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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Michael's Crag, by Grant Allen
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Michael's Crag
+
+Author: Grant Allen
+
+Posting Date: May 24, 2013 [EBook #5869]
+Release Date: June, 2004
+First Posted: September 15, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL'S CRAG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MICHAEL'S CRAG
+
+BY
+
+GRANT ALLEN
+
+AUTHOR OF "WHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE," "TENTS OP SHEM," "IN ALL SHADES,"
+ETC.
+
+With over Three Hundred and Fifty Illustrations In Silhouette
+
+BY
+
+FRANCIS CARRUTHERS GOULD
+
+AND
+
+ALEC CARRUTHERS GOULD
+
+
+
+CHICAGO AND NEW YORK:
+
+1893
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER.
+
+I.     A CORNISH LANDLORD
+
+II.    TREVENNACK
+
+III.   FACE TO FACE
+
+IV.    TYRREL'S REMORSE
+
+V.     A STRANGE DELUSION VI.    PURE ACCIDENT
+
+VII.   PERIL BY LAND
+
+VIII.  SAFE AT LAST
+
+IX.    MEDICAL OPINION
+
+X.     A BOLD ATTEMPT
+
+XI.    BUSINESS IS BUSINESS
+
+XII.   A HARD BARGAIN
+
+XIII.  ANGEL AND DEVIL
+
+XIV.   AT ARM'S LENGTH
+
+XV.    ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A CORNISH LANDLORD.
+
+
+"Then you don't care for the place yourself, Tyrrel?" Eustace Le Neve
+said, musingly, as he gazed in front of him with a comprehensive glance
+at the long gray moor and the wide expanse of black and stormy water.
+
+"It's bleak, of course; bleak and cold, I grant you; all this upland
+plateau about the Lizard promontory seems bleak and cold everywhere;
+but to my mind it has a certain wild and weird picturesqueness of its
+own for all that. It aims at gloominess. I confess in its own way I
+don't dislike it."
+
+"For my part," Tyrrel answered, clinching his hand hard as he spoke,
+and knitting his brow despondently, "I simply hate it. If I wasn't the
+landlord here, to be perfectly frank with you, I'd never come near
+Penmorgan. I do it for conscience' sake, to be among my own people.
+That's my only reason. I disapprove of absenteeism; and now the land's
+mine, why, I must put up with it, I suppose, and live upon it in spite
+of myself. But I do it against the grain. The whole place, if I tell
+you the truth, is simply detestable to me."
+
+He leaned on his stick as he spoke, and looked down gloomily at the
+heather. A handsome young man, Walter Tyrrel, of the true Cornish
+type--tall, dark, poetical-looking, with pensive eyes and a thick black
+mustache, which gave dignity and character to his otherwise almost too
+delicately feminine features. And he stood on the open moor just a
+hundred yards outside his own front door at Penmorgan, on the Lizard
+peninsula, looking westward down a great wedge-shaped gap in the solid
+serpentine rock to a broad belt of sea beyond without a ship or a sail
+on it. The view was indeed, as Eustace Le Neve admitted, a somewhat
+bleak and dreary one. For miles, as far as the eye could reach, on
+either side, nothing was to be seen but one vast heather-clad upland,
+just varied at the dip by bare ledges of dark rock and a single gray
+glimpse of tossing sea between them. A little farther on, to be sure,
+winding round the cliff path, one could open up a glorious prospect on
+either hand over the rocky islets of Kynance and Mullion Cove, with
+Mounts Bay and Penzance and the Land's End in the distance. That was a
+magnificent site--if only his ancestors had had the sense to see it.
+But Penmorgan House, like most other Cornish landlords' houses, had
+been carefully placed--for shelter's sake, no doubt--in a seaward
+hollow where the view was most restricted; and the outlook one got from
+it, over black moor and blacker rocks, was certainly by no means of a
+cheerful character. Eustace Le Neve himself, most cheery and sanguine
+of men, just home from his South American railway-laying, and with the
+luxuriant vegetation of the Argentine still fresh in his mind, was
+forced to admit, as he looked about him, that the position of his
+friend's house on that rolling brown moor was far from a smiling one.
+
+"You used to come here when you were a boy, though," he objected, after
+a pause, with a glance at the great breakers that curled in upon the
+cove; "and you must surely have found it pleasant enough then, what
+with the bathing and the fishing and the shooting and the boating, and
+all the delights of the sea and the country."
+
+Walter Tyrrel nodded his head. It was clear the subject was extremely
+distasteful to him.
+
+"Yes--till I was twelve or thirteen," he said, slowly, as one who
+grudges assent, "in my uncle's time, I liked it well enough, no doubt.
+Boys don't realize the full terror of sea or cliff, you know, and are
+perfectly happy swimming and climbing. I used to be amphibious in those
+days, like a seal or an otter--in the water half my time; and I
+scrambled over the rocks--great heavens, it makes me giddy now just to
+THINK where I scrambled. But when I was about thirteen years old"--his
+face grew graver still--"a change seemed to come over me, and I began
+... well, I began to hate Penmorgan. I've hated it ever since. I shall
+always hate it. I learned what it all meant, I suppose--rocks, wrecks,
+and accidents. I saw how dull and gloomy it was, and I couldn't bear
+coming down here. I came as seldom as I dared, till my uncle died last
+year and left it to me. And then there was no help for it. I HAD to
+come down. It's a landlord's business, I consider, to live among his
+tenants and look after the welfare of the soil, committed to his charge
+by his queen and country. He holds it in trust, strictly speaking, for
+the nation. So I felt I must come and live here. But I hate it, all the
+same. I hate it! I hate it!"
+
+He said it so energetically, and with such strange earnestness in his
+voice, that Eustace Le Neve, scanning his face as he spoke, felt sure
+there must be some good reason for his friend's dislike of his
+ancestral home, and forebore (like a man) to question him further.
+Perhaps, he thought, it was connected in Tyrrel's mind with some
+painful memory, some episode in his history he would gladly forget;
+though, to be sure, when one comes to think of it, at thirteen such
+episodes are rare and improbable. A man doesn't, as a rule, get crossed
+in love at that early age; nor does he generally form lasting and
+abiding antipathies. And indeed, for the matter of that, Penmorgan was
+quite gloomy enough in itself, in all conscience, to account for his
+dislike--a lonely and gaunt-looking granite-built house, standing bare
+and square on the edge of a black moor, under shelter of a rocky dip,
+in a treeless country. It must have been a terrible change for a
+bachelor about town, like Walter Tyrrel, to come down at twenty-eight
+from his luxurious club and his snug chambers in St. James' to the
+isolation and desolation of that wild Cornish manor-house. But the
+Tyrrels, he knew, were all built like that; Le Neve had been with three
+of the family at Rugby; and conscience was their stumbling-block. When
+once a Tyrrel was convinced his duty lay anywhere, no consideration on
+earth would keep him from doing it.
+
+"Let's take a stroll down by the shore," Le Neve suggested, carelessly,
+after a short pause, slipping his arm through his friend's.
+
+"Your cliffs, at least, must be fine; they look grand and massive; and
+after three years of broiling on a South American line, this fresh
+sou'wester's just the thing, to my mind, to blow the cobwebs out of
+one."
+
+He was a breezy-looking young man, this new-comer from beyond the
+sea--a son of the Vikings, Tyrrel's contemporary in age, but very
+unlike him in form and features; for Eustace Le Neve was fair and
+big-built, a florid young giant, with tawny beard, mustache, and
+whiskers, which he cut in a becoming Vandyke point of artistic
+carelessness. There was more of the artist than of the engineer,
+indeed, about his frank and engaging English face--a face which made
+one like him as soon as one looked at him. It was impossible to do
+otherwise. Exuberant vitality was the keynote of the man's being. And
+he was candidly open, too. He impressed one at first sight, by some
+nameless instinct, with a certain well-founded friendly confidence. A
+lovable soul, if ever there was one, equally liked at once by men and
+women.
+
+"Our cliffs are fine," Walter Tyrrel answered, grudgingly, in the tone
+of one who, against his will, admits an adverse point he sees no chance
+of gainsaying. "They're black, and repellant, and iron-bound, and
+dangerous, but they're certainly magnificent. I don't deny it. Come and
+see them, by all means. They're the only lions we have to show a
+stranger in this part of Cornwall, so you'd better make the most of
+them."
+
+And he took, as if mechanically, the winding path that led down the gap
+toward the frowning cove in the wall of cliff before them.
+
+Eustace Le Neve was a little surprised at this unexpected course, for
+he himself would naturally have made rather for the top of the
+promontory, whence they were certain to obtain a much finer and more
+extensive view; but he had only arrived at Penmorgan the evening
+before, so he bowed at once to his companion's more mature experience
+of Cornish scenery. They threaded their way through the gully, for it
+was little more--a great water-worn rent in the dark serpentine rocks,
+with the sea at its lower end--picking their path as they went along
+huge granite boulders or across fallen stones, till they reached a
+small beach of firm white sand, on whose even floor the waves were
+rolling in and curling over magnificently. It was a curious place,
+Eustace thought, rather dreary than beautiful. On either side rose
+black cliffs, towering sheer into the air, and shutting out overhead
+all but a narrow cleft of murky sky. Around, the sea dashed itself in
+angry white foam against broken stacks and tiny weed-clad skerries. At
+the end of the first point a solitary islet, just separated from the
+mainland by a channel of seething water, jutted above into the waves,
+with hanging tresses of blue and yellow seaweed. Tyrrel pointed to it
+with one hand. "That's Michael's Crag," he said, laconically. "You've
+seen it before, no doubt, in half a dozen pictures. It's shaped exactly
+like St. Michael's Mount in miniature. A marine painter fellow down
+here's forever taking its portrait."
+
+Le Neve gazed around him with a certain slight shudder of unspoken
+disapprobation. This place didn't suit his sunny nature. It was even
+blacker and more dismal than the brown moorland above it. Tyrrel caught
+the dissatisfaction in his companion's eye before Le Neve had time to
+frame it in words.
+
+"Well, you don't think much of it?" he said, inquiringly.
+
+"I can't say I do," Le Neve answered, with apologetic frankness. "I
+suppose South America has spoilt me for this sort of thing. But it's
+not to my taste. I call it gloomy, without being even impressive."
+
+"Gloomy," Tyrrel answered; "oh, yes, gloomy, certainly. But impressive;
+well, yes. For myself, I think so. To me, it's all terribly,
+unspeakably, ineffably impressive. I come here every day, and sit close
+on the sands, and look out upon the sea by the edge of the breakers.
+It's the only place on this awful coast one feels perfectly safe in.
+You can't tumble over here, or...roll anything down to do harm to
+anybody."
+
+A steep cliff path led up the sheer face of the rock to southward. It
+was a difficult path, a mere foothold on the ledges; but its difficulty
+at once attracted the engineer's attention. "Let's go up that way!" he
+said, waving his hand toward it carelessly. "The view from on top there
+must be infinitely finer."
+
+"I believe it is," Tyrrel replied, in an unconcerned voice, like one
+who retails vague hearsay evidence. "I haven't seen it myself since I
+was a boy of thirteen. I never go along the top of the cliffs on any
+account."
+
+Le Neve gazed down on him, astonished. "You BELIEVE it is!" he
+exclaimed, unable to conceal his surprise and wonder. "You never go up
+there! Why, Walter, how odd of you! I was reading up the Guidebook this
+morning before breakfast, and it says the walk from this point on the
+Penmorgan estate to Kynance Cove is the most magnificent bit of wild
+cliff scenery anywhere in Cornwall."
+
+"So I'm told," Tyrrel answered, unmoved. "And I remember, as a boy, I
+thought it very fine. But that was long since. I never go by it."
+
+"Why not?" Le Neve cried.
+
+Tyrrel shrugged his shoulders and shook himself impatiently. "I don't
+know." he answered, in a testy sort of voice. "I don't like the cliff
+top... It's so dangerous, don't you know? So unsafe. So unstable. The
+rocks go off so sheer, and stones topple over so easily."
+
+Le Neve laughed a little laugh of half-disguised contempt. He was
+moving over toward the path up the cliff side as they spoke. "Why, you
+used to be a first-class climber at school," he said, attempting it,
+"especially when you were a little chap. I remember you could scramble
+up trees like a monkey. What fun we had once in the doctor's orchard!
+And as to the cliffs, you needn't go so near you have to tumble over
+them. It seems ridiculous for a landowner not to know a bit of scenery
+on his own estate that's celebrated and talked about all over England."
+
+"I'm not afraid of tumbling over, for myself," Tyrrel answered, a
+little nettled by his friend's frank tone of amusement. "I don't feel
+myself so useful to my queen and country that I rate my own life at too
+high a figure. It's the people below I'm chiefly concerned about.
+There's always someone wandering and scrambling about these cliffs,
+don't you see?--fishermen, tourists, geologists. If you let a loose
+stone go, it may fall upon them and crush them."
+
+The engineer looked back upon him with a somewhat puzzled expression.
+"Well, that's carrying conscience a point too far," he said, with one
+strong hand on the rock and one sure foot in the first convenient
+cranny. "If we're not to climb cliffs for fear of showering down stones
+on those who stand below, we won't dare to walk or ride or drive or put
+to sea for fear of running over or colliding against somebody. We shall
+have to stop all our trains and keep all our steamers in harbor.
+There's nothing in this world quite free from risk. We've got to take
+it and lump it. You know the old joke about those dangerous beds--so
+many people die in them. Won't you break your rule just for once, and
+come up on top here to see the view with me?"
+
+Tyrrel shook his head firmly. "Not to-day," he answered, with a quiet
+smile. "Not by that path, at any rate. It's too risky for my taste. The
+stones are so loose. And it overhangs the road the quarrymen go to the
+cave by."
+
+Le Neve had now made good his foothold up the first four or five steps.
+"Well, you've no objection to my going, at any rate?" he said, with a
+wave of one hand, in his cheerful good-humor. "You don't put a veto on
+your friends here, do you?"
+
+"Oh, not the least objection," Tyrrel answered, hurriedly, watching him
+climb, none the less, with nervous interest. "It's...it's a purely
+personal and individual feeling. Besides," he added, after a pause, "I
+can stop below here, if need be, and warn the quarrymen."
+
+"I'll be back in ten minutes," Le Neve shouted from the cliff.
+
+"No, don't hurry," his host shouted back. "Take your own time, it's
+safest. Once you get to the top you'd better walk along the whole cliff
+path to Kynance. They tell me its splendid; the view's so wide; and you
+can easily get back across the moor by lunch-time. Only, mind about the
+edge, and whatever you do, let no stones roll over."
+
+"All right," Le Neve made answer, clinging close to a point of rock.
+"I'll do no damage. It's opening out beautifully on every side now. I
+can see round the corner to St. Michael's Mount; and the point at the
+end there must be Tol-Pedn-Penwith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+TREVENNACK.
+
+
+It was a stiff, hot climb to the top of the cliff; but as soon as he
+reached it, Eustace Le Neve gazed about him, enchanted at the outlook.
+He was not in love with Cornwall, as far as he'd seen it yet; and to
+say the truth, except in a few broken seaward glens, that high and
+barren inland plateau has little in it to attract or interest anyone,
+least of all a traveler fresh from the rich luxuriance of South
+American vegetation. But the view that burst suddenly upon Eustace Le
+Neve's eye as he gained the summit of that precipitous serpentine bluff
+fairly took his breath away. It was a rich and varied one. To the north
+and west loomed headland after headland, walled in by steep crags, and
+stretching away in purple perspective toward Marazion, St. Michael's
+Mount, and the Penzance district. To the south and east huge masses of
+fallen rock lay tossed in wild confusion over Kynance Cove and the
+neighboring bays, with the bare boss of the Rill and the Rearing Horse
+in the foreground. Le Neve stood and looked with open eyes of delight.
+It was the first beautiful view he had seen since he came to Cornwall;
+but this at least was beautiful, almost enough so to compensate for his
+first acute disappointment at the barrenness and gloom of the Lizard
+scenery.
+
+For some minutes he could only stand with open eyes and gaze delighted
+at the glorious prospect. Cliffs, sea, and rocks all blended with one
+another in solemn harmony. Even the blackness of the great crags and
+the scorched air of the brown and water-logged moorland in the rear now
+ceased to oppress him. They fell into their proper place in one
+consistent and well-blended picture. But, after awhile, impelled by a
+desire to look down upon the next little bay beyond--for the coast is
+indented with endless coves and headlands--the engineer walked on along
+the top by a coastguard's path that threaded its way, marked by
+whitened stones, round the points and gullies. As he did so, he
+happened to notice on the very crest of the ridge that overlooked the
+rock they called St. Michael's Crag a tall figure of a man silhouetted
+in dark outline against the pale gray skyline. From the very first
+moment Eustace Le Neve set eyes upon that striking figure this man
+exerted upon him some nameless attraction. Even at this distance the
+engineer could see he had a certain indefinite air of dignity and
+distinction; and he poised himself lightly on the very edge of the
+cliff in a way that would no doubt have made Walter Tyrrel shudder with
+fear and alarm. Yet there was something about that poise quite
+unearthly and uncanny; the man stood so airily on his high rocky perch
+that he reminded Le Neve at once of nothing so much as of Giovanni da
+Bologna's Mercury in the Bargello at Florence; he seemed to spurn the
+earth as if about to spring from it with a bound; his feet were as if
+freed from the common bond of gravity.
+
+It was a figure that belonged naturally to the Cornish moorland.
+
+Le Neve advanced along the path till he nearly reached the summit where
+the man was standing. The point itself was a rugged tor, or little
+group of bare and weather-worn rocks, overlooking the sea and St.
+Michael's Crag below it. As the engineer drew near he saw the stranger
+was not alone. Under shelter of the rocks a girl lay stretched at
+length on a loose camel's-hair rug; her head was hatless; in her hand
+she held, half open, a volume of poetry. She looked up as Eustace
+passed, and he noted at a glance that she was dark and pretty. The
+Cornish type once more; bright black eyes, glossy brown hair, a rich
+complexion, a soft and rounded beauty.
+
+"Cleer," the father said, warningly, in a modulated voice, as the young
+man approached, "don't let your hat blow away, dear; it's close by the
+path there."
+
+The girl he called Cleer darted forward and picked it up, with a little
+blush of confusion. Eustace Le Neve raised his hat, by way of excuse
+for disturbing her, and was about to pass on, but the view down into
+the bay below, with the jagged and pointed crag islanded in white foam,
+held him spellbound for a moment. He paused and gazed at it. "This is a
+lovely lookout, sir," he said, after a second's silence, as if to
+apologize for his intrusion, turning round to the stranger, who still
+stood poised like a statue on the natural pedestal of lichen-covered
+rock beside him. "A lovely lookout and a wonderful bit of wild coast
+scenery."
+
+"Yes," the stranger answered, in a voice as full of dignity as his
+presence and his mien. "It's the grandest spot along the Cornish coast.
+From here you can see in one view St. Michael's Mount, St. Michael's
+Crag, St. Michael's Church, and St. Michael's Promontory. The whole of
+this country, indeed, just teems with St. Michael."
+
+"Which is St. Michael's Promontory?" the young man asked, with a side
+glance at Cleer, as they called the daughter. He wasn't sorry indeed
+for the chance of having a second look at her.
+
+"Why Land's End, of course," the dignified stranger answered at once,
+descending from his perch as he spoke, with a light spring more like a
+boy's than a mature man's. "You must surely know those famous lines in
+'Lycidas' about
+
+                                           'The fable of Bellerus old,
+    Where the Great Vision of the guarded mount
+    Looks towards Namancos and Bayona's hold;
+    Look homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth.'"
+
+"Yes, I KNOW them, of course," Eustace answered with ingenuous shyness;
+"but as so often happens with poetry, to say the truth, I'm afraid I
+attached no very definite idea to them. The music so easily obscures
+the sense; though the moment you suggest it, I see they can't possibly
+mean anyone but St. Michael."
+
+"My father's very much interested in the antiquities of Cornwall," the
+girl Cleer put in, looking up at him somewhat timidly; "so he naturally
+knows all these things, and perhaps he expects others to know them
+unreasonably."
+
+"We've every ground for knowing them," the father went on, glancing
+down at her with tender affection. "We're Cornish to the
+backbone--Cornish born and bred, if ever there were Cornishmen. Every
+man of my ancestors was a Tre, Pol, or Pen, to the tenth generation
+backward; and I'm descended from the Bassets, too--the Bassets of
+Tehidy. You must have heard of the Bassets in Cornish history. They
+owned St. Michael's Mount before these new-fangled St. Aubyn people."
+
+"It's Lord St. Levan's now, isn't it?" Le Neve put in, anxious to show
+off his knowledge of the local aristocracy.
+
+"Yes, they've made him Lord St. Levan," the dignified stranger
+answered, with an almost imperceptible curl of his delicate lower lip.
+"They've made him Lord St. Levan. The queen can make one anything. He
+was plain Sir John St. Aubyn before that, you know; his family bought
+the Mount from my ancestors--the Bassets of Tehidy. They're new people
+at Marazion--new people altogether. They've only been there since 1660."
+
+Le Neve smiled a quiet smile. That seemed to him in his innocence a
+fairly decent antiquity as things go nowadays. But the dignified
+stranger appeared to think so little of it that his new acquaintance
+abstained from making note or comment on it. He waited half a moment to
+see whether Cleer would speak again; he wanted to hear that pleasant
+voice once more; but as she held her peace, he merely raised his hat,
+and accepting the dismissal, continued his walk round the cliffs alone.
+Yet, somehow, the rest of the way, the figure of that statuesque
+stranger haunted him. He looked back once or twice. The descendant of
+the Bassets of Tehidy had now resumed his high pedestal upon the airy
+tor, and was gazing away seaward, like the mystic Great Vision of his
+own Miltonic quotation, toward the Spanish coast, wrapped round in a
+loose cloak of most poetic dimensions. Le Neve wondered who he was, and
+what errand could have brought him there.
+
+At the point called the Rill, he diverged from the path a bit, to get
+that beautiful glimpse down into the rock-strewn cove and smooth white
+sands at Kynance. A coastguard with brush and pail was busy as he
+passed by renewing the whitewash on the landmark boulders that point
+the path on dark nights to the stumbling wayfarer. Le Neve paused and
+spoke to him. "That's a fine-looking man, my friend, the gentleman on
+the tor there," he said, after a few commonplaces. "Do you happen to
+know his name? Is he spending the summer about here?"
+
+The man stopped in his work and looked up. His eye lighted with
+pleasure on the dignified stranger. "Yes; he's one of the right sort,
+sir," he answered, with a sort of proprietary pride in the
+distinguished figure. "A real old Cornish gentleman of the good old
+days, he is, if ever you see one. That's Trevennack of Trevennack; and
+Miss Cleer's his daughter. Fine old crusted Cornish names, every one of
+them; I'm a Cornishman myself, and I know them well, the whole grand
+lot of them. The Trevennacks and the Bassets, they was all one, time
+gone by; they owned St. Michael's Mount, and Penzance, and Marazion,
+and Mullion here. They owned Penmorgan, too, afore the Tyrrels bought
+it up. Michael Basset Trevennack, that's the gentleman's full name; the
+eldest son of the eldest son is always a Michael, to keep up the memory
+of the times gone by, when they was Guardians of the Mount and St.
+Michael's Constables. And the lady's Miss Cleer, after St. Cleer of
+Cornwall--her that gives her name still to St. Cleer by Liskeard."
+
+"And do they live here?" Le Neve asked, much interested in the
+intelligent local tone of the man's conversation.
+
+"Lord bless you, no, sir. They don't live nowhere. They're in the
+service, don't you see. They lives in Malta or Gibraltar, or wherever
+the Admiralty sends him. He's an Admiralty man, he is, connected with
+the Vittling Yard. I was in the navy myself, on the good old Billy
+Ruffun, afore I was put in the Coastguards, and I knowed him well when
+we was both together on the Mediterranean Station. Always the same
+grand old Cornish gentleman, with them gracious manners, so haughty
+like, an' yet so condescending, wherever they put him. A gentleman
+born. No gentleman on earth more THE gentleman all round than
+Trevennack of Trevennack."
+
+"Then he's staying down here on a visit?" Le Neve went on, curiously,
+peering over the edge of the cliffs, as he spoke, to observe the
+cormorants.
+
+"Don't you go too nigh, sir," the coastguard put in, warningly. "She's
+slippery just there. Yes, they're staying down in Oliver's lodgings at
+Gunwalloe. He's on leave, that's where it is. Every three or four years
+he gets leave from the Vittling and comes home to England; and then he
+always ups and runs down to the Lizard, and wanders about on the cliffs
+by himself like this, with Miss Cleer to keep him company. He's a chip
+of the old rock, he is--Cornish granite to the core, as the saying
+goes; and he can't be happy away from it. You'll see him any day
+standing like that on the very edge of the cliff, looking across over
+the water, as if he was a coastguard hisself, and always sort o'
+perched on the highest bit of rock he can come nigh anywhere."
+
+"He looks an able man," Le Neve went on, still regarding the stranger,
+poised now as before on the very summit of the tor, with his cloak
+wrapped around him.
+
+"Able? I believe you! Why, he's the very heart and soul, the brains and
+senses of the Vittling Department. The navy'd starve if it wasn't for
+him. He's a Companion of St. Michael and St. George, Mr. Trevennack is.
+'Tain't every one as is a Companion of St. Michael and St. George. The
+queen made him that herself for his management of the Vittling." "It's
+a strange place for a man in his position to spend his holiday," Le
+Neve went on, reflectively. "You'd think, coming back so seldom, he'd
+want to see something of London, Brighton, Scarborough, Scotland."
+
+The coastguard looked up, and held his brush idle in one hand with a
+mysterious air. "Not when you come to know his history," he answered,
+gazing hard at him.
+
+"Oh, there's a history to him, is there?" Le Neve answered, not
+surprised. "Well, he certainly has the look of it."
+
+The coastguard nodded his head and dropped his voice still lower. "Yes,
+there's a history to him," he replied. "And that's why you'll always
+see Trevennack of Trevennack on the top of the cliff, and never at the
+bottom.--Thank'ee very kindly, sir; it ain't often we gets a chance of
+a good cigar at Kynance.--Well, it must be fifteen year now--or maybe
+sixteen--I don't mind the right time--Trevennack came down in old
+Squire Tyrrel's days, him as is buried at Mullion Church town, and
+stopped at Gunwalloe, same as he might be stopping there in his
+lodgings nowadays. He had his only son with him, too, a fine-looking
+young gentleman, they say, for his age, for I wasn't here then--I was
+serving my time under Admiral De Horsey on the good old Billy
+Ruffun--the very picture of Miss Cleer, and twelve year old or
+thereabouts; and they called him Master Michael, the same as they
+always call the eldest boy of the Trevennacks of Trevennack. Aye, and
+one day they two, father and son, were a-strolling on the beach under
+the cliffs by Penmorgan--mind them stones on the edge, sir; they're
+powerful loose--don't you drop none over--when, just as you might
+loosen them pebbles there with your foot, over came a shower o' small
+bits from the cliff on top, and as sure as you're livin', hit the two
+on 'em right so, sir. Mr. Trevennack himself, he wasn't much hurt--just
+bruised a bit on the forehead, for he was wearing a Scotch cap; but
+Master Michael, well, it caught him right on the top of the head, and
+afore they knowed what it was, it smashed his skull in. Aye, that it
+did, sir, just so; it smashed the boy's skull in. They carried him
+home, and cut the bone out, and trepanned him; but bless you, it wa'n't
+no good; he lingered on for a night, and then, afore morning, he died,
+insensible."
+
+"What a terrible story!" Le Neve exclaimed, with a face of horror,
+recoiling instinctively from the edge of the cliff that had wrought
+this evil. "Aye, you may well say so. It was rough on him," the
+coastguard went on, with the calm criticism of his kind. "His only
+son--and all in a minute like, as you may term it--such a promising
+young gentleman! It was rough, terrible rough on him. So from that day
+to this, whenever Trevennack has a holiday, down he comes here to
+Gunwalloe, and walks about the cliffs, and looks across upon the rocks
+by Penmorgan Point, or stands on the top of Michael's Crag, just over
+against the spot where his boy was hurted. An' he never wants to go
+nowhere else in all England, but just to stand like that on the very
+edge of the cliff, and look over from atop, and brood, and think about
+it."
+
+As the man spoke, it flashed across Le Neve's mind at once that
+Trevennack's voice had quivered with a strange thrill of emotion as he
+uttered that line, no doubt pregnant with meaning for him. "Look
+homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth." He was thinking of his own
+boy, most likely, not of the poet's feigned Lycidas.
+
+"He'll stand like that for hours," the coastguard went on
+confidentially, "musing like to himself, with Miss Cleer by his side,
+reading in her book or doing her knitting or something. But you
+couldn't get him, for love or money, to go BELOW the cliffs, no, not if
+you was to kill him. He's AFRAID of going below--that's where it is; he
+always thinks something's sure to tumble from the top on him. Natural
+enough, too, after all that's been. He likes to get as high as ever he
+can in the air, where he can see all around him, and be certain there
+ain't anyone above to let anything drop as might hurt him. Michael's
+Crag's where he likes best to stand, on the top there by the Horse; he
+always chooses them spots. In Malta it was San Mickayly; and in
+Gibraltar it was the summit of Europa Point, by the edge of the Twelve
+Apostles' battery."
+
+"How curious!" Le Neve exclaimed. "It's just the other way on now, with
+my friend Mr. Tyrrel. I'm stopping at Penmorgan, but Mr. Tyrrel won't
+go on TOP of the cliffs for anything. He says he's afraid he might let
+something drop by accident on the people below him."
+
+The coastguard grew suddenly graver. "Like enough," he said, stroking
+his chin. "Like enough; and right, too, for him, sir. You see, he's a
+Tyrrel, and he's bound to be cautious.'
+
+"Why so?" Le Neve asked, somewhat puzzled. "Why a Tyrrel more than the
+rest of us?"
+
+The man hesitated and stared hard at him.
+
+"Well, it's like this, sir," he answered at last, with the shamefaced
+air of the intelligent laboring man who confesses to a superstition.
+"We Cornish are old-fashioned, and we has our ideas. The Tyrrels are
+new people like, in Cornwall, as we say; they came in only with
+Cromwell's folk, when he fought the Grenvilles; but it's well beknown
+in the county bad luck goes with them. You see, they're descended from
+that Sir Walter Tyrrel you'll read about in the history books, him as
+killed King William Rufious in the New Forest. You'll hear all about it
+at Rufious' Stone, where the king was killed; Sir Walter, he drew, and
+he aimed at a deer, and the king was standing by; and the bullet, it
+glanced aside--or maybe it was afore bullets, and then it'd be an
+arrow; but anyhow, one or t'other, it hit the king, and he fell, and
+died there. The stone's standing to this day on the place where he
+fell, and I've seen it, and read of it when I was in hospital at
+Netley. But Sir Walter, he got clear away, and ran across to France;
+and ever since that time they've called the eldest son of the Tyrrels
+Walter, same as they've called the eldest son of the Trevennacks
+Michael. But they say every Walter Tyrrel that's born into the world is
+bound, sooner or later, to kill his man unintentional. So he do right
+to avoid going too near the cliffs, I say. We shouldn't tempt
+Providence. And the Tyrrels is all a conscientious people."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+FACE TO FACE.
+
+
+When Eustace Le Neve returned to lunch at Penmorgan that day he was
+silent to his host about Trevennack of Trevennack. To say the truth, he
+was so much attracted by Miss Cleer's appearance that he didn't feel
+inclined to mention having met her. But he wanted to meet her again for
+all that, and hoped he would do so. Perhaps Tyrrel might know the
+family, and ask them round to dine some night. At any rate, society is
+rare at the Lizard. Sooner or later, he felt sure, he'd knock up
+against the mysterious stranger somewhere. And that involved the
+probability of knocking up against the mysterious stranger's beautiful
+daughter.
+
+Next morning after breakfast, however, he made a vigorous effort to
+induce Walter Tyrrel to mount the cliff and look at the view from
+Penmorgan Point toward the Rill and Kynance. It was absurd, he said
+truly, for the proprietor of such an estate never to have seen the most
+beautiful spot in it. But Tyrrel was obdurate. On the point of actually
+mounting the cliff itself he wouldn't yield one jot or tittle. Only,
+after much persuasion, he consented at last to cross the headland by
+the fields at the back and come out at the tor above St. Michael's
+Crag, provided always Eustace would promise he'd neither go near the
+edge himself nor try to induce his friend to approach it.
+
+Satisfied with this lame compromise--for he really wished his host to
+enjoy that glorious view--Eustace Le Neve turned up the valley behind
+the house, with Walter Tyrrel by his side, and after traversing several
+fields, through gaps in the stone walls, led out his companion at last
+to the tor on the headland.
+
+As they approached it from behind, the engineer observed, not without a
+faint thrill of pleasure, that Trevennack's stately figure stood
+upright as before upon the wind-swept pile of fissured rocks, and that
+Cleer sat reading under its shelter to leeward. But by her side this
+morning sat also an elder lady, whom Eustace instinctively recognized
+as her mother--a graceful, dignified lady, with silvery white hair and
+black Cornish eyes, and features not untinged by the mellowing,
+hallowing air of a great sorrow.
+
+Le Neve raised his hat as they drew near, with a pleased smile of
+welcome, and Trevennack and his daughter both bowed in return. "A
+glorious morning!" the engineer said, drinking in to the full the
+lovely golden haze that flooded and half-obscured the Land's End
+district; and Trevennack assented gravely. "The crag stands up well in
+this sunshine against the dark water behind," he said, waving one
+gracious hand toward the island at his foot, and poising lighter than
+ever.
+
+"Oh, take care!" Walter Tyrrel cried, looking up at him, on
+tenterhooks. "It's so dangerous up there! You might tumble any minute."
+
+"_I_ never tumble," Trevennack made answer with solemn gravity,
+spreading one hand on either side as if to balance himself like an
+acrobat. But he descended as he spoke and took his place beside them.
+
+Tyrrel looked at the view and looked at the pretty girl. It was evident
+he was quite as much struck by the one as by the other. Indeed, of the
+two, Cleer seemed to attract the larger share of his attention. For
+some minutes they stood and talked, all five of them together, without
+further introduction than their common admiration for that exquisite
+bay, in which Trevennack appeared to take an almost proprietary
+interest. It gratified him, obviously, a Cornish man, that these
+strangers (as he thought them) should be so favorably impressed by his
+native county. But Tyrrel all the while looked ill at ease, though he
+sidled away as far as possible from the edge of the cliff, and sat down
+near Cleer at a safe distance from the precipice. He was silent and
+preoccupied. That mattered but little, however, as the rest did all the
+talking, especially Trevennack, who turned out to be indeed a perfect
+treasure-house of Cornish antiquities and Cornish folk-lore.
+
+"I generally stand below, on top of Michael's Crag," he said to
+Eustace, pointing it out, "when the tide allows it; but when it's high,
+as it is now, such a roaring and seething scour sets through the
+channel between the rock and the mainland that no swimmer could stem
+it; and then I come up here, and look down from above upon it. It's the
+finest point on all our Cornish coast, this point we stand on. It has
+the widest view, the purest air, the hardest rock, the highest and most
+fantastic tor of any of them."
+
+"My husband's quite an enthusiast for this particular place," Mrs.
+Trevennack interposed, watching his face as she spoke with a certain
+anxious and ill-disguised wifely solicitude.
+
+"He's come here for years. It has many associations for us."
+
+"Some painful and some happy," Cleer added, half aloud; and Tyrrel,
+nodding assent, looked at her as if expecting some marked recognition.
+
+"You should see it in the pilchard season," her father went on, turning
+suddenly to Eustace with much animation in his voice. "That's the time
+for Cornwall--a month or so later than now--you should see it then, for
+picturesqueness and variety. 'When the corn is in the shock,' says our
+Cornish rhyme, 'Then the fish are off the rock'--and the rock's St.
+Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the hue and cry from
+the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he stands on Michael's
+Crag just below there, as I stand myself so often, and when he sights
+the shoals by the ripple on the water, he motions to the boats which
+way to go for the pilchards. Then the rowers in the lurkers, as we call
+our seine-boats, surround the shoal with a tuck-net, or drag the seine
+into Mullion Cove, all alive with a mass of shimmering silver. The
+jowsters come down with their carts on to the beach, and hawk them
+about round the neighborhood--I've seen them twelve a penny; while in
+the curing-houses they're bulking them and pressing them as if for dear
+life, to send away to Genoa, Leghorn, and Naples. That's where all our
+fish go--to the Catholic south. 'The Pope and the Pilchards,' says our
+Cornish toast; for it's the Friday fast that makes our only market."
+
+"You can see them on St. George's Island in Looe Harbor," Cleer put in
+quite innocently. "They're like a sea of silver there--on St. George's
+Island."
+
+"My dear," her father corrected with that grave, old-fashioned courtesy
+which the coast-guard had noted and described as at once so haughty and
+yet so condescending, "how often I've begged of you NOT to call it St.
+George's Island! It's St. Nicholas' and St. Michael's--one may as well
+be correct--and till a very recent date a chapel to St. Michael
+actually stood there upon the rocky top; it was only destroyed, you
+remember, at the time of the Reformation."
+
+"Everybody CALLS it St. George's now," Cleer answered, with girlish
+persistence. And her father looked round at her sharply, with an
+impatient snap of the fingers, while Mrs. Trevennack's eye was fixed on
+him now more carefully and more earnestly, Tyrrel observed, than ever.
+
+"I wonder why it is," Eustace Le Neve interposed, to spare Cleer's
+feelings, "that so many high places, tops of mountains and so forth,
+seem always to be dedicated to St. Michael in particular? He seems to
+love such airy sites. There's St. Michael's Mount here, you know, and
+Mont St. Michel in Normandy; and at Le Puy, in Auvergne, there's a St.
+Michael's Rock, and at ever so many other places I can't remember this
+minute."
+
+Trevennack was in his element. The question just suited him. He smiled
+a curious smile of superior knowledge. "You've come to the right place
+for information," he said, blandly, turning round to the engineer. "I'm
+a Companion of St. Michael and St. George myself, and my family, as I
+told you, once owned St. Michael's Mount; so, for that and various
+other reasons, I've made a special study of St. Michael the Archangel,
+and all that pertains to him." And then he went on to give a long and
+learned disquisition, which Le Neve and Walter Tyrrel only partially
+followed, about the connection between St. Michael and the Celtic race,
+as well as about the archangel's peculiar love for high and airy
+situations. Most of the time, indeed, Le Neve was more concerned in
+watching Cleer Trevennack's eyes, as her father spoke, than in
+listening to the civil servant's profound dissertation. He gathered,
+however, from the part he caught, that St. Michael the Archangel had
+been from early days a very important and powerful Cornish personage,
+and that he clung to high places on the tors and rocks because he had
+to fight and subdue the Prince of the Air, whom he always destroyed at
+last on some pointed pinnacle. And now that he came to think of it,
+Eustace vaguely recollected he had always seen St. Michael, in pictures
+or stained glass windows, delineated just so--with drawn sword and
+warrior's mien--in the act of triumphing over his dragon-like enemy on
+the airy summit of some tall jagged crag or rock-bound precipice.
+
+As for Mrs. Trevennack, she watched her husband every moment he spoke
+with a close and watchful care, which Le Neve hardly noticed, but which
+didn't for a minute escape Walter Tyrrel's more piercing and observant
+scrutiny.
+
+At last, as the amateur lecturer was beginning to grow somewhat prolix,
+a cormorant below created a slight diversion for awhile by settling in
+his flight on the very highest point of Michael's Crag, and proceeding
+to preen his glittering feathers in the full golden flood of that
+bright August sunlight.
+
+With irrepressible boyish instinct Le Neve took up a stone, and was
+just on the point of aiming it (quite without reason) at the bird on
+the pinnacle.
+
+But before he could let it go, the two other men, moved as if by a
+single impulse, had sprung forward with a bound, and in the self-same
+tone and in the self-same words cried out with one accord, in a wildly
+excited voice, "For God's sake, don't throw! You don't know how
+dangerous it is!"
+
+Le Neve let his hand drop flat, and allowed the stone to fall from it.
+As he did so the two others stood back a pace, as if guarding him, but
+kept their hands still ready to seize the engineer's arm if he made the
+slightest attempt at motion. Eustace felt they were watching him as one
+might watch a madman. For a moment they were silent. Trevennack was the
+first to speak. His voice had an earnest and solemn ring in it, like a
+reproving angel's. "How can you tell what precious life may be passing
+below?" he said, with stern emphasis, fixing Le Neve with his
+reproachful eye. "The stone might fall short. It might drop out of
+sight. You might kill whomsoever it struck, unseen. And then"--he drank
+in a deep breath, gasping--"you would know you were a murderer."
+
+Walter Tyrrel drew himself up at the words like one stung. "No, no! not
+a murderer!" he cried; "not quite as bad as a murderer! It wouldn't be
+murder, surely. It would be accidental homicide--unintentional,
+unwilled--a terrible result of most culpable carelessness, of course;
+but it wouldn't be quite murder; don't call it murder. I can't allow
+that. Not that name by any means.... Though to the end of your life,
+Eustace, if you were to kill a man so, you'd never cease to regret it
+and mourn over it daily; you'd never cease to repent your guilty
+carelessness in sackcloth and ashes."
+
+He spoke so seriously, so earnestly, with such depth of personal
+feeling, that Trevennack, starting back, stood and gazed at him slowly
+with those terrible eyes, like one who awakens by degrees from a
+painful dream to some awful reality. Tyrrel winced before his scrutiny.
+For a moment the elder man just looked at him and stared. Then he took
+one step forward. "Sir," he said, in a very low voice, half broken with
+emotion, "I had a dear son of my own once; a very dear, dear son. He
+was killed by such an ACCIDENT on this very spot. No wonder I remember
+it."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack and Cleer both gave a start of surprise. The man's
+words astonished them; for never before, during fifteen long years, had
+that unhappy father alluded in any way in overt words to his son's
+tragic end. He had brooded and mused over it in his crushed and wounded
+spirit; he had revisited the scene of his loss whenever opportunity
+permitted him; he had made of his sorrow a cherished and petted daily
+companion; but he had stored it up deep in his own inmost heart, never
+uttering a word of it even to his wife or daughter. The two women knew
+Michael Trevennack must be profoundly moved, indeed, so to tear open
+the half-healed wound in his tortured bosom before two casual strangers.
+
+But Tyrrel, too, gave a start as he spoke, and looked hard at the
+careworn face of that unhappy man. "Then you're Mr. Trevennack!" he
+exclaimed, all aghast. "Mr. Trevennack of the Admiralty!"
+
+And the dignified stranger answered, bowing his head very low, "Yes,
+you've guessed me right. I'm Michael Trevennack."
+
+With scarcely a word of reply Walter Tyrrel turned and strode away from
+the spot. "I must go now," he muttered faintly, looking at his watch
+with some feigned surprise, as a feeble excuse. "I've an appointment at
+home." He hadn't the courage to stay. His heart misgave him. Once
+fairly round the corner he fled like a wounded creature, too deeply
+hurt even to cry. Eustace Le Neve, raising his hat, hastened after him,
+all mute wonder. For several hundred yards they walked on side by side
+across the open heathy moor. Then, as they passed the first wall,
+Tyrrel paused for a moment and spoke. "NOT a murderer!" he cried in his
+anguish; "oh, no, not quite as bad as a murderer, surely, Eustace; but
+still, a culpable homicide. Oh, God, how terrible."
+
+And even as he disappeared across the moor to eastward, Trevennack, far
+behind, seized his wife's arm spasmodically, and clutching it tight in
+his iron grip, murmured low in a voice of supreme conviction, "Do you
+see what that means, Lucy? I can read it all now. It was HE who rolled
+down that cursed stone. It was HE who killed our boy. And I can guess
+who he is. He must be Tyrrel of Penmorgan."
+
+Cleer didn't hear the words. She was below, gazing after them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+TYRREL'S REMORSE.
+
+
+The two young men walked back, without interchanging another word, to
+the gate of the manor-house. Tyrrel opened it with a swing. Then, once
+within his own grounds, and free from prying eyes, he sat down
+forthwith upon a little craggy cliff that overhung the carriage-drive,
+buried his face in his hands, and, to Le Neve's intense astonishment,
+cried long and silently. He let himself go with a rush; that's the
+Cornish nature. Eustace Le Neve sat by his side, not daring to speak,
+but in mute sympathy with his sorrow. For many minutes neither uttered
+a sound. At last Tyrrel looked up, and in an agony of remorse, turned
+round to his companion. "Of course you understand," he said.
+
+And Eustace answered reverently, "Yes, I think I understand. Having
+come so near doing the same thing myself, I sympathize with you."
+
+Tyrrel paused a moment again. His face was like marble. Then he added,
+in a tone of the profoundest anguish, "Till this minute, Eustace, I've
+never told anybody. And if it hadn't been forced out of me by that poor
+man's tortured and broken-hearted face, I wouldn't have told you now.
+But could I look at him to-day and not break down before him?"
+
+"How did it all happen?" Le Neve asked, leaning forward and clasping
+his friend's arm with a brotherly gesture.
+
+Tyrrel answered with a deep sigh, "Like this. I'll make a clean breast
+of it all at last. I've bottled it up too long. I'll tell you now,
+Eustace.
+
+"Nearly sixteen years ago I was staying down here at Penmorgan with my
+uncle. The Trevennacks, as I learned afterward, were in lodgings at
+Gunwalloe. But, so far as I can remember at present, I never even saw
+them. To the best of my belief I never set eyes on Michael Trevennack
+himself before this very morning. If I'd known who he was, you may be
+pretty sure I'd have cut off my right hand before I'd allowed myself to
+speak to him.
+
+"Well, one day that year I was strolling along the top of the cliff by
+Michael's Crag, with my uncle beside me, who owned Penmorgan. I was but
+a boy then, and I walked by the edge more than once, very carelessly.
+My uncle knew the cliffs, though, and how dangerous they were; he knew
+men might any time be walking below, digging launces in the sand, or
+getting lobworms for their lines, or hunting serpentine to polish, or
+looking for sea-bird's eggs among the half-way ledges. Time after time
+he called out to me, 'Walter, my boy, take care; don't go so near the
+edge, you'll tumble over presently.' And time after time I answered him
+back, like a boy that I was, 'Oh, I'm all right, uncle. No fear about
+me. I can take care of myself. These cliffs don't crumble. They're a
+deal too solid.'
+
+"At last, when he saw it was no good warning me that way any longer, he
+turned round to me rather sharply--he was a Tyrrel, you see, and
+conscientious, as we all of us are--it runs in the blood somehow--'If
+you don't mind for yourself, at least mind for others. Who can say who
+may be walking underneath those rocks? If you let a loose stone fall
+you may commit manslaughter.'
+
+"I laughed, and thought ill of him. He was such a fidget! I was only a
+boy. I considered him absurdly and unnecessarily particular. He had
+stalked on a yard or two in front. I loitered behind, and out of pure
+boyish deviltry, as I was just above Michael's Crag, I loosened some
+stones with my foot and showered them over deliberately. Oh, heavens, I
+feel it yet; how they rattled and rumbled!
+
+"My uncle wasn't looking. He walked on and left me behind. He didn't
+see me push them. He didn't see them fall. He didn't hear them rattle.
+But as they reached the bottom I heard myself--or thought I heard--a
+vague cry below. A cry as of some one wounded. I was frightened at
+that; I didn't dare to look down, but ran on to my uncle. Not till some
+hours after did I know the whole truth, for we walked along the cliffs
+all the way to Kynance, and then returned inland by the road to the
+Lizard.
+
+"That afternoon, late, there was commotion at Penmorgan. The servants
+brought us word how a bit of the cliff near Michael's Crag had
+foundered unawares, and struck two people who were walking below--a Mr.
+Trevennack, in lodgings at Gunwalloe, and his boy Michael. The father
+wasn't much hurt, they said; but the son--oh, Eustace! the son was
+dangerously wounded.... I listened in terror.... He lived out the
+night, and died next morning."
+
+Tyrrel leaned back in agony as he spoke, and looked utterly crushed. It
+was an awful memory. Le Neve hardly knew what to say, the man's remorse
+was so poignant. After all those years the boy's thoughtless act seemed
+to weigh like a millstone round the grown man's neck. Eustace held his
+peace, and felt for him. By and by Tyrrel went on again, rocking
+himself to and fro on his rough seat as he spoke. "For fifteen years,"
+he said, piteously, "I've borne this burden in my heart, and never told
+anybody. I tell it now first of all men to you. You're the only soul on
+earth who shares my secret."
+
+"Then your uncle didn't suspect it?" Eustace asked, all breathless.
+
+Walter Tyrrel shook his head. "On the contrary," he answered, "he said
+to me next day, 'How glad I am Walter, my boy, I called you away from
+the cliff that moment! It was quite providential. For if you'd loosened
+a stone, and then this thing had happened, we'd both of us have
+believed it was YOU that did it?' I was too frightened and appalled to
+tell him it WAS I. I thought they'd hang me. But from that day to
+this--Eustace, Eustace, believe me--I've never ceased to think of it!
+I've never forgiven myself!"
+
+"Yet it was an accident after all," Le Neve said, trying to comfort him.
+
+"No, no; not quite. I should have been warned in time. I should have
+obeyed my uncle. But what would you have? It's the luck of the Tyrrels."
+
+He spoke plaintively. Le Neve pulled a piece of grass and began biting
+it to hide his confusion. How near he might have come to doing the same
+thing himself. He thanked his stars it wasn't he. He thanked his stars
+he hadn't let that stone drop from the cliff that morning.
+
+Tyrrel was the first to break the solemn silence. "You can understand
+now," he said, with an impatient gesture, "why I hate Penmorgan. I've
+hated it ever since. I shall always hate it. It seems like a mute
+reminder of that awful day. In my uncle's time I never came near it.
+But as soon as it was my own I felt I must live upon it; and now, this
+terror of meeting Trevennack some day has made life one long burden to
+me. Sooner or later I felt sure I should run against him. They told me
+how he came down here from time to time to see where his son died, and
+I knew I should meet him. Now you can understand, too, why I hate the
+top of the cliffs so much, and WILL walk at the bottom. I had two good
+reasons for that. One I've told you already; the other was the fear of
+coming across Trevennack."
+
+Le Neve turned to him compassionately. "My dear fellow," he said, "you
+take it too much to heart. It was so long ago, and you were only a
+child. The... the accident might happen to any boy any day."
+
+"Yes, yes," Tyrrel answered, passionately. "I know all that. I try, so,
+to console myself. But then I've wrecked that unhappy man's life for
+him."
+
+"He has his daughter still," Le Neve put in, vaguely. It was all he
+could think of to say by way of consolation; and to him, Cleer
+Trevennack would have made up for anything.
+
+A strange shade passed over Tyrrel's face. Eustace noted it
+instinctively. Something within seemed to move that Cornish heart.
+"Yes, he has his daughter still," the Squire of Penmorgan answered,
+with a vacant air. "But for me, that only makes things still worse than
+before.... How can she pardon my act? What can she ever think of me?"
+
+Le Neve turned sharply round upon him. There was some undercurrent in
+the tone in which he spoke that suggested far more than the mere words
+themselves might perhaps have conveyed to him. "What do you mean?" he
+asked, all eager, in a quick, low voice. "You've met Miss Trevennack
+before? You've seen her? You've spoken to her?"
+
+For a second Tyrrel hesitated; then, with a burst, he spoke out. "I may
+as well tell you all," he cried, "now I've told you so much. Yes, I've
+met her before, I've seen her, I've spoken to her."
+
+"But she didn't seem to recognize you," Le Neve objected, taken aback.
+
+Tyrrel shook his head despondently. "That's the worst of it all," he
+answered, with a very sad sigh. "She didn't even remember me.... She
+was so much to me; and to her--why, to HER, Eustace--I was less than
+nothing."
+
+"And you knew who she was when you saw her just now?" Le Neve asked,
+greatly puzzled.
+
+"Yes and no. Not exactly. I knew she was the person I'd seen and talked
+with, but I'd never heard her name, nor connected her in any way with
+Michael Trevennack. If I had, things would be different. It's a
+terrible Nemesis. I'll tell you how it happened. I may as well tell
+all. But the worst point of the whole to me in this crushing blow is to
+learn that that girl is Michael Trevennack's daughter."
+
+"Where and when did you meet her then?" Le Neve asked, growing curious.
+
+"Quite casually, once only, some time since, in a railway carnage. It
+must be two years ago now, and I was going from Bath to Bournemouth.
+She traveled with me in the same compartment as far as Temple Combe,
+and I talked all the way with her; I can remember every word of it....
+Eustace, it's foolish of me to acknowledge it, perhaps, but in those
+two short hours I fell madly in love with her. Her face has lived with
+me ever since; I've longed to meet her, But I was stupidly afraid to
+ask her name before she got out of the train; and I had no clue at all
+to her home or her relations. Yet, a thousand times since I've said to
+myself, 'If ever I marry I'll marry that girl who went in the carriage
+from Bath to Temple Combe with me.' I've cherished her memory from that
+day to this. You mayn't believe, I dare say, in love at first sight;
+but this I can swear to you was a genuine case of it."
+
+"I can believe in it very well," Le Neve answered, most truthfully,
+"now I've seen Miss Trevennack."
+
+Tyrrel looked at him, and smiled sadly. "Well, when I saw her again
+this morning," he went on, after a short pause, "my heart came up into
+my mouth. I said to myself, with a bound, 'It's she! It's she! At last
+I've found her.' And it dashed my best hopes to the ground at once to
+see she didn't even remember having met me."
+
+Le Neve looked at him shyly. "Walter," he said, after a short struggle,
+"I'm not surprised you fell in love with her. And shall I tell you why?
+I fell in love with her myself, too, the moment I saw her."
+
+Tyrrel turned to him without one word of reproach. "Well, we're no
+rivals now," he answered, generously. "Even if she would have me--even
+if she loved me well--how could I ask her to take--her brother's
+murderer?"
+
+Le Neve drew a long breath. He hadn't thought of that before. But had
+it been other wise, he couldn't help feeling that the master of
+Penmorgan would have been a formidable rival for a penniless engineer
+just home from South America.
+
+For already Eustace Le Neve was dimly aware, in his own sanguine mind,
+that he meant to woo and win that beautiful Cleer Trevennack.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A STRANGE DELUSION.
+
+
+Trevennack and his wife sat alone that night in their bare rooms at
+Gunwalloe. Cleer had gone out to see some girls of her acquaintance who
+were lodging close by in a fisherman's house; and the husband and wife
+were left for a few hours by themselves together.
+
+"Michael," Mrs. Trevennack began, as soon as they were alone, rising up
+from her chair and coming over toward him tenderly, "I was horribly
+afraid you were going to break out before those two young men on the
+cliff to-day. I saw you were just on the very brink of it. But you
+resisted bravely. Thank you so much for that. You're a dear good
+fellow. I was so pleased with you and so proud of you."
+
+"Break out about our poor boy?" Trevennack asked, with a dreamy air,
+passing his bronzed hand wearily across his high white forehead.
+
+His wife seated herself sideways upon the arm of his chair, and bent
+over him as he sat, with wifely confidence. "No, no, dear," she said,
+taking his hand in hers and soothing it with her soft palm. "About--YOU
+know--well, of course, that other thing."
+
+At the mere hint, Trevennack leaned back and drew himself up proudly to
+his full height, like a soldier. He looked majestic as he sat
+there--every inch a St. Michael. "Well, it's hard to keep such a
+secret," he answered, laying his free hand on his breast, "hard to keep
+such a secret; and I own, when they were talking about it, I longed to
+tell them. But for Cleer's sake I refrained, Lucy. For Cleer's sake I
+always refrain. You're quite right about that. I know, of course, for
+Cleer's sake I must keep it locked up in my own heart forever."
+
+The silver-haired lady bent over him again, both caressingly and
+proudly. "Michael, dear Michael," she said, with a soft thrill in her
+voice, "I love you and honor you for it. I can FEEL what it costs you.
+My darling, I know how hard you have to fight against it. I could see
+you fighting against it to-day; and I was proud of the way you
+struggled with it, single-handed, till you gained the victory."
+
+Trevennack drew himself up still more haughtily than before. "And who
+should struggle against the devil," he said, "single-handed as you say,
+and gain the victory at last, if not I, myself, Lucy?"
+
+He said it like some great one. His wife soothed his hand again and
+repressed a sigh. She was a great-hearted lady, that brave wife and
+mother, who bore her own trouble without a word spoken to anyone; but
+she must sigh, at least, sometimes; it was such a relief to her pent-up
+feelings. "Who indeed?" she said, acquiescent. "Who indeed, if not you?
+And I love you best when you conquer so, Michael."
+
+Trevennack looked down upon her with a strange tender look on his face,
+in which gentleness and condescension were curiously mingled. "Yes," he
+answered, musing; "for dear Cleer's sake I will always keep my peace
+about it. I'll say not a word. I'll never tell anybody. And yet it's
+hard to keep it in; very hard, indeed. I have to bind myself round, as
+it were, with bonds of iron. The secret will almost out of itself at
+times. As this morning, for example, when that young fellow wanted to
+know why St. Michael always clung to such airy pinnacles. How jauntily
+he talked about it, as if the reason for the selection were a matter of
+no moment! How little he seemed to think of the Prince of the
+Archangels!"
+
+"But for Cleer's sake, darling, you kept it in," Mrs. Trevennack said,
+coaxingly; "and for Cleer's sake you'll keep it in still--I know you
+will; now won't you?"
+
+Trevennack looked the picture of embodied self-restraint. His back was
+rigid. "For Cleer's sake I'll keep it in," he said, firmly. "I know how
+important it is for her. Never in this world have I breathed a word of
+it to any living soul but you; and never in this world I will. The rest
+wouldn't understand. They'd say it was madness."
+
+"They would," his wife assented very gravely and earnestly. "And that
+would be so bad for Cleer's future prospects. People would think you
+were out of your mind; and you know how chary young men are nowadays of
+marrying a girl when they believe or even suspect there's insanity in
+the family. You can talk of it as much and as often as you like to ME,
+dear Michael. I think that does you good. It acts as a safety-valve. It
+keeps you from bottling your secret up in your own heart too long, and
+brooding over it, and worrying yourself. I like you to talk to ME of it
+whenever you feel inclined. But for heaven's sake, darling, to nobody
+else. Not a hint of it for worlds. The consequences might be terrible."
+
+Trevennack rose and stood at his full height, with his heels on the
+edge of the low cottage fender. "You can trust me, Lucy," he said, in a
+very soft tone, with grave and conscious dignity. "You can trust me to
+hold my tongue. I know how much depends upon it."
+
+The beautiful lady with the silvery hair sat and gazed on him
+admiringly. She knew she could trust him; she knew he would keep it in.
+But she knew at the same time how desperate a struggle the effort cost
+him; and visionary though he was, she loved and admired him for it.
+
+There was an eloquent silence. Then, after a while, Trevennack spoke
+again, more tenderly and regretfully. "That man did it!" he said, with
+slow emphasis. "I saw by his face at once he did it. He killed our poor
+boy. I could read it in his look. I'm sure it was he. And besides, I
+have news of it, certain news--from elsewhere," and he looked up
+significantly.
+
+"Michael!" Mrs. Trevennack said, drawing close to him with an appealing
+gesture, and gazing hard into his eyes; "it's a long time since. He was
+a boy at the time. He did it carelessly, no doubt; but not guiltily,
+culpably. For Cleer's sake, there, too--oh, forgive him, forgive him!"
+She clasped her hands tight; she looked up at him tearfully.
+
+"It was the devil's work," her husband answered, with a faint frown on
+his high forehead, "and my task in life, Lucy, is to fight down the
+devil."
+
+"Fight him down in your own heart, then, dear," Mrs. Trevennack said,
+gently. "Remember, we all may fall. Lucifer did--and he was once an
+archangel. Fight him down in your own heart when he suggests hateful
+thoughts to you. For I know what you felt when it came over you
+instinctively that that young man had done it. You wanted to fly
+straight at his throat, dear Michael--you wanted to fly at his throat,
+and fling him over the precipice."
+
+"I did," Trevennack answered, making no pretense of denial. "But for
+Cleer's sake I refrained. And for Cleer's sake, if you wish it, I'll
+try to forgive him."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack pressed his hand. Tears stood in her dim eyes. She,
+too, had a terrible battle to fight all the days of her life, and she
+fought it valiantly. "Michael," she said, with an effort, "try to avoid
+that young man. Try to avoid him, I implore you. Don't go near him in
+the future. If you see him too often, I'm afraid what the result for
+you both may be. You control yourself wonderfully, dear; you control
+yourself, I know; and I'm grateful to you for it. But if you see too
+much of him, I dread an outbreak. It may get the better of you. And
+then--think of Cleer! Avoid him! Avoid him!"
+
+For only that silver-headed woman of all people on earth knew the
+terrible truth, that Michael Trevennack's was a hopeless case of
+suppressed insanity. Well suppressed, indeed, and kept firmly in check
+for his daughter's sake, and by his brave wife's aid; but insanity,
+none the less, of the profoundest monomaniacal pattern, for all that.
+All day long, and every day, in his dealings with the outer world, he
+kept down his monomania. An able and trusted government servant, he
+never allowed it for one moment to interfere with his public duties. To
+his wife alone he let out what he thought the inmost and deepest secret
+of his real existence--that he was the Archangel Michael. To no one
+else did he ever allow a glimpse of the truth, as he thought it, to
+appear. He knew the world would call it madness; and he didn't wish the
+stigma of inherited insanity to cling to his Cleer.
+
+Not even Cleer herself for a moment suspected it.
+
+Trevennack was wise enough and cunning enough, as madmen often are, to
+keep his own counsel, for good and sufficient reason.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+PURE ACCIDENT.
+
+
+During the next week or so, as chance would have it, Cleer Trevennack
+fell in more than once on her walks with Eustace Le Neve and Walter
+Tyrrel. They had picked up acquaintance in an irregular way, to be
+sure; but Cleer hadn't happened to be close by when her father uttered
+those strange words to his wife, "It was he who did it; it was he who
+killed our boy"; nor did she notice particularly the marked abruptness
+of Tyrrel's departure on that unfortunate occasion. So she had no such
+objection to meeting the two young men as Trevennack himself not
+unnaturally displayed; she regarded his evident avoidance of Walter
+Tyrrel as merely one of "Papa's fancies." To Cleer, Papa's fancies were
+mysterious but very familiar entities; and Tyrrel and Le Neve were
+simply two interesting and intelligent young men--the squire of the
+village and a friend on a visit to him. Indeed, to be quite
+confidential, it was the visitor who occupied the larger share of
+Cleer's attention. He was so good-looking and so nice. His open face
+and pink and white complexion had attracted her fancy from the very
+first; and the more she saw of him the more she liked him.
+
+They met often--quite by accident, of course--on the moor and
+elsewhere. Tyrrel, for his part, shrank somewhat timidly from the
+sister of the boy, for his share in whose death he so bitterly
+reproached himself; yet he couldn't quite drag himself off whenever he
+found himself in Cleer's presence. She bound him as by a spell. He was
+profoundly attracted to her. There was something about the pretty
+Cornish girl so frank, so confiding, in one word, so magnetic, that
+when once he came near her he couldn't tear himself away as he felt he
+ought to. Yet he could see very well, none the less, it was for Eustace
+Le Neve that she watched most eagerly, with the natural interest of a
+budding girl in the man who takes her pure maiden fancy. Tyrrel allowed
+with a sigh that this was well indeed; for how could he ever dream, now
+he knew who she was, of marrying young Michael Trevennack's sister?
+
+One afternoon the two friends were returning from a long ramble across
+the open moor, when, near a little knoll of bare and weathered rock
+that rose from a circling belt of Cornish heath, they saw Cleer by
+herself, propped against the huge boulders, with her eyes fixed
+intently on a paper-covered novel. She looked up and smiled as they
+approached; and the young men, turning aside from their ill-marked
+path, came over and stood by her. They talked for awhile about the
+ordinary nothings of society small-talk, till by degrees Cleer chanced
+accidentally to bring the conversation round to something that had
+happened to her mother and herself a year or two since in Malta. Le
+Neve snatched at the word; for he was eager to learn all he could about
+the Trevennacks' movements, so deeply had Cleer already impressed her
+image on his susceptible nature.
+
+"And when do you go back there?" he asked, somewhat anxiously. "I
+suppose your father's leave is for a week or two only."
+
+"Oh, dear, no; we don't go back at all, thank heaven," Cleer answered,
+with a sunny smile. "I can't bear exile, Mr. Le Neve, and I never cared
+one bit for living in Malta. But this year, fortunately, papa's going
+to be transferred for a permanence to England; he's to have charge of a
+department that has something or other to do with provisioning the
+Channel Squadron; I don't quite understand what; but anyhow, he'll have
+to be running about between Portsmouth and Plymouth, and I don't know
+where else; and mamma and I will have to take a house for ourselves in
+London."
+
+Le Neve's face showed his pleasure. "That's well," he answered,
+briskly. "Then you won't be quite lost! I mean, there'll be some chance
+at least when you go away from here of one's seeing you sometimes."
+
+A bright red spot rose deep on Cleer's cheek through the dark
+olive-brown skin. "How kind of you to say so," she answered, looking
+down. "I'm sure mamma'll be very pleased, indeed, if you'll take the
+trouble to call." Then, to hide her confusion, she went on hastily,
+"And are YOU going to be in England, too? I thought I understood the
+other day from your friend you had something to do with a railway in
+South America."
+
+"Oh, that's all over now," Le Neve answered, with a wave, well pleased
+she should ask him about his whereabouts so cordially. "I was only
+employed in the construction of the line, you know; I've nothing at all
+to do with its maintenance and working, and now the track's laid, my
+work there's finished. But as to stopping in England,--ah--that's quite
+another thing. An engineer's, you know, is a roving life. He's here
+to-day and there to-morrow. I must go, I suppose, wherever work may
+take me. And there isn't much stirring in the markets just now in the
+way of engineering."
+
+"I hope you'll get something at home," Cleer said, simply, with a
+blush, and then blamed herself for saying it. She blushed again at the
+thought. She looked prettiest when she blushed. Walter Tyrrel, a little
+behind, stood and admired her all the while. But Eustace was flattered
+she should think of wanting him to remain in England.
+
+"Thank you," he said, somewhat timidly, for her bashfulness made him a
+trifle bashful in return. "I should like to very much--for more reasons
+than one;" and he looked at her meaningly. "I'm getting tired, in some
+ways, of life abroad. I'd much prefer to come back now and settle down
+in England."
+
+Cleer rose as he spoke. His frank admiration made her feel
+self-conscious. She thought this conversation had gone quite far enough
+for them both for the present. After all, she knew so little of him,
+though he was really very nice, and he looked at her so kindly! But
+perhaps it would be better to go and hunt up papa. "I think I ought to
+be moving now," she said, with a delicious little flush on her smooth,
+dark cheek. "My father'll be waiting for me." And she set her face
+across the moor in the opposite direction from the gate of Penmorgan.
+
+"We may come with you, mayn't we?" Eustace asked, with just an
+undertone of wistfulness.
+
+But Tyrrel darted a warning glance at him. He, at least, couldn't go to
+confront once more that poor dead boy's father.
+
+"I must hurry home," he said, feebly, consulting his watch with an
+abstracted air. "It's getting so late. But don't let me prevent YOU
+from accompanying Miss Trevennack."
+
+Cleer shrank away, a little alarmed. She wasn't quite sure whether it
+would be perfectly right for her to walk about alone on the moorland
+with only ONE young man, though she wouldn't have minded the two, for
+there is safety in numbers. "Oh, no," she said, half frightened, in
+that composite tone which is at once an entreaty and a positive
+command. "Don't mind me, Mr. Le Neve. I'm quite accustomed to strolling
+by myself round the cliff. I wouldn't make you miss your dinner for
+worlds. And besides, papa's not far off. He went away from me,
+rambling."
+
+The two young men, accepting their dismissal in the sense in which it
+was intended, saluted her deferentially, and turned away on their own
+road. But Cleer took the path to Michael's Crag, by the gully.
+
+From the foot of the crag you can't see the summit. Its own shoulders
+and the loose rocks of the foreground hide it. But Cleer was pretty
+certain her father must be there; for he was mostly to be found, when
+tide permitted it, perched up on the highest pinnacle of his namesake
+skerry, looking out upon the waters with a pre-occupied glance from
+that airy citadel. The waves in the narrow channel that separate the
+crag from the opposite mainland were running high and boisterous, but
+Cleer had a sure foot, and could leap, light as a gazelle, from rock to
+rock. Not for nothing was she Michael Trevennack's daughter, well
+trained from her babyhood to high and airy climbs. She chose an easy
+spot where it was possible to spring across by a series of boulders,
+arranged accidentally like stepping-stones; and in a minute she was
+standing on the main crag itself, a huge beetling mass of detached
+serpentine pushed boldly out as the advance-guard of the land into the
+assailing waves, and tapering at its top into a pyramidal steeple.
+
+The face of the crag was wet with spray in places; but Cleer didn't
+mind spray; she was accustomed to the sea in all its moods and tempers.
+She clambered up the steep side--a sheer wall of bare rock, lightly
+clad here and there with sparse drapery of green sapphire, or clumps of
+purple sea-aster, rooted firm in the crannies. Its front was yellow
+with great patches of lichen, and on the peaks, overhead, the gulls
+perched, chattering, or launched themselves in long curves upon the
+evening air. Cleer paused half way up to draw breath and admire the
+familiar scene. Often as she had gone there before, she could never
+help gazing with enchanted eyes on those brilliantly colored pinnacles,
+on that deep green sea, on those angry white breakers that dashed in
+ceaseless assault against the solid black wall of rock all round her.
+Then she started once more on her climb up the uncertain path, a mere
+foothold in the crannies, clinging close with her tiny hands as she
+went to every jutting corner or weather-worn rock, and every woody stem
+of weather-beaten sea plants.
+
+At last, panting and hot, she reached the sharp top, expecting to find
+Trevennack at his accustomed post on the very tallest pinnacle of the
+craggy little islet. But, to her immense surprise, her father wasn't
+there. His absence disquieted her. Cleer stood up on the fissured mass
+of orange-lichened rock that crowned the very summit, dispossessing the
+gulls who flapped round her as she mounted it; then, shading her eyes
+with her hand, she looked down in every direction to see if she could
+descry that missing figure in some nook of the crag. He was nowhere
+visible. "Father!" she cried aloud, at the top of her voice; "father!
+father! father!" But the only answer to her cry was the sound of the
+sea on the base, and the loud noise of the gulls, as they screamed and
+fluttered in angry surprise over their accustomed breeding-grounds.
+
+Alarmed and irresolute, Cleer sat down on the rock, and facing
+landwards for awhile, waved her handkerchief to and fro to attract, if
+possible, her father's attention. Then she scanned the opposite cliffs,
+beyond the gap or chasm that separated her from the mainland; but she
+could nowhere see him. He must have forgotten her and gone home to
+dinner alone, she fancied now, for it was nearly seven o'clock. Nothing
+remained but to climb down again and follow him. It was getting full
+late to be out by herself on the island. And tide was coming in, and
+the surf was getting strong--Atlantic swell from the gale at sea
+yesterday.
+
+Painfully and toilsomely she clambered down the steep path, making her
+foothold good, step by step, in the slippery crannies, rendered still
+more dangerous in places by the sticky spray and the brine that dashed
+over them from the seething channel. It was harder coming down, a good
+deal, than going up, and she was accustomed to her father's hand to
+guide her--to fit her light foot on the little ledges by the way, or to
+lift her down over the steepest bits with unfailing tenderness. So she
+found it rather difficult to descend by herself--both difficult and
+tedious. At last, however, after one or two nasty slips, and a false
+step or so on the way that ended in her grazing the tender skin on
+those white little fingers, Cleer reached the base of the crag, and
+stood face to face with the final problem of crossing the chasm that
+divided the islet from the opposite mainland.
+
+Then for the first time the truth was borne in upon her with a sudden
+rush that she couldn't get back--she was imprisoned on the island. She
+had crossed over at almost the last moment possible. The sea now quite
+covered two or three of her stepping-stones; fierce surf broke over the
+rest with each advancing billow, and rendered the task of jumping from
+one to the other impracticable even for a strong and sure-footed man,
+far more for a slight girl of Cleer's height and figure.
+
+In a moment the little prisoner took in the full horror of the
+situation. It was now about half tide, and seven o'clock in the
+evening. High water would therefore fall between ten and eleven; and it
+must be nearly two in the morning, she calculated hastily, before the
+sea had gone down enough to let her cross over in safety. Even then, in
+the dark, she dared hardly face those treacherous stepping-stones. She
+must stop there till day broke, if she meant to get ashore again
+without unnecessary hazard.
+
+Cleer was a Trevennack, and therefore brave; but the notion of stopping
+alone on that desolate island, thronged with gulls and cormorants, in
+the open air, through all those long dark hours till morning dawned,
+fairly frightened and appalled her. For a minute or two she crouched
+and cowered in silence. Then, overcome by terror, she climbed up once
+more to the first platform of rock, above the reach of the spray, and
+shouted with all her might, "Father! father! father!"
+
+But 'tis a lonely coast, that wild stretch by the Lizard. Not a soul
+was within earshot. Cleer sat there still, or stood on top of the crag,
+for many minutes together, shouting and waving her handkerchief for
+dear life itself; but not a soul heard her. She might have died there
+unnoticed; not a creature came near to help or deliver her. The gulls
+and the cormorants alone stared at her and wondered.
+
+Meanwhile, tide kept flowing with incredible rapidity. The gale in the
+Atlantic had raised an unwonted swell; and though there was now little
+wind, the breakers kept thundering in upon the firm, sandy beach with a
+deafening roar that drowned Cleer's poor voice completely. To add to
+her misfortunes, fog began to drift slowly with the breeze from
+seaward. It was getting dark too, and the rocks were damp. Overhead the
+gulls screamed loud as they flapped and circled above her.
+
+In an agony of despair, Cleer sat down all unnerved on the topmost
+crag. She began to cry to herself. It was all up now. She knew she must
+stop there alone till morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+PERIL BY LAND.
+
+
+The Trevennacks dined in their lodgings at Gunwalloe at half-past
+seven. But in the rough open-air life of summer visitors on the Cornish
+coast, meals as a rule are very movable feasts; and Michael Trevennack
+wasn't particularly alarmed when he reached home that evening to find
+Cleer hadn't returned before him. They had missed one another, somehow,
+among the tangled paths that led down the gully; an easy enough thing
+to do between those big boulders and bramble-bushes; and it was a
+quarter to eight before Trevennack began to feel alarmed at Cleer's
+prolonged absence. By that time, however, he grew thoroughly
+frightened; and, reproaching himself bitterly for having let his
+daughter stray out of his sight in the first place, he hurried back,
+with his wife, at the top of his speed along the cliff path to the
+Penmorgan headland.
+
+It's half an hour's walk from Gunwalloe to Michael's Crag; and by the
+time Trevennack reached the mouth of the gully the sands were almost
+covered; so for the first time in fifteen years he was forced to take
+the path right under the cliff to the now comparatively distant island,
+round whose base a whole waste of angry sea surged sullenly. On the way
+they met a few workmen who, in answer to their inquiries, could give
+them no news, but who turned back to aid in the search for the missing
+young lady. When they got opposite Michael's Crag, a wide belt of black
+water, all encumbered with broken masses of sharp rock, some above and
+some below the surface, now separated them by fifty yards or more from
+the island. It was growing dark fast, for these were the closing days
+of August twilight; and dense fog had drifted in, half obliterating
+everything. They could barely descry the dim outline of the pyramidal
+rock in its lower half; its upper part was wholly shrouded in thick
+mist and drizzle.
+
+With a wild cry of despair, Trevennack raised his voice, and shouted
+aloud, "Cleer, Cleer! where are you?"
+
+That clarion voice, as of his namesake angel, though raised against the
+wind, could be heard above even the thud of the fierce breakers that
+pounded the sand. On the highest peak above, where she sat, cold and
+shivering, Cleer heard it, and jumped up. "Here! here! father!" she
+cried out, with a terrible effort, descending at the same time down the
+sheer face of the cliff as far as the dashing spray and fierce wild
+waves would allow her.
+
+No other ear caught the sound of that answering cry; but Trevennack's
+keen senses, preternaturally awakened by the gravity of the crisis,
+detected the faint ring of her girlish voice through the thunder of the
+surf. "She's there!" he cried, frantically, waving his hands above his
+head. "She's there! She's there! We must get across and save her."
+
+For a second Mrs. Trevennack doubted whether he was really right, or
+whether this was only one of poor Michael's hallucinations. But the
+next moment, with another cry, Cleer waved her handkerchief in return,
+and let it fall from her hand. It came, carried on the light breeze,
+and dropped in the water before their very eyes, half way across the
+channel.
+
+Frenzied at the sight, Trevennack tore off his coat, and would have
+plunged into the sea, then and there, to rescue her. But the workmen
+held him back. "No, no, sir; you mustn't," they said. "No harm can't
+come to the young lady if she stops there. She've only got to sit on
+them rocks there till morning, and the tide'll leave her high and dry
+right enough, as it always do. But nobody couldn't live in such a sea
+as that--not Tim o' Truro. The waves 'u'd dash him up afore he knowed
+where he was, and smash him all to pieces on the side o' the island."
+
+Trevennack tried to break from them, but the men held him hard. Their
+resistance angered him. He chafed under their restraint. How dare these
+rough fellows lay hands like that on the Prince of the Archangels and a
+superior officer in Her Majesty's Civil Service? But with the
+self-restraint that was habitual to him, he managed to refrain, even
+so, from disclosing his identity. He only struggled ineffectually,
+instead of blasting them with his hot breath, or clutching his strong
+arms round their bare throats and choking them. As he stood there and
+hesitated, half undecided how to act, of a sudden a sharp cry arose
+from behind. Trevennack turned and looked. Through the dark and the fog
+he could just dimly descry two men hurrying up, with ropes and life
+buoys. As they neared him, he started in unspeakable horror. For one of
+them, indeed, was only Eustace Le Neve; but the other--the other was
+that devil Walter Tyrrel, who, he felt sure in his own heart, had
+killed their dear Michael. And it was his task in life to fight and
+conquer devils.
+
+For a minute he longed to leap upon him and trample him under foot, as
+long ago he had trampled his old enemy, Satan. What was the fellow
+doing here now? What business had he with Cleer? Was he always to be in
+at the death of a Trevennack?
+
+But true to her trust, the silver-haired lady clutched his arm with
+tender watchfulness. "For Cleer's sake, dear Michael!" she whispered
+low in his ear; "for Cleer's sake--say nothing; don't speak to him,
+don't notice him!"
+
+The distracted father drew back a step, out of reach of the spray. "But
+Lucy," he cried low to her, "only think! only remember! If I cared to
+go on the cliff and just spread my wings, I could fly across and save
+her--so instantly, so easily!"
+
+His wife held his hand hard. That touch always soothed him. "If you
+did, Michael," she said gently, with her feminine tact, "they'd all
+declare you were mad, and had no wings to fly with. And Cleer's in no
+immediate danger just now, I feel sure. Don't try, there's a dear man.
+That's right! Oh, thank you."
+
+Reassured by her calm confidence, Trevennack fell back yet another step
+on the sands, and watched the men aloof. Walter Tyrrel turned to him.
+His heart was in his mouth. He spoke in short, sharp sentences. "The
+coastguard's wife told us," he said. "We've come down to get her off.
+I've sent word direct to the Lizard lifeboat. But I'm afraid it won't
+come. They daren't venture out. Sea runs too high, and these rocks are
+too dangerous."
+
+As he spoke, he tore off his coat, tied a rope round his waist, flung
+his boots on the sand, and girded himself rapidly with an inflated
+life-buoy. Then, before the men could seize him or prevent the rash
+attempt, he had dashed into the great waves that curled and thundered
+on the beach, and was struggling hard with the sea in a life and death
+contest. Eustace Le Neve held the rope, and tried to aid him in his
+endeavors. He had meant to plunge in himself, but Walter Tyrrel was
+beforehand with him. He was no match in a race against time for the
+fiery and impetuous Cornish temperament. It wasn't long, however,
+before the breakers proved themselves more than equal foes for Walter
+Tyrrel. In another minute he was pounded and pummeled on the unseen
+rocks under water by the great curling billows. They seized him
+resistlessly on their crests, tumbled him over like a child, and dashed
+him, bruised and bleeding, one limp bundle of flesh, against the jagged
+and pointed summits of the submerged boulders.
+
+With all his might, Eustace Le Neve held on to the rope; then, in coat
+and boots as he stood, he plunged into the waves and lifted Walter
+Tyrrel in his strong arms landward. He was a bigger built and more
+powerful man than his host, and his huge limbs battled harder with the
+gigantic waves. But even so, in that swirling flood, it was touch and
+go with him. The breakers lifted him off his feet, tossed him to and
+fro in their trough, flung him down again forcibly against the
+sharp-edged rocks, and tried to float off his half unconscious burden.
+But Le Neve persevered in spite of them, scrambling and tottering as he
+went, over wet and slippery reefs, with Tyrrel still clasped in his
+arms, and pressed tight to his breast, till he landed him safe at last
+on the firm sand beside him.
+
+The squire was far too beaten and bruised by the rocks to make a second
+attempt against those resistless breakers. Indeed, Le Neve brought him
+ashore more dead than alive, bleeding from a dozen wounds on the face
+and hands, and with the breath almost failing in his battered body.
+They laid him down on the beach, while the fishermen crowded round him,
+admiring his pluck, though they deprecated his foolhardiness, for they
+"knowed the squire couldn't never live ag'in it." But Le Neve, still
+full of the reckless courage of youth, and health, and strength, and
+manhood, keenly alive now to the peril of Cleer's lonely situation,
+never heeded their forebodings. He dashed in once more, just as he
+stood, clothes and all, in the wild and desperate attempt to stem that
+fierce flood and swim across to the island.
+
+In such a sea as then raged, indeed, and among such broken rocks,
+swimming, in the strict sense, was utterly impossible. By some mere
+miracle of dashing about, however--here, battered against the sharp
+rocks; there, flung over them by the breakers; and yonder, again,
+sucked down, like a straw in an eddy, by the fierce strength of the
+undertow--Eustace found himself at last, half unconscious and half
+choked, carried round by the swirling scour that set through the
+channel to the south front of the island. Next instant he felt he was
+cast against the dead wall of rock like an india rubber ball. He
+rebounded into the trough. The sea caught him a second time, and flung
+him once more, helpless, against the dripping precipice. With what life
+was left in him, he clutched with both hands the bare serpentine edge.
+Good luck befriended him. The great wave had lifted him up on its
+towering crest to the level of vegetation, beyond the debatable zone.
+He clung to the hard root of woody sea-aster in the clefts. The waves
+dashed back in tumultuous little cataracts, and left him there hanging.
+
+Like a mountain goat, Eustace clambered up the side, on hands, knees,
+feet, elbows, glad to escape with his life from that irresistible
+turmoil. The treacherous herbs on the slope of the crag were kind to
+him. He scrambled ahead, like some mad, wild thing. He went onward,
+upward, cutting his hands at each stage, tearing the skin from his
+fingers. It was impossible; but he did it. Next minute he found himself
+high and dry on the island.
+
+His clothes were clinging wet, of course, and his limbs bruised and
+battered. But he was safe on the firm plateau of the rock at last; and
+he had rescued Cleer Trevennack!
+
+In the first joy and excitement of the moment he forgot altogether the
+cramping conventionalities of our every-day life; and, repeating the
+cry he had heard Michael Trevennack raise from the beach below, he
+shouted aloud, at the top of his voice, "Cleer! Cleer! Where are you?"
+
+"Here!" came an answering voice from the depths of the gloom overhead.
+And following the direction whence the sound seemed to come, Eustace Le
+Neve clambered up to her.
+
+As he seized her hand and wrung it, Cleer crying the while with delight
+and relief, it struck him all at once, for the very first time, he had
+done no good by coming, save to give her companionship. It would be
+hopeless to try carrying her through those intricate rock-channels and
+that implacable surf, whence he himself had emerged, alone and
+unburdened, only by a miracle. They two must stop alone there on the
+rock till morning.
+
+As for Cleer, too innocent and too much of a mere woman in her deadly
+peril to think of anything but the delightful sense of confidence in a
+strong man at her side to guard and protect her, she sat and held his
+hand still, in a perfect transport of gratitude. "Oh, how good of you
+to come!" she cried again and again, bending over it in her relief, and
+half tempted to kiss it. "How good of you to come across like that to
+save me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+SAFE AT LAST.
+
+
+The night was long. The night was dark. Slowly the fog closed them in.
+It grew rainier and more dismal. But on the summit of the crag Eustace
+Le Neve stood aloft, and waved his arms, and shouted. He lit a match
+and shaded it. The dull glare of it through the mist just faintly
+reached the eyes of the anxious watchers on the beach below. From a
+dozen lips there rose an answering shout. The pair on the crag half
+heard its last echoes. Eustace put his hands to his mouth and cried
+aloud once more, in stentorian tones, "All right. Cleer's here. We can
+hold out till morning."
+
+Trevennack alone heard the words. But he repeated them so instantly
+that his wife felt sure it was true hearing, not insane hallucination.
+The sea was gaining on them now. It had risen almost up to the face of
+the cliffs. Reluctantly they turned along the path by the gully, and
+mounting the precipice waited and watched till morning on the tor that
+overlooks Michael's Crag from the Penmorgan headland.
+
+Every now and again, through that livelong night, Trevennack whispered
+in his wife's ear, "If only I chose to spread my wings, and launch
+myself, I could fly across and carry her." And each time that brave
+woman, holding his hand in her own and smoothing it gently, answered in
+her soft voice, "But then the secret would be out, and Cleer's life
+would be spoiled, and they'd call you a madman. Wait till morning, dear
+Michael; do, do, wait till morning."
+
+And Trevennack, struggling hard with the mad impulse in his heart,
+replied with all his soul, "I will; I will; for Cleer's sake and yours,
+I'll try to keep it down. I'll not be mad. I'll be strong and restrain
+it."
+
+For he knew he was insane, in his inmost soul, almost as well as he
+knew his name was Michael the Archangel.
+
+On the island, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve and Cleer Trevennack sat
+watching out the weary night, and longing for the dawn to make the way
+back possible. At least, Cleer did, for as to Eustace, in spite of rain
+and fog and cold and darkness, he was by no means insensible to the
+unwonted pleasure of so long a tete-a-tete, in such romantic
+circumstances, with the beautiful Cornish girl. To be sure the waves
+roared, and the drizzle dripped, and the seabirds flapped all round
+them. But many waters will not quench love. Cleer was by his side,
+holding his hand in hers in the dark for pure company's sake, because
+she was so frightened; and as the night wore on they talked at last of
+many things. They were prisoners there for five mortal hours or so,
+alone, together; and they might as well make the best of it by being
+sociable with one another.
+
+There could be no denying, however, that it was cold and damp and dark
+and uncomfortable. The rain came beating down upon them, as they sat
+there side by side on that exposed rock. The spray from the breakers
+blew in with the night wind; the light breeze struck chill on their wet
+clothes and faces. After awhile Eustace began a slow tour of inspection
+over the crag, seeking some cave or rock shelter, some projecting ledge
+of stone on the leeward side that might screen their backs at least
+from the driving showers. Cleer couldn't be left alone; she clung to
+his hand as he felt his way about the islet, with uncertain steps,
+through the gloom and fog. Once he steadied himself on a jutting piece
+of the rock as he supposed, when to his immense surprise--wh'r'r'r--it
+rose from under his hand, with a shrill cry of alarm, and fluttered
+wildly seaward. It was some sleeping gull, no doubt, disturbed
+unexpectedly in its accustomed resting-place. Eustace staggered and
+almost fell. Cleer supported him with her arm. He accepted her aid
+gratefully. They stumbled on in the dark once more, lighting now and
+again for a minute or two one of his six precious matches--he had no
+more in his case--and exploring as well as they might the whole broken
+surface of that fissured pinnacle. "I'm so glad you smoke, Mr. Le
+Neve," Cleer said, simply, as he lit one. "For if you didn't, you know,
+we'd have been left here all night in utter darkness."
+
+At last, in a nook formed by the weathered joints, Eustace found a
+rugged niche, somewhat dryer than the rest, and laid Cleer gently down
+in it, on a natural spring seat of tufted rock-plants. Then he settled
+down beside her, with what cheerfulness he could muster up, and taking
+off his wet coat, spread it on top across the cleft, like a tent roof,
+to shelter them. It was no time, indeed, to stand upon ceremony. Cleer
+recognized as much, and nestled close to his side, like a sensible girl
+as she was, so as to keep warm by mere company; while Eustace, still
+holding her hand, just to assure her of his presence, placed himself in
+such an attitude, leaning before her and above her, as to protect her
+as far as possible from the drizzling rainfall through the gap in front
+of them. There they sat till morning, talking gradually of many things,
+and growing more and more confidential, in spite of cold and wet, as
+they learnt more and more, with each passing hour, of each other's
+standpoint. There are some situations where you get to know people
+better in a few half-hours together than you could get to know them in
+months upon months of mere drawing-room acquaintance. And this was one
+of them. Before morning dawned, Eustace Le Neve and Cleer Trevennack
+felt just as if they had known one another quite well for years. They
+were old and trusted friends already. Old friends--and even something
+more than that. Though no word of love was spoken between them, each
+knew of what the other was thinking. Eustace felt Cleer loved him;
+Cleer felt Eustace loved her. And in spite of rain and cold and fog and
+darkness they were almost happy--before dawn came to interrupt their
+strange tete-a-tete on the islet.
+
+As soon as day broke Eustace looked out from their eyrie on the
+fissured peak, and down upon the troubled belt of water below. The sea
+was now ebbing, and the passage between the rock and the mainland
+though still full (for it was never dry even at spring-tide low water)
+was fairly passable by this time over the natural bridge of
+stepping-stones. He clambered down the side, giving his hand to Cleer
+from ledge to ledge as he went. The fog had lifted a little, and on the
+opposite headland they could just dimly descry the weary watchers
+looking eagerly out for them. Eustace put his hands to his mouth, and
+gave a loud halloo. The sound of the breakers was less deafening now;
+his voice carried to the mainland. Trevennack, who had sat under a
+tarpaulin through the livelong night, watching and waiting with anxious
+heart for the morning, raised an answering shout, and waved his hat in
+his hand frantically. St. Michael's Crag had not betrayed its trust.
+That was the motto of the Trevennacks--"Stand fast, St.
+Michael's!"--under the crest of the rocky islet, castled and mured,
+flamboyant. Eustace reached the bottom of the rock, and, wading in the
+water himself, or jumping into the deepest parts, helped Cleer across
+the stepping-stones. Meanwhile, the party on the cliff had hurried down
+by the gully path; and a minute later Cleer was in her mother's arms,
+while Trevennack held her hand, inarticulate with joy, and bent over
+her eagerly.
+
+"Oh, mother," Cleer cried, in her simple girlish naivete, "Mr. Le
+Neve's been so kind to me! I don't know how I should ever have got
+through the night without him. It was so good of him to come. He's been
+SUCH a help to me."
+
+The father and mother both looked into her eyes--a single searching
+glance--and understood perfectly. They grasped Le Neve's hand. Tears
+rolled down their cheeks. Not a word was spoken, but in a certain
+silent way all four understood one another.
+
+"Where's Tyrrel?" Eustace asked.
+
+And Mrs. Trevennack answered, "Carried home, severely hurt. He was
+bruised on the rocks. But we hope not dangerously. The doctor's been to
+see him, we hear, and finds no bones broken. Still, he's terribly
+battered about, in those fearful waves, and it must be weeks, they tell
+us, before he can quite recover."
+
+But Cleer, as was natural, thought more of the man who had struggled
+through and reached her than of the man who had failed in the attempt,
+though he suffered all the more for it. This is a world of the
+successful. In it, as in most other planets I have visited, people make
+a deal more fuss over the smallest success than over the noblest
+failure.
+
+It was no moment for delay. Eustace turned on his way at once, and ran
+up to Penmorgan. And the Trevennacks returned, very wet and cold, in
+the dim gray dawn to their rooms at Gunwalloe.
+
+As soon as they were alone--Cleer put safely to bed--Trevennack looked
+at his wife. "Lucy," he said, slowly, in a disappointed tone, "after
+this, of course, come what may, they must marry."
+
+"They must," his wife answered. "There's no other way left. And
+fortunately, dear, I could see from the very first, Cleer likes him,
+and he likes her."
+
+The father paused a moment. It wasn't quite the match he had hoped for
+a Trevennack of Trevennack. Then he added, very fervently, "Thank God
+it was HIM--not that other man, Tyrrel! Thank God, the first one fell
+in the water and was hurt. What should we ever have done--oh, what
+should we have done, Lucy, if she'd been cut off all night long on that
+lonely crag face to face with the man who murdered our dear boy
+Michael?"
+
+Mrs. Trevennack drew a long breath. Then she spoke earnestly once more.
+"Dear heart," she said, looking deep into his clear brown eyes, "now
+remember, more than ever, Cleer's future is at stake. For Cleer's sake,
+more than ever, keep a guard on yourself, Michael; watch word and deed,
+do nothing foolish."
+
+"You can trust me!" Trevennack answered, drawing himself up to his full
+height, and looking proudly before him. "Cleer's future is at stake.
+Cleer has a lover now. Till Cleer is married, I'll give you my sacred
+promise no living soul shall ever know in any way she's an archangel's
+daughter."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MEDICAL OPINION.
+
+
+From that day forth, by some unspoken compact, it was "Eustace" and
+"Cleer," wherever they met, between them. Le Neve began it, by coming
+round in the afternoon of that self-same day, as soon as he'd slept off
+the first effects of his fatigue and chill, to inquire of Mrs.
+Trevennack "how Cleer was getting on" after her night's exposure. And
+Mrs. Trevennack accepted the frank usurpation in very good part, as
+indeed was no wonder, for Cleer had wanted to know half an hour before
+whether "Eustace" had yet been round to ask after her. The form of
+speech told all. There was no formal engagement, and none of the party
+knew exactly how or when they began to take it for granted; but from
+that evening on Michael's Crag it was a tacitly accepted fact between
+Le Neve and the Trevennacks that Eustace was to marry Cleer as soon as
+he could get a permanent appointment anywhere.
+
+Engineering, however, is an overstocked profession. In that particular
+it closely resembles most other callings.
+
+The holidays passed away, and Walter Tyrrel recovered, and the
+Trevennacks returned to town for the head of the house to take up his
+new position in the Admiralty service; but Eustace Le Neve heard of no
+opening anywhere for an energetic young man with South American
+experience. Those three years he had passed out of England, indeed, had
+made him lose touch with other members of his craft. People shrugged
+their shoulders when they heard of him, and opined, with a chilly
+smile, he was the sort of young man who ought to go to the colonies.
+That's the easiest way of shelving all similar questions. The colonies
+are popularly regarded in England as the predestined dumping-ground for
+all the fools and failures of the mother-country. So Eustace settled
+down in lodgings in London, not far from the Trevennacks, and spent
+more of his time, it must be confessed, in going round to see Cleer
+than in perfecting himself in the knowledge of his chosen art. Not that
+he failed to try every chance that lay open to him--he had far too much
+energy to sit idle in his chair and let the stream of promotion flow by
+unattempted; but chances were few and applicants were many, and month
+after month passed away to his chagrin without the clever young
+engineer finding an appointment anywhere. Meanwhile, his little
+nest-egg of South-American savings was rapidly disappearing; and though
+Tyrrel, who had influence with railway men, exerted himself to the
+utmost on his friend's behalf--partly for Cleer's sake, and partly for
+Eustace's own--Le Neve saw his balance growing daily smaller, and began
+to be seriously alarmed at last, not merely for his future prospects of
+employment and marriage, but even for his immediate chance of a modest
+livelihood.
+
+Nor was Mrs. Trevennack, for her part, entirely free from sundry qualms
+of conscience as to her husband's condition and the rightfulness of
+concealing it altogether from Cleer's accepted lover. Trevennack
+himself was so perfectly sane in every ordinary relation of life, so
+able a business head, so dignified and courtly an English gentleman,
+that Eustace never even for a moment suspected any undercurrent of
+madness in that sound practical intelligence. Indeed, no man could talk
+with more absolute common sense about his daughter's future, or the
+duties and functions of an Admiralty official, than Michael Trevennack.
+It was only to his wife in his most confidential moments that he ever
+admitted the truth as to his archangelic character; to all others whom
+he met he was simply a distinguished English civil servant of blameless
+life and very solid judgment. The heads of his department placed the
+most implicit trust in Trevennack's opinion; there was no man about the
+place who could decide a knotty point of detail off-hand like Michael
+Trevennack. What was his poor wife to do, then? Was it her place to
+warn Eustace that Cleer's father might at any moment unexpectedly
+develop symptoms of dangerous insanity? Was she bound thus to wreck her
+own daughter's happiness? Was she bound to speak out the very secret of
+her heart which she had spent her whole life in inducing Trevennack
+himself to bottle up with ceaseless care in his distracted bosom?
+
+And yet ... she saw the other point of view as well--alas, all too
+plainly. She was a martyr to conscience, like Walter Tyrrel himself;
+was it right of her, then, to tie Eustace for life to a girl who was
+really a madman's daughter? This hateful question was up before her
+often in the dead dark night, as she lay awake on her bed, tossing and
+turning feverishly; it tortured her in addition to her one lifelong
+trouble. For the silver-haired lady had borne the burden of that
+unknown sorrow locked up in her own bosom for fifteen years; and it had
+left on her face such a beauty of holiness as a great trouble often
+leaves indelibly stamped on women of the same brave, loving temperament.
+
+One day, about three months later, in their drawing-room at Bayswater,
+Eustace Le Neve happened to let drop a casual remark which cut poor
+Mrs. Trevennack to the quick, like a knife at her heart. He was talking
+of some friend of his who had lately got engaged. "It's a terrible
+thing," he said, seriously. "There's insanity in the family. I wouldn't
+marry into such a family as that--no, not if I loved a girl to
+distraction, Mrs. Trevennack. The father's in a mad-house, you know;
+and the girl's very nice now, but one never can tell when the tendency
+may break out. And then--just think! what an inheritance to hand on to
+one's innocent children!"
+
+Trevennack took no open notice of what he said. But Mrs. Trevennack
+winced, grew suddenly pale, and stammered out some conventional
+none-committing platitude. His words entered her very soul. They stung
+and galled her. That night she lay awake and thought more bitterly to
+herself about the matter than ever. Next morning early, as soon as
+Trevennack had set off to catch the fast train from Waterloo to
+Portsmouth direct (he was frequently down there on Admiralty business),
+she put on her cloak and bonnet, without a word to Cleer, and set out
+in a hansom all alone to Harley Street.
+
+The house to which she drove was serious-looking and professional--in
+point of fact, it was Dr. Yate-Westbury's, the well-known specialist on
+mental diseases. She sent up no card and gave no name. On the contrary,
+she kept her veil down--and it was a very thick one. But Dr.
+Yate-Westbury made no comment on this reticence; it was a familiar
+occurrence with him--people are often ashamed to have it known they
+consult a mad-doctor.
+
+"I want to ask you about my husband's case," Mrs. Trevennack began,
+trembling. And the great specialist, all attention, leaned forward and
+listened to her.
+
+Mrs. Trevennack summoned up courage, and started from the very
+beginning. She described how her husband, who was a government servant,
+had been walking below a cliff on the seashore with their only son,
+some fifteen years earlier, and how a shower of stones from the top had
+fallen on their heads and killed their poor boy, whose injuries were
+the more serious. She could mention it all now with comparatively
+little emotion; great sorrows since had half obliterated that first and
+greatest one. But she laid stress upon the point that her husband had
+been struck, too, and was very gravely hurt--so gravely, indeed, that
+it was weeks before he recovered physically.
+
+"On what part of the head?" Yate-Westbury asked, with quick medical
+insight.
+
+And Mrs. Trevennack answered, "Here," laying her small gloved hand on
+the center of the left temple.
+
+The great specialist nodded. "Go on," he said, quietly. "Fourth frontal
+convolution! And it was a month or two, I have no doubt, before you
+noticed any serious symptoms supervening?"
+
+"Exactly so," Mrs. Trevennack made answer, very much relieved. "It was
+all of a month or two. But from that day forth--from the very
+beginning, I mean--he had a natural horror of going BENEATH a cliff,
+and he liked to get as high up as he could, so as to be perfectly sure
+there was nobody at all anywhere above to hurt him." And then she went
+on to describe in short but graphic phrase how he loved to return to
+the place of his son's accident, and to stand for hours on lonely sites
+overlooking the spot, and especially on a crag which was dedicated to
+St. Michael.
+
+The specialist caught at what was coming with the quickness, she
+thought, of long experience. "Till he fancied himself the archangel?"
+he said, promptly and curiously.
+
+Mrs. Trevennack drew a deep breath of satisfaction and relief. "Yes,"
+she answered, flushing hot. "Till he fancied himself the archangel.
+There--there were extenuating circumstances, you see. His own name's
+Michael; and his family--well, his family have a special connection
+with St. Michael's Mount; their crest's a castled crag with 'Stand
+fast, St. Michael's!' and he knew he had to fight against this mad
+impulse of his own--which he felt was like a devil within him--for his
+daughter's sake; and he was always standing alone on these rocky high
+places, dedicated to St. Michael, till the fancy took full hold upon
+him; and now, though he knows in a sort of a way he's mad, he believes
+quite firmly he's St. Michael the Archangel."
+
+Yate-Westbury nodded once more. "Precisely the development I should
+expect to occur," he said, "after such an accident."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack almost bounded from her seat in her relief. "Then you
+attribute it to the accident first of all?" she asked, eagerly.
+
+"Not a doubt about it," the specialist answered. "The region you
+indicate is just the one where similar illusory ideas are apt to arise
+from external injuries. The bruise gave the cause, and circumstances
+the form. Besides, the case is normal--quite normal altogether. Does he
+have frequent outbreaks?"
+
+Mrs. Trevennack explained that he never had any. Except to herself, and
+that but seldom, he never alluded to the subject in any way.
+
+Yate-Westbury bit his lip. "He must have great self-control," he
+answered, less confidently. "In a case like that, I'm bound to admit,
+my prognosis--for the final result--would be most unfavorable. The
+longer he bottles it up the more terrible is the outburst likely to be
+when it arrives. You must expect that some day he will break out
+irrepressibly."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack bowed her head with the solemn placidity of despair.
+"I'm quite prepared for that," she said, quietly; "though I try hard to
+delay it, for a specific reason. That wasn't the question I came to
+consult you about to-day. I feel sure my poor husband's case is
+perfectly hopeless, as far as any possibility of cure is concerned;
+what I want to know is about another aspect of the case." She leaned
+forward appealingly. "Oh, doctor," she cried, clasping her hands, "I
+have a dear daughter at home--the one thing yet left me. She's engaged
+to be married to a young man whom she loves--a young man who loves her.
+Am I bound to tell him she's a madman's child? Is there any chance of
+its affecting her? Is the taint hereditary?"
+
+She spoke with deep earnestness. She rushed out with it without
+reserve. Yate-Westbury gazed at her compassionately. He was a
+kind-hearted man. "No; certainly not," he answered, with emphasis. "Not
+the very slightest reason in any way to fear it. The sanest man, coming
+from the very sanest and healthiest stock on earth, would almost
+certainly be subject to delusions under such circumstances. This is
+accident, not disease--circumstance, not temperament. The injury to the
+brain is the result of a special blow. Grief for the loss of his son,
+and brooding over the event, no doubt contributed to the particular
+shape the delusion has assumed. But the injury's the main thing. I
+don't doubt there's a clot of blood formed just here on the brain,
+obstructing its functions in part, and disturbing its due relations. In
+every other way, you say, he's a good man of business. The very
+apparent rationality of the delusion--the way it's been led up to by
+his habit of standing on cliffs, his name, his associations, his
+family, everything--is itself a good sign that the partial insanity is
+due to a local and purely accidental cause. It simulates reason as
+closely as possible. Dismiss the question altogether from your mind, as
+far as your daughter's future is concerned. Its no more likely to be
+inherited than a broken leg or an amputated arm is."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack burst into a flood of joyous tears. "Then all I have to
+do," she sobbed out, "is to keep him from an outbreak until after my
+daughter's married."
+
+Dr. Yate-Westbury nodded. "That's all you have to do," he answered,
+sympathetically. "And I'm sure Mrs. Trevennack---" he paused with a
+start and checked himself.
+
+"Why, how do you know my name?" the astonished mother cried, drawing
+back with a little shudder of half superstitious alarm at such
+surprising prescience.
+
+Dr. Yate-Westbury made a clean breast of it. "Well, to tell the truth,"
+he said, "Mr. Trevennack himself called round here yesterday, in the
+afternoon, and stated the whole case to me from his own point of view,
+giving his name in full--as a man would naturally do--but never
+describing to me the nature of his delusion. He said it was too sacred
+a thing for him to so much as touch upon; that he knew he wasn't mad,
+but that the world would think him so; and he wanted to know, from
+something he'd heard said, whether madness caused by an injury of the
+sort would or would not be considered by medical men as inheritable.
+And I told him at once, as I've told you to-day, there was not the
+faintest danger of it. But I never made such a slip in my life before
+as blurting out the name. I could only have done it to you. Trust me,
+your secret is safe in my keeping. I have hundreds in my head." He took
+her hand in his own as he spoke. "Dear madam," he said, gently, "I
+understand; I feel for you."
+
+"Thank you," Mrs. Trevennack answered low, with tears standing in her
+eyes. "I'm--I'm so glad you've SEEN him. It makes your opinion so much
+more valuable to me. But you thought his delusion wholly due to the
+accident, then?"
+
+"Wholly due to the accident, dear lady. Yes, wholly, wholly due to it.
+You may go home quite relieved. Your doubts and fears are groundless.
+Miss Trevennack may marry with a clear conscience."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A BOLD ATTEMPT.
+
+
+During the next ten or eleven months poor Mrs. Trevennack had but one
+abiding terror--that a sudden access of irrepressible insanity might
+attack her husband before Cleer and Eustace could manage to get
+married. Trevennack, however, with unvarying tenderness, did his best
+in every way to calm her fears. Though no word on the subject passed
+between them directly, he let her feel with singular tact that he meant
+to keep himself under proper control. Whenever a dangerous topic
+cropped up in conversation, he would look across at her affectionately,
+with a reassuring smile. "For Cleer's sake," he murmured often, if she
+was close by his side; "for Cleer's sake, dearest!" and his wife,
+mutely grateful, knew at once what he meant, and smiled approval sadly.
+
+Her heart was very full; her part was a hard one to play with fitting
+cheerfulness; but in his very madness itself she couldn't help loving,
+admiring, and respecting that strong, grave husband who fought so hard
+against his own profound convictions.
+
+Ten months passed away, however, and Eustace Le Neve didn't seem to get
+much nearer any permanent appointment than ever. He began to tire at
+last of applying unsuccessfully for every passing vacancy. Now and then
+he got odd jobs, to be sure; but odd jobs won't do for a man to marry
+upon; and serious work seemed always to elude him. Walter Tyrrel did
+his best, no doubt, to hunt up all the directors of all the companies
+he knew; but no posts fell vacant on any line they were connected with.
+It grieved Walter to the heart, for he had always had the sincerest
+friendship for Eustace Le Neve; and now that Eustace was going to marry
+Cleer Trevennack, Walter felt himself doubly bound in honor to assist
+him. It was HE who had ruined the Trevennacks' hopes in life by his
+unintentional injury to their only son; the least he could do in
+return, he thought, and felt, was to make things as easy as possible
+for their daughter and her intended husband.
+
+By July, however, things were looking so black for the engineer's
+prospects that Tyrrel made up his mind to run up to town and talk
+things over seriously with Eustace Le Neve himself in person. He hated
+going up there, for he hardly knew how he could see much of Eustace
+without running some risk of knocking up accidentally against Michael
+Trevennack; and there was nothing on earth that sensitive young squire
+dreaded so much as an unexpected meeting with the man he had so deeply,
+though no doubt so unintentionally and unwittingly, injured. But he
+went, all the same. He felt it was his duty. And duty to Walter Tyrrel
+spoke in an imperative mood which he dared not disobey, however much he
+might be minded to turn a deaf ear to it.
+
+Le Neve had little to suggest of any practical value. It wasn't his
+fault, Tyrrel knew; engineering was slack, and many good men were
+looking out for appointments. In these crowded days, it's a foolish
+mistake to suppose that energy, industry, ability, and integrity are
+necessarily successful. To insure success you must have influence,
+opportunity, and good luck as well, to back them. Without these, not
+even the invaluable quality of unscrupulousness itself is secure from
+failure.
+
+If only Walter Tyrrel could have got his friend to accept such terms,
+indeed, he would gladly, for Cleer's sake, have asked Le Neve to marry
+on an allowance of half the Penmorgan rent-roll. But in this commercial
+age, such quixotic arrangements are simply impossible. So Tyrrel set to
+work with fiery zeal to find out what openings were just then to be
+had; and first of all for that purpose he went to call on a
+parliamentary friend of his, Sir Edward Jones, the fat and good-natured
+chairman of the Great North Midland Railway. Tyrrel was a shareholder
+whose vote was worth considering, and he supported the Board with
+unwavering loyalty.
+
+Sir Edward was therefore all attention, and listened with sympathy to
+Tyrrel's glowing account of his friend's engineering energy and talent.
+When he'd finished his eulogy, however, the practical railway magnate
+crossed his fat hands and put in, with very common-sense dryness, "If
+he's so clever as all that, why doesn't he have a shot at this
+Wharfedale Viaduct?"
+
+Walter Tyrrel drew back a little surprised. The Wharfedale Viaduct was
+a question just then in everybody's mouth. But what a question! Why, it
+was one of the great engineering works of the age; and it was
+informally understood that the company were prepared to receive plans
+and designs from any competent person. There came the rub, though.
+Would Eustace have a chance in such a competition as that? Much as he
+believed in his old school-fellow, Tyrrel hesitated and reflected. "My
+friend's young, of course," he said, after a pause. "He's had very
+little experience--comparatively, I mean--to the greatness of the
+undertaking."
+
+Sir Edward pursed his fat lips. It's a trick with your railway kings.
+"Well, young men are often more inventive than old ones," he answered,
+slowly. "Youth has ideas; middle age has experience. In a matter like
+this, my own belief is, the ideas count for most. Yes, if I were you,
+Tyrrel, I'd ask your friend to consider it."
+
+"You would?" Walter cried, brightening up.
+
+"Aye, that I would," the great railway-man answered, still more
+confidently than before, rubbing his fat hands reflectively. "It's a
+capital opening. Erasmus Walker'll be in for it, of course; and Erasmus
+Walker'll get it. But don't you tell your fellow that. It'll only
+discourage him. You just send him down to Yorkshire to reconnoiter the
+ground; and if he's good for anything, when he's seen the spot he'll
+make a plan of his own, a great deal better than Walker's. Not that
+that'll matter, don't you know, as far as this viaduct goes. The
+company'll take Walker's, no matter how good any other fellow's may be,
+and how bad Walker's--because Walker has a great name, and because they
+think they can't go far wrong if they follow Walker. But still, if your
+friend's design is a good one, it'll attract attention--which is always
+something; and after they've accepted Walker's, and flaws begin to be
+found in it--as experts can always find flaws in anything, no matter
+how well planned--your friend can come forward and make a fuss in the
+papers (or what's better still, YOU can come forward and make it for
+him) to say these flaws were strikingly absent from HIS very superior
+and scientific conception. There'll be flaws in your friend's as well,
+of course, but they won't be the same ones, and nobody'll have the same
+interest in finding them out and exposing them. And that'll get your
+man talked about in the papers and the profession. It's better, anyhow,
+than wasting his time doing nothing in London here."
+
+"He shall do it!" Walter cried, all on fire. "I'll take care he shall
+do it. And Sir Edward, I tell you, I'd give five thousand pounds down
+if only he could get the job away from Walker."
+
+"Got a grudge against Walker, then?" Sir Edward cried quickly,
+puckering up his small eyes.
+
+"Oh, no," Tyrrel answered, smiling; that was not much in his line. "But
+I've got strong reasons of my own, on the other hand, for wishing to do
+a good turn to Le Neve in this business."
+
+And he went home, reflecting in his own soul on the way that many
+thousands would be as dross in the pan to him if only he could make
+Cleer Trevennack happy.
+
+But that very same evening Trevennack came home from the Admiralty in a
+most excited condition.
+
+"Lucy!" he cried to his wife, as soon as he was alone in the room with
+her, "who do you think I saw to-day--there, alive in the flesh,
+standing smiling on the steps of Sir Edward Jones' house?--that brute
+Walter Tyrrel, who killed our poor boy for us!" "Hush! hush, Michael!"
+his wife cried in answer. "It's so long ago now, and he was such a boy
+at the time; and he repents it bitterly--I'm sure he repents it. You
+promised you'd try to forgive him. For Cleer's sake, dear heart, you
+must keep your promise."
+
+Trevennack knit his brows. "What does he mean, then, by dogging my
+steps?" he cried. "What does he mean by coming after me up to London
+like this? What does he mean by tempting me? I can't stand the sight of
+him. I won't be challenged, Lucy; I don't know whether it's the devil
+or not, but when I saw the fellow to-day I had hard work to keep my
+hands off him. I wanted to spring at his throat. I would have liked to
+throttle him!"
+
+The silver-haired lady drew still closer to the excited creature, and
+held his hands with a gentle pressure. "Michael," she said, earnestly,
+"this IS the devil. This is the greatest temptation of all. This is
+what I dread most for you. Remember, it's Satan himself that suggests
+such thoughts to you. Fight the devil WITHIN, dearest. Fight him
+within, like a man. That's the surest place, after all, to conquer him."
+
+Trevennack drew himself up proudly, and held his peace for a time. Then
+he went on in another tone: "I shall get leave," said he quietly,
+becoming pure human once more. "I shall get leave of absence. I can't
+stop in town while this creature's about. I'd HAVE to spring at him if
+I saw him again. I can't keep my hands off him. I'll fly from
+temptation. I must go down into the country."
+
+"Not to Cornwall!" Mrs. Trevennack cried, in deep distress; for she
+dreaded the effect of those harrowing associations for him.
+
+Trevennack shook his head gravely. "No, not to Cornwall," he answered.
+"I've another plan this time. I want to go to Dartmoor. It's lonely
+enough there. Not a soul to distract me. You know, Lucy, when one means
+to fight the devil, there's nothing for it like the wilderness; and
+Dartmoor's wilderness enough for me. I shall go to Ivybridge, for the
+tors and the beacons."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack assented gladly. If he wanted to fight the devil, it
+was best at any rate he should be out of reach of Walter Tyrrel while
+he did it. And it was a good thing to get him away, too, from St.
+Michael's Mount, and St. Michael's Crag, and St. Michael's Chair, and
+all the other reminders of his archangelic dignity in the Penzance
+neighborhood. Why, she remembered with a wan smile--the dead ghost of a
+smile rather--he couldn't even pass the Angel Inn at Helston without
+explaining to his companions that the parish church was dedicated to
+St. Michael, and that the swinging sign of the old coaching house once
+bore a picture of the winged saint himself in mortal conflict with his
+Satanic enemy. It was something, at any rate, to get Trevennack away
+from a district so replete with memories of his past greatness, to say
+nothing of the spot where their poor boy had died. But Mrs. Trevennack
+didn't know that one thing which led her husband to select Dartmoor
+this time for his summer holiday was the existence, on the wild hills a
+little behind Ivybridge, of a clatter-crowned peak, known to all the
+country-side as St. Michael's Tor, and crowned in earlier days by a
+medieval chapel. It was on this sacred site of his antique cult that
+Trevennack wished to fight the internal devil. And he would fight it
+with a will, on that he was resolved; fight and, as became his angelic
+reputation, conquer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+BUSINESS IS BUSINESS.
+
+
+It reconciled Cleer to leaving London for awhile when she learnt that
+Eustace Le Neve was going north to Yorkshire, with Walter Tyrrel, to
+inspect the site of the proposed Wharfedale viaduct. Not that she ever
+mentioned his companion's name in her father's presence. Mrs.
+Trevennack had warned her many times over, with tears in her eyes, but
+without cause assigned, never to allude to Tyrrel's existence before
+her father's face; and Cleer, though she never for one moment suspected
+the need for such reticence, obeyed her mother's injunction with
+implicit honesty. So they parted two ways, Eustace and Tyrrel for the
+north, the Trevennacks for Devonshire. Cleer needed a change indeed;
+she'd spent the best part of a year in London. And for Cleer, that was
+a wild and delightful holiday. Though Eustace wasn't there, to be sure,
+he wrote hopefully from the north; he was maturing his ideas; he was
+evolving a plan; the sense of the magnitude of his stake in this
+attempt had given him an unwonted outburst of inspiration. As she
+wandered with her father among those boggy uplands, or stood on the
+rocky tors that so strangely crest the low flat hill-tops of the great
+Devonian moor. She felt a marvelous exhilaration stir her blood--the
+old Cornish freedom making itself felt through all the restrictions of
+our modern civilization. She was to the manner born, and she loved the
+Celtic West Country.
+
+But to Michael Trevennack it was life, health, vigor. He hated London.
+He hated officialdom. He hated the bonds of red tape that enveloped
+him. It's hard to know yourself an archangel--
+
+  "One of the seven who nearest to the throne
+   Stand ready at command, and are as eyes
+   That run through all the heavens, or down to the earth,"
+
+and yet to have to sit at a desk all day long, with a pen in your hand,
+in obedience to the orders of the First Lord of the Admiralty! It's
+hard to know you can
+
+  "Bear swift errands over moist and dry,
+   O'er sea and land,"
+
+as his laureate Milton puts it, and yet be doomed to keep still hour
+after hour in a stuffy office, or to haggle over details of pork and
+cheese in a malodorous victualing yard. Trevennack knew his "Paradise
+Lost" by heart--it was there, indeed, that he had formed his main ideas
+of the archangelic character; and he repeated the sonorous lines to
+himself, over and over again, in a ringing, loud voice, as he roamed
+the free moor or poised light on the craggy pinnacles. This was the
+world that he loved, these wild rolling uplands, these tall peaks of
+rock, these great granite boulders; he had loved them always, from the
+very beginning of things; had he not poised so of old, ages and ages
+gone by, on that famous crag
+
+  "Of alabaster, piled up to the clouds,
+   Conspicuous far, winding with one ascent
+   Accessible from earth, one entrance high;
+   The rest was craggy cliff that overhung
+   Still as it rose, impossible to climb."
+
+So he had poised in old days; so he poised himself now, with Cleer by
+his side, an angel confessed, on those high tors of Dartmoor.
+
+But amid all the undulations of that great stony ocean, one peak there
+was that delighted Trevennack's soul more than any of the rest--a bold
+russet crest, bursting suddenly through the heathery waste in abrupt
+ascent, and scarcely to be scaled, save on one difficult side, like its
+Miltonic prototype. Even Cleer, who accompanied her father everywhere
+on his rambles, clad in stout shoes and coarse blue serge gown--. for
+Dartmoor is by no means a place to be approached by those who, like
+Agag, "walk delicately"--even Cleer didn't know that this craggy peak,
+jagged and pointed like some Alpine or dolomitic aiguille, was known to
+all the neighboring shepherds around as St. Michael's Tor, from its now
+forgotten chapel. A few wild Moorland sheep grazed now and again on the
+short herbage at its base; but for the most part father and daughter
+found themselves alone amid that gorse-clad solitude. There Michael
+Trevennack would stand erect, with head bare and brows knit, in the
+full eye of the sun, for hour after hour at a time, fighting the devil
+within him. And when he came back at night, tired out with his long
+tramp across the moor and his internal struggle, he would murmur to his
+wife, "I've conquered him to-day. It was a hard, hard fight! But I
+conquered! I conquered him!"
+
+Up in the north, meanwhile, Eustace Le Neve worked away with a will at
+the idea for his viaduct. As he rightly wrote to Cleer, the need itself
+inspired him. Love is a great engineer, and Eustace learned fast from
+him. He was full of the fresh originality of youth; and the place took
+his fancy and impressed itself upon him. Gazing at it each day, there
+rose up slowly by degrees in his mind, like a dream, the picture of a
+great work on a new and startling principle--a modification of the
+cantilever to the necessities of the situation. Bit by bit he worked it
+out, and reduced his first floating conception to paper; then he
+explained it to Walter Tyrrel, who listened hard to his explanations,
+and tried his best to understand the force of the technical arguments.
+Enthusiasm is catching; and Le Neve was enthusiastic about his
+imaginary viaduct, till Walter Tyrrel in turn grew almost as
+enthusiastic as the designer himself over its beauty and utility. So
+charmed was he with the idea, indeed, that when Le Neve had at last
+committed it all to paper, he couldn't resist the temptation of asking
+leave to show it to Sir Edward Jones, whom he had already consulted as
+to Eustace's prospects.
+
+Eustace permitted him, somewhat reluctantly, to carry the design to the
+great railway king, and on the very first day of their return to
+London, in the beginning of October, Tyrrel took the papers round to
+Sir Edward's house in Onslow Gardens. The millionaire inspected it at
+first with cautious reserve. He was a good business man, and he hated
+enthusiasm--except in money matters. But gradually, as Walter Tyrrel
+explained to him the various points in favor of the design, Sir Edward
+thawed. He looked into it carefully. Then he went over the calculations
+of material and expense with a critical eye. At the end he leant back
+in his study chair, with one finger on the elevation and one eye on the
+figures, while he observed with slow emphasis: "This is a very good
+design. Why, man, its just about twenty times better than Erasmus
+Walker's."
+
+"Then you think it may succeed?" Tyrrel cried, with keen delight, as
+anxious for Cleer's sake as if the design were his own. "You think they
+may take it?"
+
+"Oh dear, no," Sir Edward answered, confidently, with a superior smile.
+"Not the slightest chance in the world of that. They'd never even dream
+of it. It's novel, you see, novel, while Walker's is conventional. And
+they'll take the conventional one. But its a first rate design for all
+that, I can tell you. I never saw a better one."
+
+"Well, but how do you know what Walker's is like?" Tyrrel asked,
+somewhat dismayed at the practical man's coolness.
+
+"Oh, he showed it me last night," Sir Edward answered, calmly. "A very
+decent design, on the familiar lines, but not fit to hold a candle to
+Le Neve's, of course; any journeyman could have drafted it. Still, it
+has Walker's name to it, don't you see--it has Walker's name to it;
+that means everything."
+
+"Is it cheaper than this would be," Tyrrel asked, for Le Neve had laid
+stress on the point that for economy of material, combined with
+strength of weight-resisting power, his own plan was remarkable.
+
+"Cheaper!" Sir Edward echoed. "Oh dear, no. By no means. Nothing could
+very well be cheaper than this. There's genius in its construction,
+don't you see? It's a new idea, intelligently applied to the
+peculiarities and difficulties of a very unusual position, taking
+advantage most ingeniously of the natural support afforded by the rock
+and the inequalities of the situation; I should say your friend is well
+within the mark in the estimate he gives." He drummed his finger and
+calculated mentally. "It'd save the company from a hundred and fifty to
+two hundred thousand pounds, I fancy," he said, ruminating, after a
+minute.
+
+"And do you mean to tell me," Tyrrel exclaimed, taken aback, "men of
+business like the directors of the Great North Midland will fling away
+two hundred thousand pounds of the shareholder's money as if it were
+dirt, by accepting Walker's plan when they might accept this one?"
+
+Sir Edward opened his palms, like a Frenchman, in front of him. It was
+a trick he had picked up on foreign bourses.
+
+"My dear fellow," he answered, compassionately, "directors are men, and
+to err is human. These great North Midland people are mere flesh and
+blood, and none of them very brilliant. They know Walker, and they'll
+be largely guided by Walker's advice in the matter. If he saw his way
+to make more out of contracting for carrying out somebody else's
+design, no doubt he'd do it. But failing that, he'll palm his own off
+upon them, and Stillingfleet'll accept it. You see with how little
+wisdom the railways of the world are governed! People think, if they
+get Walker to do a thing for them, they shift the responsibility upon
+Walker's shoulders. And knowing nothing themselves, they feel that's a
+great point; it saves them trouble and salves their consciences."
+
+A new idea seemed to cross Tyrrel's mind. He leant forward suddenly.
+
+"But as to safety," he asked, with some anxiety, "viewed as a matter of
+life and death, I mean? Which of these two viaducts is likely to last
+longest, to be freest from danger, to give rise in the end to least and
+fewest accidents?"
+
+"Why, your friend Le Neve's, of course," the millionaire answered,
+without a moment's hesitation.
+
+"You think so?"
+
+"I don't think so at all, my dear fellow, I know it. I'm sure of it.
+Look here," and he pulled out a design from a pigeon-hole in his desk;
+"this is in confidence, you understand. I oughtn't to show it to you;
+but I can trust your honor. Here's Walker's idea. It isn't an idea at
+all, in fact, it's just the ordinary old stone viaduct, with the
+ordinary dangers, and the ordinary iron girders--nothing in any way new
+or original. It's respectable mediocrity. On an affair like that, and
+with this awkward curve, too, just behind taking-off point, the
+liability to accident is considerably greater than in a construction
+like Le Neve's, where nothing's left to chance, and where every source
+of evil, such as land-springs, or freshets, or weakening, or
+concussion, is considered beforehand and successfully provided against.
+If a company only thought of the lives and limbs of its
+passengers--which it never does, of course--and had a head on its
+shoulders, which it seldom possesses, Le Neve's is undoubtedly the
+design it would adopt in the interests of security."
+
+Tyrrel drew a long breath. "And you know all this," he said, "and yet
+you won't say a word for Le Neve to the directors. A recommendation
+from YOU, you see--"
+
+Sir Edward shrugged his shoulders. "Impossible!" he answered, at once.
+"It would be a great breach of confidence. Remember, Walker showed me
+his design as a friend, and after having looked at it I couldn't go
+right off and say to Stillingfleet, 'I've seen Walker's plans, and also
+another fellow's, and I advise you, for my part, not to take my
+friend's.' It wouldn't be gentlemanly."
+
+Tyrrel paused and reflected. He saw the dilemma. And yet, what was the
+breach of confidence or of etiquette to the deadly peril to life and
+limb involved in choosing the worst design instead of the better one?
+It was a hard nut to crack. He could see no way out of it.
+
+"Besides," Sir Edward went on, musingly, "even if I told them they
+wouldn't believe me. Whatever Walker sends in they're sure to accept
+it. They've more confidence, I feel sure, in Walker than in anybody."
+
+A light broke in on Walter Tyrrel's mind.
+
+"Then the only way," he said, looking up, "would be ... to work upon
+Walker; induce him NOT to send in, if that can be managed."
+
+"But it can't be," Sir Edward answered, with brisk promptitude.
+"Walker's a money-grubbing chap. If he sees a chance of making a few
+thousands more anywhere, depend upon it he'll make 'em. He's a martyr
+to money, he is. He toils and slaves for L. s. d. {money} all his life.
+He has no other interests."
+
+"What can he want with it?" Tyrrel exclaimed. "He's a bachelor, isn't
+he, without wife or child? What can a man like that want to pile up
+filthy lucre for?"
+
+"Can't say, I'm sure," Sir Edward answered, good humoredly. "I have my
+quiver full of them myself, and every guinea I get I find three of my
+children are quarreling among themselves for ten and sixpence apiece of
+it. But what Walker can want with money heaven only knows. If _I_ were
+a bachelor, now, and had an estate of my own in Cornwall, say, or
+Devonshire, I'm sure I don't know what I'd do with my income."
+
+Tyrrel rose abruptly. The chance words had put an idea into his head.
+
+"What's Walker's address?" he asked, in a very curt tone.
+
+Sir Edward gave it him.
+
+"You'll find him a tough nut, though," he added, with a smile, as he
+followed the enthusiastic young Cornishman to the door. "But I see
+you're in earnest. Good luck go with you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+A HARD BARGAIN.
+
+
+Tyrrel took a hansom, and tore round in hot haste to Erasmus Walker's
+house. He sent in his card. The famous engineer was happily at home.
+Tyrrel, all on fire, found himself ushered into the great man's study.
+Mr. Walker sat writing at a luxurious desk in a most luxurious
+room--writing, as if for dear life, in breathless haste and eagerness.
+He simply paused for a second in the midst of a sentence, and looked up
+impatiently at the intruder on his desperate hurry. Then he motioned
+Tyrrel into a chair with an imperious wave of his ivory penholder.
+After that, he went on writing for some moments in solemn silence. Only
+the sound of his steel nib, traveling fast as it could go over the
+foolscap sheet, broke for several seconds the embarrassing stillness.
+
+Walter Tyrrel, therefore, had ample time meanwhile to consider his host
+and to take in his peculiarities before Walker had come to the end of
+his paragraph. The great engineer was a big-built, bull-necked,
+bullet-headed sort of person, with the self-satisfied air of monetary
+success, but with that ominous hardness about the corners of the mouth
+which constantly betrays the lucky man of business. His abundant long
+hair was iron-gray and wiry--Erasmus Walker had seldom time to waste in
+getting it cut--his eyes were small and shrewd; his hand was firm, and
+gripped the pen in its grasp like a ponderous crowbar. His writing,
+Tyrrel could see, was thick, black, and decisive. Altogether the kind
+of man on whose brow it was written in legible characters that it's
+dogged as does it. The delicately organized Cornishman felt an
+instinctive dislike at once for this great coarse mountain of a
+bullying Teuton. Yet for Cleer's sake he knew he mustn't rub him the
+wrong way. He must put up with Erasmus Walker and all his faults, and
+try to approach him by the most accessible side--if indeed any side
+were accessible at all, save the waistcoat pocket.
+
+At last, however, the engineer paused a moment in his headlong course
+through sentence after sentence, held his pen half irresolute over a
+new blank sheet, and turning round to Tyrrel, without one word of
+apology, said, in a quick, decisive voice, "This is business, I
+suppose, business? for if not, I've no time. I'm very pressed this
+morning. Very pressed, indeed. Very pressed and occupied."
+
+"Yes, it is business," Tyrrel answered, promptly, taking his cue with
+Celtic quickness. "Business that may be worth a good deal of money."
+Erasmus Walker pricked up his ears at that welcome sound, and let the
+pen drop quietly into the rack by his side. "Only I'm afraid I must ask
+for a quarter of an hour or so of your valuable time. You will not find
+it thrown away. You can name your own price for it."
+
+"My dear sir," the engineer replied, taking up his visitor's card again
+and gazing at it hard with a certain inquiring scrutiny, "if it's
+business, and business of an important character, of course I need
+hardly say I'm very glad to attend to you. There are so many people who
+come bothering me for nothing, don't you know--charitable appeals or
+what not--that I'm obliged to make a hard and fast rule about
+interviews. But if it's business you mean, I'm your man at once. I live
+for public works. Go ahead. I'm all attention."
+
+He wheeled round in his revolving chair, and faced Tyrrel in an
+attitude of sharp practical eagerness. His eye was all alert. It was
+clear, the man was keen on every passing chance of a stray hundred or
+two extra. His keenness disconcerted the conscientious and idealistic
+Cornishman. For a second or two Tyrrel debated how to open fire upon so
+unwonted an enemy. At last he began, stammering, "I've a friend who has
+made a design for the Wharfedale Viaduct."
+
+"Exactly," Erasmus Walker answered, pouncing down upon him like a hawk.
+"And I've made one too. And as mine's in the field, why, your friend's
+is waste paper."
+
+His sharpness half silenced Tyrrel. But with an effort the younger man
+went on, in spite of interruption. "That's precisely what I've come
+about," he said; "I know that already. If only you'll have patience and
+hear me out while I unfold my plan, you'll find what I have to propose
+is all to your own interest. I'm prepared to pay well for the
+arrangement I ask. Will you name your own price for half an hour's
+conversation, and then listen to me straight on and without further
+interruption?"
+
+Erasmus Walker glanced back at him with those keen ferret-like eyes of
+his. "Why, certainly," he answered; "I'll listen if you wish. We'll
+treat it as a consultation. My fees for consultation depend, of course,
+upon the nature of the subject on which advice is asked. But you'll pay
+well, you say, for the scheme you propose. Now, this is business.
+Therefore, we must be business-like. So first, what guarantee have I of
+your means and solvency? I don't deal with men of straw. Are you known
+in the City?" He jerked out his sentences as if words were extorted
+from him at so much per thousand.
+
+"I am not," Tyrrel answered, quietly; "but I gave you my card, and you
+can see from it who I am--Walter Tyrrel of Penmorgan Manor. I'm a
+landed proprietor, with a good estate in Cornwall. And I'm prepared to
+risk--well, a large part of my property in the business I propose to
+you, without any corresponding risk on your part. In plain words, I'm
+prepared to pay you money down, if you will accede to my wish, on a
+pure matter of sentiment."
+
+"Sentiment?" Mr. Walker replied, bringing his jaw down like a rat-trap,
+and gazing across at him, dubiously. "I don't deal in sentiment."
+
+"No; probably not," Tyrrel answered. "But I said sentiment, Mr. Walker,
+and I'm willing to pay for it. I know very well it's an article at a
+discount in the City. Still, to me, it means money's worth, and I'm
+prepared to give money down to a good tune to humor it. Let me explain
+the situation. I'll do so as briefly and as simply as I can, if only
+you'll listen to me. A friend of mine, as I said, one Eustace Le Neve,
+who has been constructing engineer of the Rosario and Santa Fe, in the
+Argentine Confederacy, has made a design for the Wharfedale Viaduct.
+It's a very good design, and a practical design; and Sir Edward Jones,
+who has seen it, entirely approves of it."
+
+"Jones is a good man," Mr. Walker murmured, nodding his head in
+acquiescence. "No dashed nonsense about Jones. Head screwed on the
+right way. Jones is a good man and knows what he's talking about."
+"Well, Jones says it's a good design," Tyrrel went on, breathing freer
+as he gauged his man more completely. "And the facts are just these: My
+friend's engaged to a young lady up in town here, in whom I take a deep
+interest--" Mr. Walker whistled low to himself, but didn't interrupt
+him--"a deep FRIENDLY interest," Tyrrel corrected, growing hot in the
+face at the man's evident insolent misconstruction of his motives; "and
+the long and the short of it is, his chance of marrying her depends
+very much upon whether or not he can get this design of his accepted by
+the directors."
+
+"He can't," Mr. Walker said, promptly, "unless he buys me out. That's
+pat and flat. He can't, for mine's in; and mine's sure to be taken."
+
+"So I understand," Tyrrel went on. "Your name, I'm told, carries
+everything before it. But what I want to suggest now is simply
+this--How much will you take, money down on the nail, this minute, to
+withdraw your own design from the informal competition?"
+
+Erasmus Walker gasped hard, drew a long breath, and stared at him. "How
+much will I take," he repeated, slowly; "how--much--will--I--take--to
+withdraw my design? Well, that IS remarkable!"
+
+"I mean it," Tyrrel repeated, with a very serious face. "This is to me,
+I will confess, a matter of life and death. I want to see my friend Le
+Neve in a good position in the world, such as his talents entitle him
+to. I don't care how much I spend in order to insure it. So what I want
+to know is just this and nothing else--how much will you take to
+withdraw from the competition?"
+
+Erasmus Walker laid his two hands on his fat knees, with his legs wide
+open, and stared long and hard at his incomprehensible visitor. So
+strange a request stunned for a moment even that sound business head. A
+minute or two he paused. Then, with a violent effort, he pulled himself
+together. "Come, come," he said, "Mr. Tyrrel; let's be practical and
+above-board. I don't want to rob you. I don't want to plunder you. I
+see you mean business. But how do you know, suppose even you buy me
+out, this young fellow's design has any chance of being accepted? What
+reason have you to think the Great North Midland people are likely to
+give such a job to an unknown beginner?"
+
+"Sir Edward Jones says it's admirable," Tyrrel ventured, dubiously.
+
+"Sir Edward Jones says it's admirable! Well, that's good, as far as it
+goes. Jones knows what he's talking about. Head's screwed on the right
+way. But has your friend any interest with the directors--that's the
+question? Have you reason to think, if he sends it in, and I hold back
+mine, his is the plan they'd be likely to pitch upon?"
+
+"I go upon its merits," Walter Tyrrel said, quietly.
+
+"The very worst thing on earth any man can ever possibly go upon," the
+man of business retorted, with cynical confidence. "If that's all
+you've got to say, my dear sir, it wouldn't be fair of me to make money
+terms with you. I won't discuss my price in the matter till I've some
+reason to believe this idea of yours is workable."
+
+"I have the designs here all ready," Walter Tyrrel replied, holding
+them out. "Plans, elevations, specifications, estimates, sections,
+figures, everything. Will you do me the favor to look at them? Then,
+perhaps, you'll be able to see whether or not the offer's genuine."
+
+The great engineer took the roll with a smile. He opened it hastily, in
+a most skeptical humor. Walter Tyrrel leant over him, and tried just at
+first to put in a word or two of explanation, such as Le Neve had made
+to himself; but an occasionally testy "Yes, yes; I see," was all the
+thanks he got for his pains and trouble. After a minute or two he found
+out it was better to let the engineer alone. That practiced eye picked
+out in a moment the strong and weak points of the whole conception.
+Gradually, however, as Walker went on, Walter Tyrrel could see he paid
+more and more attention to every tiny detail. His whole manner altered.
+The skeptical smile faded away, little by little, from those thick,
+sensuous lips, and a look of keen interest took its place by degrees on
+the man's eager features. "That's good!" he murmured more than once, as
+he examined more closely some section or enlargement. "That's good!
+very good! knows what he's about, this Eustace Le Neve man!" Now and
+again he turned back, to re-examine some special point. "Clever dodge!"
+he murmured, half to himself. "Clever dodge, undoubtedly. Make an
+engineer in time--no doubt at all about that--if only they'll give him
+his head, and not try to thwart him."
+
+Tyrrel waited till he'd finished. Then he leant forward once more.
+"Well, what do you think of it now?" he asked, flushing hot. "Is this
+business--or otherwise?"
+
+"Oh, business, business," the great engineer murmured, musically,
+regarding the papers before him with a certain professional affection.
+"It's a devilish clever plan--I won't deny that--and it's devilish well
+carried out in every detail."
+
+Tyrrel seized his opportunity. "And if you were to withdraw your own
+design," he asked, somewhat nervously, hardly knowing how best to frame
+his delicate question, "do you think ... the directors ... would be
+likely to accept this one?"
+
+Erasmus Walker hummed and hawed. He twirled his fat thumbs round one
+another in doubt. Then he answered oracularly, "They might, of course;
+and yet, again, they mightn't."
+
+"Upon whom would the decision rest?" Tyrrel inquired, looking hard at
+him.
+
+"Upon me, almost entirely," the great engineer responded at once, with
+cheerful frankness. "To say the plain truth, they've no minds of their
+own, these men. They'd ask my advice, and accept it implicitly."
+
+"So Jones told me," Tyrrel answered.
+
+"So Jones told you--quite right," the engineer echoed, with a
+complacent nod. "They've no minds of their own, you see. They'll do
+just as I tell them."
+
+"And you think this design of Le Neve's a good one, both mechanically
+and financially, and also exceptionally safe as regards the lives and
+limbs of passengers and employees?" Tyrrel inquired once more, with
+anxious particularity. His tender conscience made him afraid to do
+anything in the matter unless he was quite sure in his own mind he was
+doing no wrong in any way either to shareholders, competitors, or the
+public generally.
+
+"My dear sir," Mr. Walker replied, fingering the papers lovingly, "it's
+an admirable design--sound, cheap, and practical. It's as good as it
+can be. To tell you the truth, I admire it immensely."
+
+"Well, then," Tyrrel said at last, all his scruples removed--"let's
+come to business. I put it plainly. How much will you take to withdraw
+your own design, and to throw your weight into the scale in favor of my
+friend's here?"
+
+Erasmus Walker closed one eye, and rewarded his visitor fixedly out of
+the other for a minute or two in silence, as if taking his bearings. It
+was a trick he had acquired from frequent use of a theodolite. Then he
+answered at last, after a long, deep pause, "It's YOUR deal, Mr.
+Tyrrel. Make me an offer, won't you?"
+
+"Five thousand pounds?" tremblingly suggested Walter Tyrrel.
+
+Erasmus Walker opened his eye slowly, and never allowed his surprise to
+be visible on his face. Why, to him, a job like that, entailing loss of
+time in personal supervision, was hardly worth three. The plans were
+perfunctory, and as far as there was anything in them, could be used
+again elsewhere. He could employ his precious days meanwhile to better
+purpose in some more showy and profitable work than this half-hatched
+viaduct. But this was an upset price. "Not enough," he murmured,
+slowly, shaking his bullet head. "It's a fortune to the young man. You
+must make a better offer."
+
+Walter Tyrrel's lip quivered. "Six thousand," he said, promptly.
+
+The engineer judged from the promptitude of the reply that the Cornish
+landlord must still be well squeezable. He shook his head gain. "No,
+no; not enough," he answered short. "Not enough--by a long way."
+
+"Eight," Tyrrel suggested, drawing a deep breath of suspense. It was a
+big sum, indeed, for a modest estate like Penmorgan.
+
+The engineer shook his head once more. That rush up two thousand at
+once was a very good feature. The man who could mount by two thousand
+at a time might surely be squeezed to the even figure.
+
+"I'm afraid," Walter said, quivering, after a brief mental
+calculation--mortgage at four per cent--and agricultural depression
+running down the current value of land in the market--"I couldn't by
+any possibility go beyond ten thousand. But to save my friend--and to
+get the young lady married--I wouldn't mind going as far as that to
+meet you."
+
+The engineer saw at once, with true business instinct, his man had
+reached the end of his tether. He struck while the iron was hot and
+clinched the bargain. "Well,--as there's a lady in the case"--he said,
+gallantly,--"and to serve a young man of undoubted talent, who'll do
+honor to the profession, I don't mind closing with you. I'll take ten
+thousand, money down, to back out of it myself, and I'll say what I
+can--honestly--to the Midland Board in your friend's favor."
+
+"Very good," Tyrrel answered, drawing a deep breath of relief. "I ask
+no more than that. Say what you can honestly. The money shall be paid
+you before the end of a fortnight."
+
+"Only, mind," Mr. Walker added in an impressive afterthought, "I can't,
+of course, ENGAGE that the Great North Midland people will take my
+advice. You mustn't come down upon me for restitution and all that if
+your friend don't succeed and they take some other fellow. All I
+guarantee for certain is to withdraw my own plans--not to send in
+anything myself for the competition."
+
+"I fully understand," Tyrrel answered. "And I'm content to risk it.
+But, mind, if any other design is submitted of superior excellence to
+Le Neve's, I wouldn't wish you on any account to--to do or say anything
+that goes against your conscience."
+
+Erasmus Walker stared at him. "What--after paying ten thousand pounds?"
+he said, "to secure the job?"
+
+Tyrrel nodded a solemn nod. "Especially," he added, "if you think it
+safer to life and limb. I should never forgive myself if an accident
+were to occur on Eustace Le Neve's viaduct."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ANGEL AND DEVIL.
+
+
+Tyrrel left Erasmus Walker's house that morning in a turmoil of mingled
+exultation and fear. At least he had done his best to atone for the
+awful results of his boyish act of criminal thoughtlessness. He had
+tried to make it possible for Cleer to marry Eustace, and thereby to
+render the Trevennacks happier in their sonless old age; and what was
+more satisfactory still, he had crippled himself in doing it. There was
+comfort even in that. Expiation, reparation! He wouldn't have cared for
+the sacrifice so much if it had cost him less. But it would cost him
+dear indeed. He must set to work at once now and raise the needful sum
+by mortgaging Penmorgan up to the hilt to do it.
+
+After all, of course, the directors might choose some other design than
+Eustace's. But he had done what he could. And he would hope for the
+best, at any rate. For Cleer's sake, if the worst came, he would have
+risked and lost much. While if Cleer's life was made happy, he would be
+happy in the thought of it.
+
+He hailed another hansom, and drove off, still on fire, to his lawyer's
+in Victoria Street. On the way, he had to go near Paddington Station.
+He didn't observe, as he did so, a four-wheel cab that passed him with
+luggage on top, from Ivybridge to London. It was the Trevennacks, just
+returned from their holiday on Dartmoor. But Michael Trevennack had
+seen him; and his brow grew suddenly dark. He pinched his nails into
+his palm at sight of that hateful creature, though not a sound escaped
+him; for Cleer was in the carriage, and the man was Eustace's friend.
+Trevennack accepted Eustace perforce, after that night on Michael's
+Crag; for he knew it was politic; and indeed, he liked the young man
+himself well enough--there was nothing against him after all, beyond
+his friendship with Tyrrel; but had it not been for the need for
+avoiding scandal after the adventure on the rock, he would never have
+allowed Cleer to speak one word to any friend or acquaintance of her
+brother's murderer.
+
+As it was, however, he never alluded to Tyrrel in any way before Cleer.
+He had learnt to hold his tongue. Madman though he was, he knew when to
+be silent.
+
+That evening at home, Cleer had a visit from Eustace, who came round to
+tell her how Tyrrel had been to see the great engineer, Erasmus Walker;
+and how it was all a mistake that Walker was going to send in plans for
+the Wharfedale Viaduct--nay, how the big man had approved of his own
+design, and promised to give it all the support in his power. For
+Tyrrel was really an awfully kind friend, who had pushed things for him
+like a brick, and deserved the very best they could both of them say
+about him.
+
+But of course Eustace hadn't the faintest idea himself by what manner
+of persuasion Walter Tyrrel had commended his friend's designs to
+Erasmus Walker. If he had, needless to say, he would never have
+accepted the strange arrangement.
+
+"And now, Cleer," Eustace cried, jubilant and radiant with the easy
+confidence of youth and love, "I do believe I shall carry the field at
+last, and spring at a bound into a first-rate position among engineers
+in England."
+
+"And then?" Cleer asked, nestling close to his side.
+
+"And then," Eustace went on, smiling tacitly at her native simplicity,
+"as it would mean permanent work in superintending and so forth, I see
+no reason why--we shouldn't get married immediately."
+
+They were alone in the breakfast room, where Mrs. Trevennack had left
+them. They were alone, like lovers. But in the drawing-room hard by,
+Trevennack himself was saying to his wife with a face of suppressed
+excitement, "I saw him again to-day, Lucy. I saw him again, that
+devil--in a hansom near Paddington. If he stops in town, I'm sure I
+don't know what I'm ever to do. I came back from Devonshire, having
+fought the devil hard, as I thought, and conquered him. I felt I'd got
+him under. I felt he was no match for me. But when I see that man's
+face the devil springs up at me again in full force, and grapples with
+me. Is he Satan himself? I believe he must be. For I feel I must rush
+at him and trample him under foot, as I trampled him long ago on the
+summit of Niphates."
+
+In a tremor of alarm Mrs. Trevennack held his hand. Oh, what would she
+ever do if the outbreak came ... before Cleer was married! She could
+see the constant strain of holding himself back was growing daily more
+and more difficult for her unhappy husband. Indeed, she couldn't bear
+it herself much longer. If Cleer didn't marry soon, Michael would break
+out openly--perhaps would try to murder that poor man Tyrrel--and then
+Eustace would be afraid, and all would be up with them.
+
+By and by, Eustace came in to tell them the good news. He said nothing
+about Tyrrel, at least by name, lest he should hurt Trevennack; he
+merely mentioned that a friend of his had seen Erasmus Walker that day,
+and that Walker had held out great hopes of success for him in this
+Wharfedale Viaduct business. Trevennack listened with a strange mixture
+of interest and contempt. He was glad the young man was likely to get
+on in his chosen profession--for Cleer's sake, if it would enable them
+to marry. But, oh, what a fuss it seemed to him to make about such a
+trifle as a mere bit of a valley that one could fly across in a
+second--to him who could become
+
+    "... to his proper shape returned
+     A seraph winged: six wings he wore, to shade
+     His lineaments divine; the pair that clad
+     Each shoulder broad, came mantling o'er his breast
+     With regal ornament; the middle pair
+     Girt like a starry zone his waist, and round
+     Skirted his loins and thighs, the third his feet
+     Shadowed from either heel with feathered mail."
+
+And then they talked to HIM about the difficulties of building a few
+hundred yards of iron bridge across a miserable valley! Why, was it not
+he and his kind of whom it was written that they came
+
+    "Gliding through the even
+     On a sunbeam, swift as a shooting star
+     In autumn thwarts the night?"
+
+A viaduct indeed! a paltry human viaduct! What need, with such as him,
+to talk of bridges or viaducts?
+
+As Eustace left that evening, Mrs. Trevennack followed him out, and
+beckoned him mysteriously into the dining-room at the side for a
+minute's conversation. The young man followed her, much wondering what
+this strange move could mean. Mrs. Trevennack fell back, half faint,
+into a chair, and gazed at him with a frightened look very rare on that
+brave face of hers. "Oh, Eustace," she said, hurriedly, "do you know
+what's happened? Mr. Tyrrel's in town. Michael saw him to-day. He was
+driving near Paddington. Now do you think... you could do anything to
+keep him out of Michael's way? I dread their meeting. I don't know
+whether you know it, but Michael has some grudge against him. For
+Cleer's sake and for yours, do keep them apart, I beg of you. If they
+meet, I can't answer for what harm may come of it."
+
+Eustace was taken aback at her unexpected words. Not even to Cleer had
+he ever hinted in any way at the strange disclosure Walter Tyrrel made
+to him that first day at Penmorgan. He hesitated how to answer her
+without betraying his friend's secret. At last he said, as calmly as he
+could, "I guessed, to tell you the truth, there was some cause of
+quarrel. I'll do my very best to keep Tyrrel out of the way, Mrs.
+Trevennack, as you wish it. But I'm afraid he won't be going down from
+town for some time to come, for he told me only to-day he had business
+at his lawyer's, in Victoria Street, Westminster, which might keep him
+here a fortnight. Indeed, I rather doubt whether he'll care to go down
+again until he knows for certain, one way or the other, about the
+Wharfedale Viaduct."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack sank back in her chair, very pale and wan. "Oh, what
+shall we do if they meet?" she cried, wringing her hands in despair.
+"What shall we do if they meet? This is more than I can endure.
+Eustace, Eustace, I shall break down. My burden's too heavy for me!"
+
+The young man leant over her like a son. "Mrs. Trevennack," he said,
+gently, smoothing her silvery white hair with sympathetic fingers, "I
+think I can keep them apart. I'll speak seriously to Tyrrel about it.
+He's a very good fellow, and he'll do anything I ask of him. I'm sure
+he'll try to avoid falling in with your husband. He's my kindest of
+friends; and he'd cut off his hand to serve me."
+
+One word of sympathy brought tears into Mrs. Trevennack's eyes. She
+looked up through them, and took the young man's hand in hers. "It was
+HE who spoke to Erasmus Walker, I suppose," she murmured, slowly.
+
+And Eustace, nodding assent, answered in a low voice, "It was he, Mrs.
+Trevennack. He's a dear good fellow."
+
+The orphaned mother clasped her hands. This was too, too much. And
+Michael, if the fit came upon him, would strangle that young man, who
+was doing his best after all for Cleer and Eustace!
+
+But that night in his bed Trevennack lay awake, chuckling grimly to
+himself in an access of mad triumph. He fancied he was fighting his
+familiar foe, on a tall Cornish peak, in archangelic fashion; and he
+had vanquished his enemy, and was trampling on him furiously. But the
+face of the fallen seraph was not the face of Michael Angelo's Satan,
+as he oftenest figured it--for Michael Angelo, his namesake, was one of
+Trevennack's very chiefest admirations;--it was the face of Walter
+Tyrrel, who killed his dear boy, writhing horribly in the dust, and
+crying for mercy beneath him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+AT ARM'S LENGTH.
+
+
+For three or four weeks Walter Tyrrel remained in town, awaiting the
+result of the Wharfedale Viaduct competition. With some difficulty he
+raised and paid over meanwhile to Erasmus Walker the ten thousand
+pounds of blackmail--for it was little else--agreed upon between them.
+The great engineer accepted the money with as little compunction as men
+who earn large incomes always display in taking payment for doing
+nothing. It is an enviable state of mind, unattainable by most of us
+who work hard for our living. He pocketed his check with a smile, as if
+it were quite in the nature of things that ten thousand pounds should
+drop upon him from the clouds without rhyme or reason. To Tyrrel, on
+the other hand, with his sensitive conscience, the man's greed and
+callousness seemed simply incomprehensible. He stood aghast at such
+sharp practice. But for Cleer's sake, and to ease his own soul, he paid
+it all over without a single murmur.
+
+And then the question came up in his mind, "Would it be effectual after
+all? Would Walker play him false? Would he throw the weight of his
+influence into somebody else's scale? Would the directors submit as
+tamely as he thought to his direction or dictation?" It would be hard
+on Tyrrel if, after his spending ten thousand pounds without security
+of any sort, Eustace were to miss the chance, and Cleer to go unmarried.
+
+At the end of a month, however, as Tyrrel sat one morning in his own
+room at the Metropole, which he mostly frequented, Eustace Le Neve
+rushed in, full of intense excitement. Tyrrel's heart rose in his
+mouth. He grew pale with agitation. The question had been decided one
+way or the other he saw.
+
+"Well; which is it?" he gasped out. "Hit or miss? Have you got it?"
+
+"Yes; I've got it!" Eustace answered, half beside himself with delight.
+"I've got it! I've got it! The chairman and Walker have just been round
+to call on me, and congratulate me on my success. Walker says my
+fortune's made. It's a magnificent design. And in any case it'll mean
+work for me for the next four years; after which I'll not want for
+occupation elsewhere. So now, of course, I can marry almost
+immediately."
+
+"Thank God!" Tyrrel murmured, falling back into his chair as he spoke,
+and turning deadly white.
+
+He was glad of it, oh, so glad; and yet, in his own heart, it would
+cost him many pangs to see Cleer really married in good earnest to
+Eustace.
+
+He had worked for it with all his might to be sure; he had worked for
+it and paid for it! and now he saw his wishes on the very eve of
+fulfillment, the natural man within him rose up in revolt against the
+complete success of his own unselfish action.
+
+As for Mrs. Trevennack, when she heard the good news, she almost
+fainted with joy. It might yet be in time. Cleer might be married now
+before poor Michael broke forth in that inevitable paroxysm.
+
+For inevitable she felt it was at last. As each day went by it grew
+harder and harder for the man to contain himself. Fighting desperately
+against it every hour, immersing himself as much as he could in the
+petty fiddling details of the office and the Victualing Yard so as to
+keep the fierce impulse under due control, Michael Trevennack yet found
+the mad mood within him more and more ungovernable with each week that
+went by. As he put it to his own mind he could feel his wings growing
+as if they must burst through the skin; he could feel it harder and
+ever harder as time went on to conceal the truth, to pretend he was a
+mere man, when he knew himself to be really the Prince of the
+Archangels, to busy himself about contracts for pork, and cheese, and
+biscuits, when he could wing his way boldly over sea and land, or
+stand forth before the world in gorgeous gear, armed as of yore in the
+adamant and gold of his celestial panoply!
+
+So Michael Trevennack thought in his own seething soul. But that
+strong, brave woman, his wife, bearing her burden unaided, and watching
+him closely day and night with a keen eye of mingled love and fear,
+could see that the madness was gaining on him gradually. Oftener and
+oftener now did he lose himself in his imagined world; less and less
+did he tread the solid earth beneath us. Mrs. Trevennack had by this
+time but one anxious care left in life--to push on as fast as possible
+Cleer and Eustace's marriage.
+
+But difficulties intervened, as they always WILL intervene in this
+work-a-day world of ours. First of all there were formalities about the
+appointment itself. Then, even when all was arranged, Eustace found he
+had to go north in person, shortly after Christmas, and set to work
+with a will at putting his plan into practical shape for contractor and
+workmen. And as soon as he got there he saw at once he must stick at it
+for six months at least before he could venture to take a short holiday
+for the sake of getting married. Engineering is a very absorbing trade;
+it keeps a man day and night at the scene of his labors.
+
+Storm or flood at any moment may ruin everything. It would be prudent
+too, Eustace thought, to have laid by a little more for household
+expenses, before plunging into the unknown sea of matrimony; and though
+Mrs. Trevennack, flying full in the face of all matronly respect for
+foresight in young people, urged him constantly to marry, money or no
+money, and never mind about a honeymoon, Eustace stuck to his point and
+determined to take no decisive step till he saw how the work was
+turning out in Wharfedale. It was thus full August of the succeeding
+year before he could fix a date definitely; and then, to Cleer's great
+joy, he named a day at last, about the beginning of September.
+
+It was an immense relief to Mrs. Trevennack's mind when, after one or
+two alterations, she knew the third was finally fixed upon. She had
+good reasons of her own for wishing it to be early; for the
+twenty-ninth is Michaelmas Day, and it was always with difficulty that
+her husband could be prevented from breaking out before the eyes of the
+world on that namesake feast of St. Michael and All Angels. For, on
+that sacred day, when in every Church in Christendom his importance as
+the generalissimo of the angelic host was remembered and commemorated,
+it seemed hard indeed to the seraph in disguise that he must still
+guard his incognito, still go on as usual with his petty higgling over
+corned beef and biscuits and the price of jute sacking. "There was war
+in heaven," said the gospel for the day--that sonorous gospel Mrs.
+Trevennack so cordially dreaded--for her husband would always go to
+church at morning service, and hold himself more erect than was his
+wont, to hear it--"There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels
+fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and
+prevailed not." And should he, who could thus battle against all the
+powers of evil, be held in check any longer, as with a leash of straw,
+by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty? No, no, he would stand
+forth in his true angelic shape, and show these martinets what form
+they had ignorantly taken for mere Michael Trevennack of the Victualing
+Department!
+
+One thing alone eased Mrs. Trevennack's mind through all those weary
+months of waiting and watching: Walter Tyrrel had long since gone back
+again to Penmorgan. Her husband had been free from that greatest of all
+temptations, to a mad paroxysm of rage--the sight of the man who, as he
+truly believed, had killed their Michael. And now, if only Tyrrel would
+keep away from town till Cleer was married and all was settled--Mrs.
+Trevennack sighed deep--she would almost count herself a happy woman!
+
+On the day of Cleer's wedding, however, Walter Tyrrel came to town. He
+came on purpose. He couldn't resist the temptation of seeing with his
+own eyes the final success of his general plan, even though it cost him
+the pang of watching the marriage of the one girl he ever truly loved
+to another man by his own deliberate contrivance. But he didn't forget
+Eustace Le Neve's earnest warning, that he should keep out of the way
+of Michael Trevennack. Even without Eustace, his own conscience would
+have urged that upon him. The constant burden of his remorse for that
+boyish crime weighed hard upon him every hour of every day that he
+lived. He didn't dare on such a morning to face the father of the boy
+he had unwittingly and half-innocently murdered.
+
+So, very early, as soon as the church was opened, he stole in
+unobserved, and took a place by himself in the farthest corner of the
+gallery. A pillar concealed him from view; for further security he held
+his handkerchief constantly in front of his face, or shielded himself
+behind one of the big free-seat prayer-books. Cleer came in looking
+beautiful in her wedding dress; Mrs. Trevennack's pathetic face glowed
+radiant for once in this final realization of her dearest wishes. A
+single second only, near the end of the ceremony, Tyrrel leaned forward
+incautiously, anxious to see Cleer at an important point of the
+proceedings. At the very same instant Trevennack raised his face. Their
+eyes met in a flash. Tyrrel drew back, horrorstruck, and penitent at
+his own intrusion at such a critical moment. But, strange to say,
+Trevennack took no overt notice. Had his wife only known she would have
+sunk in her seat in her agony of fear. But happily she didn't know.
+Trevennack went through the ceremony, all outwardly calm; he gave no
+sign of what he had seen, even to his wife herself. He buried it deep
+in his own heart. That made it all the more dangerous.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ST. MICHAEL DOES BATTLE.
+
+
+The wedding breakfast went off pleasantly, without a hitch of any sort.
+Trevennack, always dignified and always a grand seigneur, rose to the
+occasion with his happiest spirit. The silver-haired wife, gazing up at
+him, felt proud of him as of old, and was for once quite at her ease.
+For all was over now, thank heaven, and dear Cleer was married!
+
+That same afternoon the bride and bridegroom started off for their
+honeymoon to the Tyrol and Italy. When Mrs. Trevennack was left alone
+with her husband it was with a thankful heart. She turned to him,
+flowing over in soul with joy. "Oh, Michael," she cried, melting, "I'm
+so happy, so happy, so happy."
+
+Trevennack stooped down and kissed her forehead tenderly. He had always
+been a good husband, and he loved her with all his heart. "That's well,
+Lucy," he answered. "Thank God, it's all over. For I can't hold out
+much longer. The strain's too much for me." He paused a moment, and
+looked at her. "Lucy," he said, once more, clasping his forehead with
+one hand, "I've fought against it hard. I'm fighting against it still.
+But at times it almost gets the better of me. Do you know who I saw in
+the church this morning, skulking behind a pillar?--that man Walter
+Tyrrel."
+
+Mrs. Trevennack gazed at him all aghast. This was surely a delusion, a
+fixed idea, an insane hallucination. "Oh, no, dear," she cried, prying
+deep into his eyes. "It couldn't be he, it couldn't. You must be
+mistaken, Michael. I'm sure he's not in London."
+
+"No more mistaken than I am this minute," Trevennack answered, rushing
+over to the window, and pointing with one hand eagerly. "See, see!
+there he is, Lucy--the man that killed our poor, dear Michael!"
+
+Mrs. Trevennack uttered a little cry, half sob, half wail, as she
+looked out of the window and, under the gas-lamps opposite, recognized
+through the mist the form of Walter Tyrrel.
+
+But Trevennack didn't rush out at him as she feared and believed he
+would. He only stood still in his place and glared at his enemy. "Not
+now," he said, slowly; "not now, on Cleer's wedding day. But some other
+time--more suitable. I hear it in my ears; I hear the voice still
+ringing: 'Go, Michael, of celestial armies prince!' I can't disobey. I
+shall go in due time. I shall fight the enemy."
+
+And he sank back in his chair, with his eyes staring wildly.
+
+For the next week or two, while Cleer wrote home happy letters from
+Paris, Innsbruck, Milan, Venice, Florence, poor Mrs. Trevennack was
+tortured inwardly with another terrible doubt; had Michael's state
+become so dangerous at last that he must be put under restraint as a
+measure of public security? For Walter Tyrrel's sake, ought she to make
+his condition known to the world at large--and spoil Cleer's honeymoon?
+She shrank from that final necessity with a deadly shrinking. Day after
+day she put the discovery off, and solaced her soul with the best
+intentions--as what true woman would not?
+
+But we know where good intentions go. On the morning of the
+twenty-ninth, which is Michaelmas Day, the poor mother rose in fear and
+trembling. Michael, to all outward appearance, was as sane as usual. He
+breakfasted and went down to the office, as was his wont.
+
+When he arrived there, however, he found letters from Falmouth awaiting
+him with bad news. His presence was needed at once. He must miss his
+projected visit to St. Michael's, Cornhill. He must go down to Cornwall.
+
+Hailing a cab at the door he hastened back to Paddington just in time
+for the Cornish express. This was surely a call. The words rang in his
+ears louder and clearer than ever, "Go, Michael, of celestial armies
+prince!" He would go and obey them. He would trample under foot this
+foul fiend that masqueraded in human shape as his dear boy's murderer.
+He would wield once more that huge two-handed sword, brandished aloft,
+wide-wasting, in unearthly warfare. He would come out in his true shape
+before heaven and earth as the chief of the archangels.
+
+Stepping into a first-class compartment he found himself, unluckily for
+his present mood, alone. All the way down to Exeter the fit was on him.
+He stood up in the carriage, swaying his unseen blade, celestial temper
+fine, and rolling forth in a loud voice Miltonic verses of his old
+encounters in heaven with the powers of darkness.
+
+     "Now waved their fiery swords, and in the air
+      Made horrid circles; two broad suns their shields
+      Blazed opposite, while expectation stood
+      In horror."
+
+He mouthed out the lines in a perfect ecstasy of madness. It was
+delightful to be alone. He could give his soul full vent. He knew he
+was mad. He knew he was an archangel.
+
+And all the way down he repeated to himself, many times over, that he
+would trample under foot that base fiend Walter Tyrrel. Satan has many
+disguises; squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, he sat in
+Paradise; for
+
+    "...spirits as they please
+     Can limb themselves, and color, or size assume
+     As likes them best, condense or rare."
+
+If he himself, Michael, prince of celestial hosts, could fit his
+angelic majesty to the likeness of a man, Trevennack--could not Satan
+meet him on his own ground, and try to thwart him as of old in the
+likeness of a man, Walter Tyrrel--his dear boy's murderer.
+
+As far as Exeter this was his one train of thought. But from there to
+Plymouth new passengers got in. They turned the current. Trevennack
+changed his mind rapidly. Another mood came over him. His wife's words
+struck him vaguely in some tenderer place. "Fight the devil WITHIN you,
+Michael. Fight him there, and conquer him." That surely was fitter far
+for an angelic nature. That foeman was worthier his celestial steel.
+"Turn homeward, angel, now, and melt with ruth!" Not his to do
+vengeance on the man Walter Tyrrel. Not his to play the divine part of
+vindicator. In his madness even Trevennack was magnanimous. Leave the
+creature to the torment of his own guilty soul. Do angels care for
+thrusts of such as he? Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?
+
+At Ivybridge station the train slowed, and then stopped. Trevennack,
+accustomed to the Cornish express, noted the stoppage with surprise.
+"We're not down to pull up here!" he said, quickly, to the guard.
+
+"No sir," the guard answered, touching his hat with marked respect, for
+he knew the Admiralty official well. "Signals are against us. Line's
+blocked as far as Plymouth."
+
+"I'll get out here, then," Trevennack said, in haste; and the guard
+opened the door. A new idea had rushed suddenly into the madman's head.
+This was St. Michael's Day--his own day; and there was St. Michael's
+Tor--his own tor--full in sight before him. He would go up there this
+very evening, and before the eyes of all the world, in his celestial
+armor, taking Lucy's advice, do battle with and quell this fierce devil
+within him.
+
+No sooner thought than done. Fiery hot within, he turned out of the
+gate, and as the shades of autumn evening began to fall, walked swiftly
+up the moor toward the tor and the uplands.
+
+As he walked his heart beat to a lilting rhythm within him. "Go,
+Michael, of celestial armies prince!--Go, Michael!--Go, Michael! Go,
+Michael, of celestial armies prince--Go, Michael!--Go, Michael!"
+
+The moor was draped in fog. It was a still, damp evening. Swirling
+clouds rose slowly up, and lifted at times and disclosed the peaty
+hollows, the high tors, the dusky heather. But Trevennack stumbled on,
+o'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, as chance
+might lead him, clambering ever toward his goal, now seen, now
+invisible--the great stack of wild rock that crowned the gray
+undulating moor to northward. Often he missed his way; often he
+floundered for awhile in deep ochreous bottoms, up to his knees in soft
+slush, but with some strange mad instinct he wandered on nevertheless,
+and slowly drew near the high point he was aiming at.
+
+By this time it was pitch dark. The sun had set and fog obscured the
+starlight. But Trevennack, all on fire, wandered madly forward and
+scaled the rocky tor by the well-known path, guided not by sight, but
+by pure instinctive groping. In his present exalted state, indeed, he
+had no need of eyes. What matters earthly darkness to angelic feet? He
+could pick his own way through the gloom, though all the fiends from
+hell in serried phalanx broke loose to thwart him. He would reach the
+top at last; reach the top; reach the top, and there fight that old
+serpent who lay in wait to destroy him. At last he gained the peak, and
+stood with feet firmly planted on the little rocky platform. Now,
+Satan, come on! Ha, traitor, come, if you dare! Your antagonist is
+ready for you!
+
+Cr'r'r'k! as he stood there, waiting, a terrible shock brought him to
+himself all at once with startling suddenness. Trevennack drew back
+aghast and appalled. Even in his mad exaltation this strange assault
+astonished him. He had expected a struggle, indeed; he had expected a
+conflict, but with a spiritual foe; to meet his adversary in so bodily
+a form as this, wholly startled and surprised him. For it was a fierce
+earthly shock he received upon his right leg as he mounted the rocky
+platform. Satan had been lying in wait for him then, expecting him,
+waylaying him, and in corporeal presence too. For this was a spear of
+good steel! This was a solid Thing that assaulted him as he
+rose--assaulted him with frantic rage and uncontrollable fury!
+
+For a moment Trevennack was stunned--the sharpness of the pain and the
+suddenness of the attack took both breath and sense away from him. He
+stood there one instant, irresolute, before he knew how to comport
+himself. But before he could make up his mind--cr'r'k, a second
+time--the Presence had assailed him again, fighting with deadly force,
+and in a white heat of frenzy. Trevennack had no leisure to think what
+this portent might mean. Man or fiend, it was a life-and-death struggle
+now between them. He stood face to face at last in mortal conflict with
+his materialized enemy. What form the Evil Thing had assumed to suit
+his present purpose Trevennack knew not, nor did he even care. Stung
+with pain and terror he rushed forward blindly upon his enraged
+assailant, and closed with him at once, tooth and nail, in a deadly
+grapple.
+
+A more terrible battle man and brute never fought. Trevennack had no
+sword, no celestial panoply. But he could wrestle like a Cornishman. He
+must trample his foe under foot, then, in this final struggle, by sheer
+force of strong thews and strained muscles alone. He fought the
+Creature as it stood, flinging his arms round it wildly. The Thing
+seemed to rear itself as if on cloven hoofs. Trevennack seized it round
+the waist, and grasping it hard in an iron grip, clung to it with all
+the wild energy of madness. Yield, Satan, yield! But still the Creature
+eluded him. Once more it drew back a pace--he felt its hot breath, he
+smelt its hateful smell--and prepared to rush again at him. Trevennack
+bent down to receive its attack, crouching. The Creature burst full
+tilt on him--it almost threw him over. Trevennack caught it in his
+horror and awe--caught it bodily by the horns--for horned it seemed to
+be, as well as cloven-footed--and by sheer force of arm held it off
+from him an elbow's length one minute. The Thing struggled and reared
+again. Yes, yes, it was Satan--he felt him all over now--a devil
+undisguised--but Satan rather in medieval than in Miltonic fashion. His
+skin was rough and hairy as a satyr's; his odor was foul; his feet were
+cleft; his horns sharp and terrible. He flung him from him horrified.
+
+Quick as lightning the demon rose again, and tilted fiercely at him
+once more. It was a death fight between those two for that rocky
+platform. Should Satan thus usurp St. Michael's Tor? Ten thousand
+times, no! Yield, yield! No surrender! Each knew the ground well, and
+even in the dark and in the mad heat of the conflict, each carefully
+avoided the steep edge of the precipice. But the fiend knew it best,
+apparently. He had been lying in a snug nook, under lee of a big rock,
+sharpening his sword on its side, before Trevennack came up there.
+Against this rock he took his stand, firm as a rock himself, and seemed
+to defy his enemy's arms to dislodge him from his position.
+
+Trevennack's hands and legs were streaming now with blood. His left arm
+was sorely wounded. His thumb hung useless. But with the strange energy
+of madness he continued the desperate conflict against his unseen foe.
+Never should Michael turn and yield to the deadly assaults of the Evil
+One! He rushed on blindly once more, and the Adversary stooped to
+oppose him. Again, a terrible shock, it almost broke both his knees;
+but by sheer strength of nerve he withstood it, still struggling. Then
+they closed in a final grapple. It was a tooth-and-nail conflict. They
+fought one another with every weapon they possessed; each hugged each
+in their fury; they tilted, and tore, and wrestled, and bit, and butted.
+
+Trevennack's coat was in ribbons, his arm was ripped and bleeding; but
+he grasped the Adversary still, he fought blindly to the end. Down,
+Satan, I defy thee!
+
+It was a long, fierce fight! At last, bit by bit, the Enemy began to
+yield. Trevennack had dashed him against the crag time after time like
+a log, till he too was torn and hurt and bleeding. His flesh was like
+pulp. He could endure the unequal fight no longer. He staggered and
+gave way. A great joy rose up tremulous in Trevennack's heart. Even
+without his celestial sword, then, he had vanquished his enemy. He
+seized the Creature round the middle, dragged it, a dead weight, in his
+weary arms, to the edge of the precipice, and dropped it, feebly
+resisting, on to the bare rock beneath him.
+
+Victory! Victory! Once more, a great victory!
+
+He stood on the brink of the tor, and poised himself, as if for flight,
+in his accustomed attitude. But he was faint from loss of blood, and
+his limbs shook under him.
+
+A light seemed to break before his blinded eyes. Victory! Victory! It
+was the light from heaven! He stared forward to welcome it. The brink
+of the precipice? What was THAT to such as he? He would spread his
+wings--for once--at last--thus! thus! and fly forward on full pinions
+to his expected triumph!
+
+He raised both arms above his head, and spread them out as if for
+flight. His knees trembled fearfully. His fingers quivered. Then he
+launched himself on the air and fell. His eyes closed half-way. He lost
+consciousness. He fainted. Before he had reached the bottom he was
+wholly insensible.
+
+Next day it was known before noon in London that a strange and
+inexplicable accident had befallen Mr. Michael Trevennack C.M.G., the
+well-known Admiralty official, on the moor near Ivybridge. Mr.
+Trevennack, it seemed, had started by the Cornish express for Falmouth,
+on official business; but the line being blocked between Ivybridge and
+Plymouth, he had changed his plans and set out to walk, as was
+conjectured, by a devious path across the moor to Tavistock. Deceased
+knew the neighborhood well, and was an enthusiastic admirer of its tors
+and uplands. But fog coming on, the unfortunate gentleman, it was
+believed, had lost his way, and tried to shelter himself for a time
+behind a tall peak of rock which he used frequently to visit during his
+summer holidays. There he was apparently attacked by a savage moorland
+ram--one of that wild breed of mountain sheep peculiar to Dartmoor, and
+famous for the strength and ferocity often displayed by the fathers of
+the flock. Mr. Trevennack was unarmed, and a terrible fight appeared to
+have taken place between these ill-matched antagonists on the summit of
+the rocks, full details of which, the Telegram said in its curt
+business-like way, were too ghastly for publication. After a long and
+exhausting struggle, however, the combatants must either have slipped
+on the wet surface and tumbled over the edge of the rocks together in a
+deadly grapple, or else, as seemed more probable from the positions in
+which the bodies were found, the unhappy gentleman had just succeeded
+in flinging his assailant over, and then, faint from loss of blood, had
+missed his footing and fallen beside his dead antagonist. At any rate,
+when the corpse was discovered life had been extinct for several hours;
+and it was the opinion of the medical authorities who conducted the
+post-mortem that death was due not so much to the injuries themselves
+as to asphyxiation in the act of falling.
+
+* * *
+
+The jury found it "Death from accidental circumstances." Cleer never
+knew more than that her father had met his end by walking over the edge
+of a cliff on Dartmoor.
+
+* * *
+
+But when the body came home for burial, Dr. Yate-Westbury looked in by
+Mrs. Trevennack's special request, and performed an informal and
+private examination of the brain and nervous system. At the close of
+the autopsy he came down to the drawing-room where the silver-haired
+lady sat pale and tearful, but courageous. "It is just as I thought,"
+he said; "a clot of blood, due to external injury, has pressed for
+years above the left frontal region, causing hallucinations and
+irregularities of a functional character only. You needn't have the
+slightest fear of its proving hereditary. It's as purely accidental as
+a sprain or a wound. Your daughter, Mrs. Le Neve, couldn't possibly
+suffer for it."
+
+And neither Cleer nor Le Neve nor anyone else ever shared that secret
+of Trevennack's delusions with his wife and the doctor.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Michael's Crag, by Grant Allen
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