped one to another. He handed me the

lantern for a better look, and in the rays of it the two wretches

peered forward as if drawn against their will. I cannot well say if

they or I first perceived the miracle; that these corpses, as they

lay in the posture, so bore the very likeness of the two lovers on my

sculptured slab. But I remember that, as John and Grace Magor

screamed back and clung to me, and as by the commotion of them

clutching at my knees the lantern fell and was extinguished, I heard

the young man Luke say, "Yourselves, yourselves!"

'I called to him to pick up the lantern; but he did not answer, and

the two clinging wretches encumbered me. After a long while the

clouds broke and the moon shone through them; and where he had stood

there was no one. Also the slab of rock was dark, and the two

drowned corpses had vanished with him. I pointed to it; but there

was no tinder-box at hand to light the lantern again, and in the

bitter weather until the dawn the two clung about me, confessing and

rehearsing their sins.

'I have great hopes that they are brought to a better way of life;

and because (repent they never so much) no one is any longer likely

to recognise in these penitents the originals upon whom it was

moulded these many years ago, I am determined to move the statuary to

a place in the S. aisle of our parish church, as a memorial, the

moral whereof I have leave of John and Grace Magor to declare to all

the parish. I choose to defer making it public, in tenderness, while

they live: for all things point as yet to the permanent saving of

their souls. But, as in the course of nature I shall predecease

them, I set the record here in the Parish Register, as its best

place.

'(Signed) Malachi Hichens, B.D.

'21st Jan., 1719.'

"And is that all?" I asked.

"Yes and no," said the Vicar, closing the book. "It is all that Mr.

Hichens has left to help us: and you may or may not connect with it

what I am going to relate of my own experience. . . . The old church,

as you know, was destroyed by fire in the morning hours of Christmas

Day, 1870. Throughout Christmas Eve and for a great part of the

night it had been snowing, but the day broke brilliantly, on a sky

without wind or cloud; and never have my eyes seen anything so

terribly beautiful--ay, so sublime--as the sight which met them at

the lych-gate. The old spire--which served as a sea-mark for the

fishermen, and was kept regularly white-washed that it might be the

more conspicuous--glittered in the morning sunshine from base to

summit, as though matching its whiteness against that of the

snow-laden elms: and in this frame of pure silver-work, burning

without noise and with scarcely any smoke--this by reason of the

excessive dryness of the woodwork--the church stood one glowing vault

of fire. There was indeed so little smoke that at the first alarm,

looking from my bedroom window, I had been incredulous; and still I

wondered rather than believed, staring into this furnace wherein

every pillar, nook, seat or text on the wall was distinctly visible,

the south windows being burnt out and the great door thrown open and

on fire.

"There was no entrance possible here, or indeed anywhere: but, being

half-distraught, I ran around to the small door of the north aisle.

This, too, was on fire--or, rather, was already consumed; and you

will say that I must have been wholly distraught when I tell you what

I saw, looking in through the aperture through which it would have

been death to pass. I saw _him_."

"You saw the young man Luke?" I asked, as he paused, inviting a word.