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Cornelt University Library 
 PR5112.04S2 
 
 St. Knighton's Keiveia Cornish tale. Wit 
 
 3 1924 013 530 617 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013530617 
 
ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE; 
 
 A CORNISH TALE. 
 
 WITH A POSTSOEIPT AND GLOSSARY. 
 
 . BY THE 
 
 KEY. F^'fALBOT O'DONOGHUE, B.A., 
 
 VICAR OF TICKENHAM, SOMERSET, AND CHAPLAIN TO THE MABQUIS OF WBSTMEATH. 
 
 " Their speech was not in Cornish phrase, 
 Their garb had marks of loftier days ; 
 Slight food they took from hands of men, 
 They withered slowly in that glen. 
 One died I —the other's shrunken eye 
 Gnsh'd till the fonnt of tears was dry ! 
 
 « « « w 
 
 They found her, silent, at the last. 
 But in the shape wherein she passed. 
 Where her lone seat long used to stand, 
 Her head upon her shrivell'd hand !"— Hawker. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SMITH, ELDEE AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 
 
 M.DCCC.LXIV. 
 
 ^ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CBiP. PAGE 
 
 L Introdtjctoby 1 
 
 n. Reginald Tbelawhet 15 
 
 ni. St. Mawnan Poeth 27 
 
 rv. A CoKNisH Mine 38 
 
 V. MONTACUTE 50 
 
 VI. Me. Teelawnet's Flock 61 
 
 Vn. Reteobpectivb 73 
 
 Vm. SiE Edwaed Ahundel 87 
 
 IX. The Peoposal 103 
 
 X. The Wedding 116 
 
 XI. The False Step 1.34 
 
 Xn. CoEKisH People — A Sketch 150 
 
 XTTT. St. Pmvins Eectoet 163 
 
 I 
 XIV. Lady Aeundel's Lettee 187 
 
 XV. Miss Wilson's Lettee — Ladt Aeundel's 
 
 JOUENAL 201 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. "■=« 
 
 XVI. A Chapter upon Church Matters 222 
 
 XVII. A Clerical Dinner Party 231 
 
 XVIII. Mrs. Tressilian gives her Opinion 245 
 
 XIX. " The Valley op the Mill " 258 
 
 XX. "Death the Consoler" 275 
 
 XXI. The Conclusion 288 
 
 postscriptum 299 
 
 Glossary 301 
 
ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIYE,* 
 
 A CORNISH STORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 "My instructions, Captain Will, are posi- 
 tive. There must be no intrusion upon 
 the privacy of these ladies. So that if I 
 take this cottage off your hands, I shall 
 expect you to see that my orders are 
 carried out to the very letter." 
 
 * Keeve, or KeivB, means the basin or bowl, into 
 which water falls from a cascade. 
 
2 ST. KNIGHTON S KEIVE. 
 
 The speaker was a respectable middle- 
 aged solicitor, practising in the small conntry 
 town of Wadebridge, in the north of Corn- 
 wall, and the person he was addressing, 
 and who was perpetually shifting about in 
 his chair, and twirling his hat round and 
 round, was a little, cute-looking, bronze- 
 faced mine " captain," who, though stiU 
 in middle hfe, had been to almost all parts 
 of the world, wherever, that is, a mine was 
 to be worked, and who, like most of his 
 class, was full of intelligence, and keen and 
 sharp-sighted enough wherever his own 
 interests were at all concerned. 
 
 He was the owner, or rather he had 
 bought the lease, of a small house in the 
 cottage style, situated in St. Knighton's 
 Keive, which he had found great difficulty 
 in letting. Its situation was so remote, that 
 one look at it was usually quite enough 
 for any intending tenant, and the few who 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 had entered upon the occupancy of it had 
 speedily thrown it up, alleging that the 
 house was haunted, and the valley itself 
 infested with gohlins. Hence, no one could 
 be induced to remain in the house for more 
 than a week or two, and Captain Will 
 (who, by the way, had a mortal dread of 
 the place himself, and was a firm believer 
 in aU the ghost stories told of it) , had the 
 mortification, time after time, of having 
 the key of the house returned to him, with 
 a message, perhaps, that nothing would 
 induce the person who brought it to sleep 
 another night in the house. The cottage 
 was too good a one to be pulled down, 
 having been buUt with a view to the 
 accommodation of the person who rented 
 the mUl — the only other building in the 
 valley. But somehow the man could never 
 be induced to reside in it, and preferred 
 walking some distance every morning to 
 
 1—2 
 
4 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 his work from the Httle fishing village of 
 Mawnan Forth, about two miles distant 
 from the valley, and returning in the even- 
 ing. Altogether Captain Will's speculation 
 had not turned out very well up to this 
 time. "What was his dehght, then, to receive 
 a message one morning from the " great 
 o£&ce " (as it used to be called), in Wade- 
 bridge, desiring him to call there, as Mr. 
 Pearce wished to speak to him about his 
 house in St. Knighton's Keive. 
 
 Captain Will was a great deal too cute 
 to give any tokens of his real feeUngs. 
 Though amazed at heart how anybody could 
 think of living in such a place, if he could 
 by possibihty contrive to live elsewhere, 
 yet he thought it well in his interview with 
 the lawyer to dilate not a little upon the 
 romantic beauty of the spot, upon its quiet- 
 ness, upon the village being so handy to 
 it, upon the fine coast almost within sight. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 He even dropped some hints of going to 
 live there himself, his " missus " had taken 
 such a " mighty fancy " to the place. Mr. 
 Pearce understood his man a great deal too 
 well to attach any sort of importance to 
 what he said in praise of St. Knighton's 
 Cottage, as it was called, and knew that 
 this bold Cornish captain would as soon 
 think of facing a legion of devils as be 
 found in the bewitched valley after dark. 
 Accordingly, after a good deal of haggling, 
 a bargain was struck between them, and 
 the rent agreed upon. 
 
 " I will be answerable for the rent," said 
 Mr. Pearce to him, " and all c(immunica- 
 tions respecting the place must be made to 
 me alone, and in no instance whatever 
 to the ladies themselves who are coming 
 to occupy it. You will please understand. 
 Captain Will," went on Mr. Pearce, "that 
 neither you, nor anybody by your authority. 
 
6 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 or with your connivance, is to approach the 
 house during its occupancy by these ladies. 
 Whatever you have got to say about it, 
 must be said to me." 
 
 " Deuce a fear of my going near the 
 place," said Captain Will, who no longer 
 thought it necessary to keep up any appear- 
 ance of being desirous to inhabit the house 
 himself. " I always require to take a sup 
 of drink more than usual " (for the captain 
 was a thirsty soul) " after being there." 
 
 " Well, now, Captain Will, there are two 
 or three things we have got to arrange 
 about. I know nothing myself of these 
 ladies whq are coming. I don't even know 
 their names. My instructions are entirely 
 from Messrs. Wenlock and Gooch, the great 
 London soUcitors, and they have merely 
 written to make inquiries on behalf of a 
 client of theirs — a person of rank, they say, 
 but whom they don't reveal — to ascertain 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 if there is any very retired dwelling to be 
 rented somewhere in the north of Cornwall 
 — it doesn't much matter where, so that it 
 be remote from other dweUing-houses ; the 
 more remote, they say, the better." 
 
 " Egad, my house is just the place for 
 them, then." 
 
 " They leave all the necessary arrange- 
 ments to me, about furnishing the house, 
 and making everything fit for the reception 
 of these two ladies. So that. Captain WUl, 
 I think I had better go over with you to 
 St. Knighton to-morrow, and, if I Uke the 
 furniture, which you say is in the house 
 already, and we can come to terms about it, 
 I have no objection to purchase everything 
 just as it stands. For the house is wanted 
 immediately ; and if there is anything more 
 required we can put it in without delay. And 
 there is another thing. Captain Will ; we 
 must make out this man of the mill, and 
 
8 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 arrange with him to supply these ladies with 
 everything they want. They are to write 
 out, I believe, a list of what they require, 
 and leave it for him in some fixed place ; 
 but, as I understand, no one is to have any 
 personal communication vnth them on any 
 pretence whatever — neither parson, nor 
 doctor, nor anybody else — except by my 
 orders." 
 
 " Why, sir," said Captain Will, getting up 
 and preparing to leave the room, " it will 
 give the valley a worse name than ever, to 
 have two such ladies living at the cottage. 
 To speak to nobody ! not even to Tom 
 Bawden of the mill ! Well, it is a rum 
 go!" 
 
 " I am paying you a good rent, and you 
 are in luck to have found a tenant at last," 
 said Mr. Pearce. " I will call for you, 
 then, to-morrow, and drive you out in my 
 
 gig-" 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 " We must go early, sir, if we want to 
 catch Bawden, He never stops at the mill 
 longer than he can help. It is so lonesome 
 like, he says." 
 
 " Well, this is early in the summer, and 
 it is not hkely he will be gone before five or 
 six. We shall have a good deal to do at the 
 house." 
 
 " Better start early, sir," persisted Captain 
 Will, " so that we can get away in good 
 time. If you have never seen the place, as 
 you say you haven't, it is about the dis- 
 maUest place you ever put foot in." 
 
 " Though you said it was so lovely just 
 now. Ah ! Captain WiU ! Captain WiU ! " 
 
 " AU fair, sir, in the way of business. 
 Why should I go crying down my pro- 
 perty ?" And with these words Captain Will 
 took his departure, hugely delighted at 
 the stroke of business he had done that 
 morning. 
 
10 ST, KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Let US accompany Mr. Pearce and the 
 mine captain in their excursion next day to 
 St. Knighton's Keive. 
 
 The north coast of Cornwall, as is well 
 known, abounds in beautiful sequestered 
 valleys. Side by side with the barest, 
 bleakest scenery, you come every now and 
 then upon valleys of exquisite beauty. You 
 have, perhaps, scarcely seen a tree or a 
 shrub for miles, but all at once you descend 
 into some shady ravine, thick with oaks and 
 ash trees, stunted, indeed, in size, and bent 
 from the effects of many a gale. Of these 
 valleys, St. Knighton's is at once the most 
 sequestered and richest in foliage of all 
 sorts. It is a miniature forest. Trees, fern, 
 brambles, all growing together. It is so 
 now, and so it was thirty and forty years 
 ago — as long as anybody can recollect. No 
 axe is ever heard ringing through its pre- 
 cincts, and, save for the water falling from a 
 
INTRODUCTORY. ll 
 
 cascade tliirty feet in height, and the occa- 
 sional noise of the null, an unbroken silence 
 prevails. There are sloping hiUs on each 
 side, and a huge barrier of rock at the head 
 of the valley. Trees rising above trees at 
 the sides, and the thickness of the bushes, 
 effectually shut out the sun's rays, and on 
 the brightest morning an awful twilight 
 seems to prevail. There it is " always 
 afternoon." Upon a small cleared space of 
 ground, just near the waterfall and the 
 barrier of rocks referred to, may still be seen 
 the ruinous walls of what was once a cottage 
 of some size. These walls are now covered 
 with ivy, and overgrown with fern and wild 
 clematis. There are a few slight remaias of 
 windows and doors, and here and there 
 portions of the old stone floors. It is now 
 the picture of desolation. Travellers speak 
 of it as the home of toads and noisome 
 reptiles. Yet was it once the shelter of 
 
12 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 youth and beauty. Those walls, now covered 
 over with lichen and moss, and where the 
 ivy spreads itself at will, once echoed to the 
 cry of the forsaken and stricken one — have 
 witnessed the pangs of hopeless sorrow, the 
 keen sharp struggle with despair, the last 
 great struggle of all ! 
 
 To Mr. Pearce's eyes, when he visited it, 
 along with his companion from Wadebridge, 
 it presented all the appearance of a neat 
 compact cottage, with some half dozen small 
 rooms in it, besides the kitchen and out 
 ofl&ces. In front was a smaU flower garden, 
 and behind the house upon a slope of the 
 hill was laid out a tolerably sized kitchen 
 garden. The silence, save for the splashing 
 of the waterfall hard by, and the occasional 
 twittering of a bird, was complete. And 
 Mr. Pearce could hardly wonder at his com- 
 panion's visible reluctance to stay in such 
 a place any longer than was absolutely 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 13 
 
 necessary. " Sure, sir," he would say 
 every now and then, "we can go on to 
 the ' Wortley Arms,' or to the ' Castle Inn,' 
 at Mawnan, and finish our business there. 
 This place gives one the horrors, and all 
 that, it does." 
 
 The business that brought them was at 
 length despatched to the captain's no small 
 contentment. A list of the things required 
 was made out, and an arrangement entered 
 into with the man of the mUl, who had 
 been fetched up by Captain WUl, as to 
 supplying the inmates of the cottage with 
 all they required, and in such a way as 
 not to intrude upon that privacy which was 
 so much insisted on in all the iustructions 
 received from town, and which, it was said, 
 was intended to be absolute and unbroken. 
 On a certain day the house was to be pre- 
 pared by the miller's wife for the reception 
 of two of the ladies. No servant was to 
 
14 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 be kept, only a char-woman for a few hours 
 every day. Nor was any one to be in wait- 
 ing to receive them. Having given these 
 instructions, Mr. Pearce and Captain Will 
 returned to Wadebridge. 
 
15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 REGINALD TRELAWNEY. 
 
 "I AM afraid I have something of the 
 vagrant about me — I often think I should 
 Uke to Hve amongst my native hills, — 
 Cheshire is too flat and tame for me;" 
 this was what the Eev. Reginald Trelawney 
 said to his patron, Sir PhiUp Cholmondeley, 
 as they were sitting together late one even- 
 ing smoking their pipes in the baronet's 
 library at Cholmondeley Hall in Cheshire. 
 Sir PhiUp, who had taken up with very 
 High Church notions, had built a beautiful 
 chapel — quite a gem in its way — adjoining 
 
16 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 his house, and here a daily choral service 
 was celebrated. He appeared to have been 
 fortunate in his selection of a chaplain — 
 as far at least as this went, — that each 
 seemed exactly to suit the other. Both 
 were very musical, and this circumstance 
 alone formed, as it. usually does, a bond of 
 union between them. And then Mr. Tre- 
 lawney was a single man — sure to be of 
 good family from his name, though little 
 was known of his antecedents. Then he 
 was tall, handsome, and good-looking — say 
 about eight and twenty — very dark com- 
 plexioned, with fine eyes, and hair coal- 
 black. He might have been taken for a 
 Spaniard, he was so dark and grave. To 
 a proud reserved man, like Sir Phihp Chol- 
 mondeley, Mr. Trelawney was very accept- 
 able. He was well informed, had travelled 
 a good deal, could describe well what he 
 had seen, and had the easy, well-bred polish 
 
REGINALD TRELAWNEY. 17 
 
 of a man of the world. Again, he very 
 seldom ever spoke of himself, or alluded 
 to his previous history. He had not been 
 long iu orders, and had never been known 
 to assign any reason for entering the ministry 
 at so comparatively late a period ; so that 
 there was no danger of his offending, his 
 patron by any undue propensity to talk 
 about himself, or his belongings. He had 
 not apparently much of a theological turn, 
 and never by any accident attended " clerical 
 meetings," or seemed to care to cultivate 
 the acquaintance of his clerical neighbours. 
 Thus, Httle was known of him by his brother 
 clergy, and they could only vaguely gueps 
 at his opinions. AH was mere surmise. 
 He was no controversialist, that was certain, 
 and seemed rather to despise polemical dis- 
 putes than care to understand them, or take 
 any part in them. He was then an in- 
 scrutable problem to most who came in 
 
 2 
 
18 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 contact with him, but not to his patron, 
 who liked him well enough, and thought 
 he understood him. People in general were 
 rather afraid of him, and set him down as 
 " satirical," from not knowing what else 
 exactly to say about him. There was an 
 air of preoccupation about him, as if his 
 thoughts were far away, and not always 
 very agreeably engaged, which is never 
 viewed with much favour in society, and 
 which induced most people to set him down 
 as a dreamy, absent, inscrutable sort of man, 
 of whom little could be made. Even the 
 young ladies could make nothing of him, 
 much as they might admire his dark eyes, 
 or feel interested in the air of melancholy 
 which was the ordinary expression of his 
 countenance. And so now upon this June 
 night, and sitting over the fire in Sir Philip's 
 library, smoking their pipes, Trelawney gave 
 utterance to that restless feeling, and desire 
 
REGINALD TRELAWNBY. 19 
 
 of change, wMch Sir Philip had latterly 
 noticed in him, having often, indeed heard 
 him say much the same thing on former 
 occasions. 
 
 "You see. Sir Phihp, I have Cornish 
 blood in my veins, and feel often a restless 
 longiag for the land of my fathers, — for 
 the granity hills of Cornwall, bare and 
 bleak though they look, and to hear the 
 roar of the ocean once more dashing up 
 against the cliffs." 
 
 " You have not been in Cornwall lately, 
 have you, Trelawney ? " 
 
 "No, not for several years, but there are 
 some things one can never get out of one's 
 head; and the wide extensive- moors covered 
 with heath, and those bare hills strewn 
 over with gigantic masses of rock, possess 
 an interest for me, which I suppose none 
 but a Comishman, bred and bom, can 
 comprehend." 
 
 2—2 
 
20 ST, KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 "Well, I can't pretend to share your 
 admiration from my recollection of the 
 county, when I travelled through it the 
 year before last. I came by coach from 
 Exeter, and a more dreary, desolate country 
 than that which lies between Exeter and 
 Truro can hardly be imagined." 
 
 "It is the least picturesque of the 
 routes, no doubt." 
 
 ' ' Picturesque, my dear fellow ; what can 
 you be thinking about ? Why, it was the 
 abomination of desolation itself, as far as 
 I could see." 
 
 " And yet you will admit that, even 
 travelling by that route, unpromising as it 
 looked, you passed the two highest hills in 
 the West of England — Eowter, and Brown 
 Willy ; you skirted Dartmoor, and were 
 frequently during the day within a short 
 walk of some of the finest coast scenery 
 in all England; you were near some of 
 
REGINALD TRBLAWNEY. 21 
 
 the most beautiful valleys that the foot of 
 man ever trod — the Vale of Lanheme, 
 for instance, with its ancient convent of 
 Carmelite nuns." 
 
 " Well, I don't remember anything of 
 that sort — I speak merely from a general 
 impression." 
 
 Trelawney's eye kindled, and his voice 
 betrayed an unusual emotion for him while 
 speaking. After this, they smoked on in 
 silence for a considerable while. At length 
 Trelawney reverted to his first subject. 
 
 '* I have a sort of notion, Sir Philip, 
 that downright, good hard work would be 
 the best thing in the world for me. It is 
 aU very pleasant this sort of life I lead 
 here with you — almost under your roof, and 
 as if I was a member of your family; 
 and the time was^ when I dreamt that a 
 perpetual round of holy services, day after 
 day, and these glorious chants which we 
 
22 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 sing in your chapel, and the ample oppor- 
 tunities afforded me for study and reading 
 in your hbrary — that these aU would have 
 brought peace with them — that I should 
 have found happiness in such quiet pur- 
 suits. But, Sir PhiUp, I have not. I am 
 not able to enter into explanations. It is 
 only that I feel the need of exertion — of 
 leading an active Kfe — if I am ever to be 
 happy or at peace again, and I feel strongly 
 inclined to undertake the charge of that 
 large mining parish in the west of Corn- 
 wall, which I told you a college friend of 
 mine had offered me." 
 
 "Hadn't you better talk to my brother 
 Henry and his wife? You know them 
 both very well, and they may be able to 
 give you advice which may help you. A 
 brother clergyman might be aisle to enter 
 into your feelings, better than a dull 
 country squire like myself. Do, Trelawney," 
 
REGINALD TRBLAWNEY. 23 
 
 said Sir Philip, kindly, as he could not be 
 bUnd to the unusual emotion displayed by 
 his friend. " Speak to Henry, and if he 
 can induce you to alter your mind and 
 stop, you know how deUghted I shall be, 
 and so will Lady Cholmondeley, for that 
 matter." 
 
 "I am afraid it is of no use. I am sure 
 I feel your kindness very sensibly. Sir Philip, 
 but I have at times such an irresistible 
 longing for Cornwall, — I suppose it is the 
 Cornish blood stirring in my veins. What 
 else it is, God knows ! My rest is so broken 
 now, and I have such strange dreams, and 
 all running upon the same thing. Last 
 night I had a dreadful one. I dreamt that 
 I was in some dark gloomy valley. I heard 
 the waves of the sea dashing up against 
 the cUffs. It seemed evening. There were 
 a great many trees, and they were com- 
 pletely arched oxer head. There was fern 
 
24 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 and lonely dank grass growing all about. 
 I remember standing by the side of a run- 
 ning stream. There was a waterfall and 
 a mill a little way oflf, which seemed to be 
 shut up. All around seemed so lonely and 
 deserted, — when of a sudden a female figure 
 started up by my side, and her face — oh, 
 what a sad one it was ! It was so pale 
 and wasted, and she looked at me with 
 those fixed, stony, grey eyes of hers, but 
 said nothing. Only her lips moved, and 
 she wrung her hands and pointed towards 
 the waterfall. And then I saw a tall figure 
 in black, closely veiled, coming towards us, 
 and she lifted her veil, and oh, my God ! 
 who did I see ? — one, Sir Philip, who has 
 been dearer to me than my own soul — one 
 of whom I have been cruelly robbed — one 
 whose fate has been hitherto wrapped up 
 in mystery. Oh, my God ! can she be in 
 such a dreadful lonely place as I beheld in 
 
REGINALD TRELAWNEY. 25 
 
 my dream — alone with such a compa- 
 nion ? " 
 
 Trelawney's emotion seemed to shake his 
 frame. He was usually so impassive. But 
 now the pent-up sorrow of years burst forth 
 in an agony of grief, and his friend — who 
 had never imagined that a man whom the 
 world reputed so cynical and heartless, 
 could be thus overcome — sought in vain for 
 some minutes to afford him consolation. 
 
 "I am a fool," at length he said, "to 
 be thus overcome, and I ought not to have 
 inflicted such a gloomy tale upon you. Sir 
 Philip, and at such an unconscionable hour 
 — for it is nearly twelve o'clock. However, 
 I awoke much disturbed this morning, and 
 all day long the dream has haunted me." 
 
 "Well, dreams do play us odd tricks at 
 times," said Sir Philip, pushing back his 
 chair, and making preparations to retire. 
 
 "Yes; and what is more extraordinary," 
 
26 ST. KNIGHTON'S KBIVE. 
 
 went on Trelawney, partly musing with him- 
 self, " I have had the same dream, or some- 
 thing very like it, before. Only one time 
 I seemed to myself to be walking on the 
 sea-shore, — some wild desolate shore, — and 
 the tide was coming in fast, and dashing 
 up against the rocks, and threatening to 
 sweep me away, and I endeavoured to cHmb 
 up the face of some enormous high chff, 
 and when I got half-way I missed my 
 footing, and tried to catch at something, 
 but fell — fell from such a height, and the 
 fright awoke me. Well, good-night. Sir 
 Philip, I must think the matter over, and 
 at any rate will do nothing in a hurry." 
 
27 
 
 CHAPTEB III. 
 
 ST. MAWNAN FORTH. 
 
 The reader must please to fancy himself, 
 or herself, in a small remote fishing village 
 on the north coast of Cornwall. It con- 
 sists of two or three very narrow streets. 
 The houses are small and shabby, and the 
 smeU of fish and sea-weed pervade them 
 extensively. The men are lounging about 
 in aU directions — tawny, dark visaged, re- 
 solute looking fellows — some fewvsdth rings 
 in their ears. Most of them have been 
 out in their boats the night before, and 
 their wives and daughters have gone to 
 
28 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 sell the fish that was caught; or a cart, 
 perhaps, has taken some of it into Camel- 
 ford and the neighbourhood. There is a 
 glorious sea stretching out before you. 
 The water is of the deepest blue, — where 
 is there such marine blue as in Cornwall ? 
 — and right and left, as you cast your eye 
 along the coast, are to be seen huge masses 
 of rock, some towering in the air, some 
 running out far into the sea. Here, there is 
 a rock standing up alone at a little distance 
 from the shore, and the top of which is 
 covered with gulls; and, if you are very 
 fortunate indeed, you may perchance see a 
 little further up the coast that now rare bird 
 the Cornish chough, with his raven black 
 plumage and bright red beak and legs. A 
 few boats are out, their sails lazily flapping 
 to the slight June breeze. Here there is a 
 gentle murmur, as the wave breaks softly on 
 the white sand at your feet, while far away 
 
ST. MAWNAN FORTH. 29 
 
 in the distance to the right may be heard a 
 dull booming sound, as the sea is borne in 
 upon the 
 
 " Thundering shores of Bude and Boss." 
 
 The houses of this little village are 
 quaint, old-fashioned dwellings, mostly con- 
 structed of stone, rude and unshapely, much 
 as they were hewed from the rock. A dash 
 of whitewash reUeves their prevalent colour, 
 and promotes the salubrity of the little fish- 
 ing community. The parish church is two 
 or three miles off; so a little whitewashed 
 meeting-house, with staring windows dispro- 
 portionately large, does duty instead ; and 
 from its unpainted deal pulpit spiritually- 
 minded cobblers, and precocious youths, and 
 even women with a " gift" (for the chapel 
 belongs to the Bible Christians, and has a 
 great B.C., with the year of the Lord carved 
 in stone over its principal entrance) , have an 
 
35 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 opportunity every Sunday, and on one week- 
 day evening, of edifying the primitive dwellers 
 at Mawnan Forth. 
 
 Upon this particular morning there is a 
 little knot of fishermen conversing together, 
 just where they have spread their nets to dry 
 over the iron rails that protect the side of 
 the road next the sea, and where they can 
 descry every object within the range of vision. 
 
 Some of them are smoking, some of them 
 sitting on the low waU spKcing ropes, and 
 one weather-beaten old tar, with a great deal 
 of white beard, and with yellow wrinkled 
 face, and who might have been the " Ancient 
 Mariner" himself, with those bright glitter- 
 ing eyes of his, was occasionally sweeping 
 the horizon with a well-worn telescope. 
 
 *' Come, tell us all about it, Tom," said 
 one of them to his fellow, a middle-aged 
 looking man, with blue Jersey, and hand- 
 kerchief tied loosely about his neck. 
 
ST. MAWNAJif FORTH. 31 
 
 " Why, you see, our Rosina," was the 
 reply, " thought that she might as well take 
 some fish which she hadn't sold down to the 
 cottage at St. Knighton's, as she heard tell 
 that there were somebody living there now. 
 But she had hardly set foot in the valley 
 before she was stopped by Tom Bawden of 
 the mill, who said that no one must on no 
 account go next or nigh the cottage, for, 
 says he, ' there be ladies there now who must 
 not be spoken to, or gone nigh to at all.' 
 ' That be a queer fashion to hve in,' said our 
 little maid, just that way. ' Well, that is 
 neither here nor there,' answered Tom, 
 roughly ; ' my orders be positive, forby 
 one of the ladies it is my belief and opinion,' 
 says he, ' cannot utter a word — is deaf and 
 dumb Hke.' ' What makes you think that ? ' 
 asked Rosy. ' Why,' says Tom, ' I am 
 bidden to go up to the cottage every Monday 
 morning for orders, which are left in a little 
 
32 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 box that has been made in the gate on 
 purpose Hke, and then next day,' says he, ' I 
 mostly brings the things from Carnelford 
 that were ordered ; and I have to leave them 
 in a little outhouse which is not used for 
 anything. And so,' says Tom, ' on the first 
 Tuesday that I was up there to leave the 
 things, I met one of the ladies just as I was 
 returning ; and so says I to her, taking off my 
 hat to her at the same time quite civil, ' I 
 have left the things, ma'am, where I was 
 bid. ' ' And what did she say to that ? ' asked 
 our little maid. ' Oh, she just put her 
 hand to her lips, and made a sign as if she 
 couldn't speak, or wouldn't, at any rate.' 
 Then Eosina asked Tom what she was hke, 
 and he made answer that she was a lady, not 
 old at all, but very sad and melancholy like. 
 She seemed, however, to thank Tom, for 
 she bowed her head, and returned to the 
 house." 
 
ST. MAWNAN FORTH. 33 
 
 " Well, that's queer enough," was the 
 comment of one of the listening fishermen, 
 as he proceeded to put some more tobacco 
 in his pipe. 
 
 "And I am told," says another, "and 
 that by one that was about when they 
 arrived, that they were driven to the house 
 in a hired carriage, which seemed to have 
 come from some distance, and that there 
 was only one man with them, who looked 
 hke a servant, only he wasn't in hvery, 
 and that he stayed but a short time — just 
 long enough to help to bring the boxes and 
 other things into the house, and then drove 
 off in the carriage he had come in — only 
 this time he got inside it." 
 
 "It is said," put in another, " that they 
 walk out most days, but have never quitted 
 the valley. They be collecting ferns and 
 wild-flowers."' 
 
 " And some do say snails and slugs : for 
 
 3 
 
84 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 to eat, I suppose," added a young sailor, 
 who had not before spoken. 
 
 " One of them be uncommon pretty, I 
 hear; but it is hard to catch a gUmpse of 
 them, as they have mostly their veils over 
 their faces. They be nearly a height, and 
 from what I hear, there is not much differ- 
 ence in their ages." 
 
 While this conversation was proceeding, 
 if any of the party had taken a walk about 
 a mile inland, in the direction of St. 
 Knighton's Keive, he might have had an 
 opportunity of forming his own judgment 
 respecting these mysterious strangers whose 
 arrival had afforded a subject of gossip in 
 every farmhouse and cottage about the 
 neighbourhood. For, walking up and down 
 not far from their cottage, one of them 
 occasionally stopping to gather a fern, or 
 piece of heath, or a wild floWer, were two 
 ladies, both dressed very simply in black. 
 
ST. MAWNAN FORTH. 35 
 
 No conversation passed between them, but, 
 as there was an occasional interchange of 
 signs, it might be presumed that one or 
 other of them — she, probably, who looked 
 a trifle the oldest, say about eight-and- 
 twenty, and whose pale, sad face wore that 
 fixed, stony appearance — was afflicted with 
 that great calamity, the loss of speech and 
 hearing. To a close observer, a disparity 
 of rank between the parties might have 
 been inferred. The taller and younger of 
 the two walked a trifle in advance of her 
 companion, and was never addressed first 
 by her. Occasionally, by a rapid motion of 
 the fingers, she would seem to make a 
 remark or ask a question of her companion, 
 and the answer to it would be briefly com- 
 municated in the same manner. The younger 
 lady's dress, too, was of somewhat richer 
 material than her companion's, and she 
 wore several rings of value upon her long 
 
 3—2 
 
36 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 delicate, tapering fingers, which the other 
 did not. Altogether the relationship between 
 them was probably that of a lady and her 
 companion or attendant. And now that 
 the younger lady has lifted up that thick 
 veil which had partly concealed her features, 
 the difference of rank between them was 
 more conspicuous. Her age might be about 
 five or six and twenty. She had that clear, 
 olive complexion, with brown eyes, and 
 profusion of dark hair which would have 
 attracted admiration seen anywhere. Added 
 to which that, though participating to some 
 extent in the air of sadness which was the 
 prevailing expression of her companion's 
 face, yet the effect was rather to chasten 
 than altogether to obscure that cheerfulness 
 of mien which seemed to be natural to her. 
 Even the discovery of some little wild 
 flower in its shady recess, or the acquisition 
 of a rare fern, Hghted up those lovely fea- 
 
ST. MAWNAN FORTH. 37 
 
 tures with a transient glow of pleasure, 
 and made her eyes to sparkle. There was 
 a Ughtness and elasticity, too, in her car- 
 riage, which contrasted with the more sedate 
 movements of her companion. 
 
 After a time the ladies might have been 
 seen slowly retracing their steps towards 
 the cottage, where we must leave them for 
 the present. 
 
38 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 A CORNISH MINE. 
 
 MoNTACUTE is the name of a new ecclesi- 
 astical district carved out of the old parish 
 of St. Swithun in West Cornwall. The 
 population is mostly mining, but there is 
 a tolerable sprinkling of farmers and agri- 
 cultural labourers as well. StiU everybody 
 there has something to do with the mines. 
 These enter largely into every one's calcu- 
 lation who adopts a profession, or sets up in 
 business in those parts. Is a man going to 
 be a doctor, — to purchase a practice there ? 
 The great question to be determined is, 
 what mines can he secure ? to what mines 
 
A CORNISH MINE. 39 
 
 can he obtain the appointment of surgeon ? 
 Or, if a lawyer, then there are purserships 
 going, snug comfortable things in their 
 way. Or it may be that a mine which has 
 been "Iqiacked," or which is "shaky," 
 requires to be set going again. Who so fit 
 for this as a lawyer ? Say Lawyer Gully 
 from the neighbouring town of PenpoU ; who 
 can compare to him in fertility of schemes ? 
 Suppose ten thousand pounds is wanted. The 
 thing is easily done. Issue a couple of thou- 
 sand shares at a pound a-piece, and they 
 will be soon taken up in the neighbourhood. 
 Never fear, if Lawyer Gully once sets his mind 
 upon it. One man buys a lot in order to 
 dispose of them the very first moment he 
 can turn a penny by them. Only run up 
 the shares somehow — the purser knows 
 how to manage that — and see what a hand- 
 some profit is reaUzed by this early specu- 
 lator ! Another takes shares because Lawyer 
 
40 ST. KiflGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Gully has made him a prom;ise that he shall 
 supply the mine with wine and spirits. And 
 what a good thing is to he made out of that 
 with a little cleverness ! Or, it is the Foundry 
 company in the neighbouring town of Tre- 
 gurgle, or the well-to-do draper in PenpoU ; 
 — every one hopes to serve his own purpose 
 by helping to set the mine going. What 
 an advantage it will be to Penpoll, where 
 trade is so stagnant, to have such a mine 
 as Wheal Ann at work again ! Think of 
 all the wages that will be spent there ! 
 What a roaring business the inns and public 
 houses will do ! For was there ever a mine 
 captain yet who didn't love his glass, and 
 two glasses better than one ? Publicans, 
 butchers, and all, must take shares, just to 
 set the thing a-going, afterwards they can 
 do what they like with them, so Lawyer 
 Gully tells them with a wink out of those 
 keen grey eyes of his. He is a great 
 
A CORNISH MINE. 41 
 
 man in Penpoll is Lawyer Gully, and lives 
 in that large handsome house with its 
 beautifully laid-out grounds on the right, just 
 as you enter the town. How he came by 
 them, it boots not to say. The story is an 
 old one now, and the last person more par- 
 ticularly interested in it died in a lunatic 
 asylum, or workhouse, or some such place, 
 where the weak get shoved into to die. 
 However, this troubles not Lawyer Gully, 
 as he bustles about disposing of no end of 
 shares. He is looked upon as the great 
 benefactor of PenpoU, and is spoken of 
 already as the next mayor, the future M.P., 
 Heaven knows what ! Now, see he has taken 
 aside that needy little Cornish baronet ; see 
 how he describes to him what great things 
 Wheal Ann is going to do ; what fortunes are 
 to be made out of her. He whispers some- 
 thing in his ear about London adventurers, 
 and Captain Dick, and a certain piece of 
 
42 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVB. 
 
 copper ore which the captain has heen dis- 
 playing to some purpose, as it would seem, 
 in town, and which he swears has come 
 from Wheal Ann. What is it, then ? The 
 little Cornish baronet is "lord of the set" 
 about to be worked. The dues are to 
 enrich him beyond his wildest hopes, so 
 he must put down his name for fifty shares 
 at least. The little baronet makes some 
 demur about it. He is not so easily talked 
 over as all that. Besides, he knows his 
 man, and how that fine house and grounds 
 of his have been come by, quite eclipsing 
 as they do his own hereditary and dilapi- 
 dated mansion of Treheme ; and he knows 
 who pays for all the champagne and claret 
 that fiow so freely at the lawyer's hospi- 
 table table, quite shaming his own " dinner 
 sherry " and thirty-two shilling port, and 
 he has heard more queer stories about 
 Lawyer Gully than he quite rehshes. 
 
A CORNISH MINE. 43 
 
 However, he is in the strong man's 
 grasp, both literally and metaphorically. 
 Gully would be a dangerous man to make 
 an enemy of. Was he ever known to stop 
 at anything? And then. How about that 
 mortgage money on Treheme ? Might he 
 not play him an ugly trick and call in the 
 money ? So down goes Sir Roger Pen- 
 dragon's name for the fifty shares, and the 
 lawyer walks off well pleased with his 
 success, for all the shares intended for the 
 neighbourhood are now disposed of. It 
 is a slightly curious circumstance about the 
 affair that, eager as the lawyer has been 
 about disposing of the shares, yet he has 
 taken none himself. He spoke, indeed, at 
 the mine dinner, in that capital speech 
 of his, which he delivered after the cloth 
 had been removed, grace said, and the 
 Queen's health drank, of the fifty shares 
 he would at once put his own name down 
 
44 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 for. But perhaps he did not bespeak them 
 in time, or something of that sort; for 
 certain it is that no shares were ever 
 assigned to him; or was it that he was 
 aware that every shareholder, as a partner, 
 makes himself answerable for all the debts 
 of the mine? Poor Sir Eoger, as if 
 you had not debts enough of your own 
 without being saddled with the debts of 
 the mine ! 
 
 No difficulty is anticipated in London 
 by this expert man of business. Captain 
 Dick has prepared the way for him with 
 his " specimens," which he is ready to 
 swear came direct from "Wheal Ann, and 
 there were plenty of gudgeons swimming all 
 round, and drinking in everything the 
 "Captain" let fall — all eagerness to make 
 their fortunes in the Cornish mines, a feat 
 represented by Captain Dick to be some- 
 thing easier than picking blackberries off 
 
A COKNISH MINE. 45 
 
 the hedges in October. Then arrives upon 
 the scene Lawyer Gully from PenpoU, fuU 
 of the furor to obtain shares which he 
 alleges to exist in his own neighbourhood. 
 The list of names is produced, headed by 
 that of Sir Roger Pendragon. It could be 
 easily doubled or trebled if thought desir- 
 able. But "London friends" must not be 
 forgotten ; and so the remaining 8,000L 
 worth of shares is soon got rid of. 
 
 With this closes Lawyer GuUy's share 
 of the business. He pockets his cool five 
 hundred pounds clear of traveUing and 
 hotel expenses — nearly a tenth more — and 
 washes his hands of the mine. Shares are 
 tendered to him at par — he declines them 
 with thanks. The pursership is pressed 
 upon him ; he shakes his head in a 
 jocular manner, and will have none of it. 
 
 The mine now enters upon phase num- 
 ber two. It is soon understood that the 
 
46 ST. KNIGHTON'S KBIVE. 
 
 shares are almost entirely in the hands 
 of London " adventurers." Somehow or 
 other, the Foundry company, the wine 
 merchant, the prosperous draper in Pen- 
 poll ; they have all quietly shpped out of 
 the business — disposed of their shares in 
 the London market at a small premium. 
 They can now afford to take matters quietly, 
 — get aU the gain they can arising from 
 labourers' wages and expenditure at the 
 mine, and leave the risk, and probably 
 eventual loss, to strangers in London and 
 elsewhere. But there is little sign, indeed, 
 of failure at the first going off. Was 
 there ever such a powerful engine con- 
 structed before — of I don't know how 
 many horse power. Why, the cylinder of it 
 is so large that the directors and Lawyer 
 Gully are going to have a dinner in it, 
 and then a sketch of it is to appear in 
 the Illustrated London News. 
 
A CORNISH MINE. 47 
 
 It was a bright idea with whomsoever it 
 originated, for it sent up the shares imme- 
 diately. And then what wonderful things 
 are to be done in the way of schools for the 
 miners' children, sick clubs, and the like ! 
 Nothing sectarian, however, about them ! 
 The clergyman is to have nothing to do 
 with them. This was an express stipula- 
 tion. The directors are a motly group. 
 There is a Jew among them, two or three 
 atheists, a Socinian, and a "liberal-minded" 
 Churchman, who thinks all sects much 
 alike, and then there is the fashionable 
 secretary, or manager, who sports a mous- 
 tache and large whiskers, and comes out 
 strong in chains and rings. He would be 
 handsome, but for that flushed face of his, 
 attributable, it may be (as he says) to over 
 work, or possibly to that open bottle of 
 sherry which is perpetually at his elbow, 
 and which he imparts liberally, it must be 
 
48 ST. KNIGHTON'S KBIVE. 
 
 admitted, to all comers of the right stamp 
 — that is, persons who are worth the com- 
 pliment. This secretary is a tremendous 
 fellow at " Rules for the workmen." He 
 allows no one to swear on the mine, except 
 himself, of course, and any Director who 
 may have a turn that way. He is not 
 religious, he says, t^t his wife is, (she 
 is really a good kind of woman, hut 
 conscientiously hlind to her husband's fail- 
 ings), and so the Sabbath is to be kept 
 holy on the mine, and the workmen en- 
 joined to attend a place of worship. It 
 was time now that Wheal Ann should be 
 making some return to the adventurers, 
 for heavy and numerous had been the 
 " calls." There was no denying that every- 
 thing was of the best sort — engines, pumps, 
 ladders, &c. The horse and trap in which 
 the secretary drove about was quite a credit 
 to the mine, so were the dinners, the wine. 
 
A CORNISH MINE. 49 
 
 and the spirits, all first-rate — dear, cer- 
 tainly, but good of the kind, which was 
 a great matter, as the secretary used to 
 observe. At last the ten thousand pounds 
 was got through ; ugly whispers were abroad 
 — there was an execution at the mine, put 
 in by the Foundry Company. No account 
 of the secretary. In a week all was stiU, 
 and as silent at Wheal Ann as ever. The 
 loss feU exclusively upon "foreigners," (as 
 inhabitants out of the Duchy are styled), 
 and this was the only thing the adventurers 
 ever had to divide amongst them. 
 
 Wheal Ann had been one of the prin- 
 cipal mines in St. Swithun, and when 
 Mr. Trelawney was appointed, as he was 
 through the interest of the vicar, to the 
 incumbency of the district church, the 
 halcyon days of the mine had just come 
 to an end as related above. 
 
 4 
 
50 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 MONT ACUTE. 
 
 Me. Teelawney, though a native of Corn- 
 wall, had not visited the county for several 
 years, and found himself almost a stranger 
 there when he arrived at Montacute. He had 
 • no very near relations hviag in Cornwall, 
 and, with the exception of the vicar of 
 St. Swithun, Mr. Praed, who resided upon 
 another living at a distance, had no 
 acquaintances amongst the clergy. St. 
 Swithun, of which, as we have said, 
 Montacute formed a part, is an extensive 
 mining parish. The natural features of the 
 country are, however, interesting. 
 
MOKTACUTE. 51 
 
 The Montacute chain of hills, from which 
 one of the finest views in the county is 
 to be had, runs in a direction east and 
 west. Bare and bleak-looking are these 
 hills at first sight. But, as you ascend 
 them, patches of purple heath meet the 
 eye, and golden furze, and gorse, and 
 fern. Wild enough is it surely as you 
 approach the cone-shaped summit, with 
 its immense boulders, and huge masses of 
 rock, scattered in all directions. And then, 
 when at the very top, seated on that large 
 sphnter of rock which seems to have been 
 thrown off by some convulsion of nature, 
 what a view presents itself. Trelawney was 
 enchanted with it on the first morning he 
 ascended the hill. A soft balmy gentle 
 morning in July it was, with the breeze 
 just stirring, wafting the scent of the furze 
 blossom, and seeming fraught with memo- 
 ries of the past, with tender soothing 
 
 4—2 
 
52 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 memories of the living and the dead, of 
 the absent and estranged. There in the 
 distance, on two sides of you, lay the sea 
 gleaming Hke molten silver, calm and mo- 
 tionless, under the influence of the summer's 
 sun; little specks of sails, or the smoke 
 of a steamer being just perceptible, and 
 rising proudly out of the sea St. Michael's 
 Mount, — that object which (with the ex- 
 ception of the Land's End) we associate 
 more than any other with Cornwall. 
 
 "Ah," thought Trelawney as he gazed 
 on it with interest for the first time, 
 "how many stirring events in English 
 history has not that Mount been the scene 
 of — ^to have been resorted to for trade by 
 the Phoenicians when the Greeks were be- 
 sieging Troy, and the Jews building their 
 Temple, — to have been a monastery, and 
 object of pilgrimage, like its namesake in 
 Normandy, during the middle ages, to Wes- 
 
MONTACUTE. 53 
 
 tern Christendom, — to have been seized 
 on by Perkin Warbeck, to have received 
 Charles I., and held out for the royal cause 
 during the civil wars — how many associations 
 does not that towering mass of rock bring 
 to the mind ! " Or did Trelawney's eye rest 
 on the httle valleys here and there, or on 
 those clumps of trees scattered up and 
 down, and encircUng some homestead, or on 
 the massive granite church towers studded 
 about the bay, or on yon tapering spire 
 more inland rising out from amongst the 
 trees in the distance, — all on that soft hazy 
 July morning spoke of peace and repose. 
 Elevated as he was five hundred feet above 
 the level of the sea, even the clanking sound 
 of the " stamps " did not seem out of place, 
 giving just enough of life to the scene to 
 prevent it from oppressing the spirits. All 
 around and above breathed of peace then 
 on that calm lovely July morning, with its 
 
64 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 perfumed air, and the elastic heathery turf 
 at your feet. 
 
 But had Trelawney found the peace he 
 sought? Had he left aU his cares behind 
 him in the far north-west as he had fondly 
 hoped ? Alas ! no. The storm raged in 
 his breast at times more fiercely than ever. 
 And then the sense of loneliness and deso- 
 lation, and uprooting of habits which had 
 become second nature, quite oppressed him 
 with melancholy. " Why seek her out ? " 
 he thought. " She is another's. And if 
 I were to discover where that bad, cruel 
 man has had her conveyed, what but misery 
 — what but ruin and misery could befall us 
 both ? Better — better we never meet again. 
 I have gone through the worst ; I have 
 drank the cup of bitterness to the very 
 dregs ; why revive it aU ? " Thus did 
 Trelawney's thoughts battle with each other 
 as he gazed down on that fair quiet scene 
 
MONT ACUTE. 55 
 
 t 
 
 all around; on that tapering spire pointed 
 up to heaven ; on those peaceful homesteads 
 in different directions, each looking a picture 
 of repose and of quiet home happiness. 
 " Ah," he thought, " what has led me here ? 
 Is it mere fancy that has disturbed aU my 
 thoughts, distorted my dreams ? Is there 
 anything in what I have dreamt — in that 
 mysterious hand beckoning to me ? Is it for 
 good or evil I have come here ? " " What 
 dost thou here, Elijah ? " The words rose 
 to his hps, as conscious of a fierce inex- 
 tinguishable fire raging in his bosom ; of 
 a longing, unappeasable desire to look upon 
 that face* once more that had wrought him 
 so much misery, and to touch that hand 
 yet - once again — that pHghted, betrothed 
 hand, which had been so cruelly wrested 
 from him. With these conflicting thoughts, 
 which one while would lead him to seek 
 safety in flight — ^to put whole oceans be- 
 
56 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 tween him and the ill-fated object of his 
 passion; and, in a moment afterwards, to 
 hug his secret to his bosom — to revel and 
 delight in the chance of discovermg his 
 long lost one ; of rescuing her from misery ; 
 of drying her tears ; of bursting open the 
 doors of her prison-house, and bearing her 
 off triumphant to far distant lands from 
 him who, by his cruelty and infideUty, had 
 trampled out her wedded love, and consigned 
 her to a Uviug tomb. 
 
 With such conflicting thoughts as these 
 did Trelawney descend the hUl, pausing as 
 he did to admire the ivy-covered ruins of 
 the old ancestral castle of the Montacutes. 
 There it lay at the foot of the hiU, a pic- 
 turesque object. There were the remains 
 of armorial bearings rudely carved in granite 
 over the principal entrance : a great white 
 eagle with wings extended, and the motto, 
 Je monte au del. A portico of granite 
 
MONTACUTE. 57 
 
 columns still remained in tolerable preser- 
 vation, with great massive oaken doors, 
 and numerous window traceries. The sight 
 was a depressing one : those grey deserted 
 ruins on that bright summer morning — 
 the powerful family who once ruled there 
 quite extinct ; all their glory and greatness, 
 their loves and their hates — all dead, and 
 buried, and forgotten ! and a stranger to 
 their name and blood in possession of that 
 castle and land, for so many generations 
 the proud heritage of the great Montacutes. 
 
 Trelawney turned away with a sigh, and 
 was going down the fine avenue of oak 
 trees which still survive amidst the ruin 
 of the family and their castle, when he was 
 accosted by a smart dapper-looking man, 
 who announced himself as the person who 
 rented Montacute from the absentee pro- 
 prietor. Lord Pengerseck. 
 
 " You have been looking at the ruins, 
 
58 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 sir, I suppose," said Captain Sam Bennett. 
 " Eather pretty, ain't they ? But they take 
 up a sight of good ground. I want the 
 steward to get me permission to take them 
 down. But my lord won't hear of it, though 
 he scarcely ever comes down here." 
 
 " Why should you take the ruins down ? 
 they are a great ornament to the place." 
 
 " Well, as far as that goes, to my mind, 
 sir," said Captain Sam, with easy familiarity, 
 " a shaft sunk there, just where those use- 
 less old pillars stand, with stamps and a 
 tidy counting-house, would be much more 
 ornamental to the place, and a sight more 
 useful. And then look at these fine trees, 
 sir, we haven't any other such trees about 
 here. Why, what splendid pumps they 
 would make, and supply us with all the 
 wood we should require both for the mine 
 and counting-house." 
 
 " Who is the steward ? " 
 
MONTACUTE. 59 
 
 " Mr. Treugrouse, sir." 
 
 " And is he in favour of pulling down 
 the ruins ? " 
 
 " Oh, he doesn't care about it one way 
 or the other, he always says when I speak 
 to him about it. Only that I must leave 
 the ruius alone, until such time as my lord 
 gives permission to remove them." 
 
 " Which I don't expect will be either 
 in your time or mine." 
 
 " Maybe not, maybe not," said Captain 
 Sam, with nonchalance. " Some people are 
 so bigoted and fond of their own way. 
 You are our new parson, sir, are you not ? 
 I heard you yesterday at the Httle church." 
 
 " Do you attend there regularly ? " 
 
 " Sometimes, that is if I like the parson. 
 The last one was but a poor stick in the 
 pulpit, and not worth going to hsten to." 
 
 " Indeed, I thought he had been a very 
 excellent man." 
 
60 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 " He was well-meaning enough, poor 
 man, I daresay, but he never could get to 
 the root of the matter. I remember his 
 trying to persuade me that sprinkling a 
 little water on a child's face did it some 
 good. That was when me and my missus 
 wanted him to come up and give our little 
 boy a name. He made us actually bring 
 him to the church, he was that bigoted." 
 " Are you a Churchman yourself ? " 
 " Well, I go anywhere, sir, I can get 
 good. I generally go to the little chapel 
 in the village. There is less form and cere- 
 mony. However, I don't say but I may 
 look in on you now and then." And with 
 this consolatory assurance, the little mine 
 captain took his departure perfectly satisfied 
 with himself, and with a jaunty motion of 
 his finger towards his hat. 
 
61 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 MR. TKELAWNEY'S FLOCK. 
 
 "But it is time," thought Trelawney, "to 
 descend from my solitary heights, and get 
 into the world again. If anything is to be 
 done with this wild place, now is the time 
 to do it. I am young, and strong, and 
 active, why not throw myself into the work ? 
 ' Let the dead bury their dead,' wherefore 
 dwell upon the past ? It is irremediable. 
 My predecessor lost heart about the place — 
 could make nothing of the people, nor they 
 of him ; so, come, I'll make the effort at any 
 rate ! I have a good Cornish name to 
 
62 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 begin with." So thought, so resolved, Tre- 
 lawney, as he came down from Montacute 
 HUl, and after he had parted with Captain 
 Sam. The prospect was not an inviting 
 one, either locally or morally, look at it 
 how you might. Once you had quitted the 
 Montacute demesne, and its still considerable 
 plantations, and you found yourself in. the 
 midst of desolation ; great heaps of refuse 
 in every direction, as if aU the rubbish in 
 England had been shot out in the place. 
 Mine chimneys dotted here and there, as 
 far as the eye could reach, and shabby 
 rickety-looking counting-houses with their 
 little balconies, from whence the work was 
 let out to the miners. 
 
 A tree was now a rare object, and those 
 that did grow in the neighbom*hood were 
 almost all stunted ashes, bent from the effect 
 of many a westerly gale. The clay-built 
 cottages more resembled Irish cabins than 
 
MK. TRELAWNEY'S FLOCK. 63 
 
 anything else; with this difference, how- 
 ever, that few of them were without their 
 bit of garden ground where myrtles, and 
 fuchsias, and geraniums might be seen all 
 the year round, and attaining a size which 
 we look for in vain anywhere but in Corn- 
 wall. It is Gudgodah, a "land of waters" 
 too : you are constantly coming to little 
 streams, and " stamps " where they wash 
 the tin. All day long may you see those 
 dark-eyed Cornish maids, with their pic- 
 turesque sun-bonnets, busily employed in 
 this way. Such was the view which pre- 
 sented itself daily to Trelawney, as he looked 
 out of the windows of his picturesque par- 
 sonage, built to be in keeping with the 
 little early English church at no great dis- 
 tance off, in the most approved Gothic style. 
 It was quite an oasis in the desert was that 
 pretty httle parsonage, with rose-trees climb- 
 ing up all round the windows, and clematis 
 
64 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVB. 
 
 and honeysuckle hanging in rich clusters 
 about the porch. A well-kept garden, too, 
 and flower-beds, bright with geraniums and 
 heliotrope, and verbenas, gladdened the eye 
 of the owner of this little paradise. While 
 right in front of you was that lofty, majestic, 
 unchangeable hill which had looked down 
 upon so many generations, and which, as 
 the Ughts and shadows rested upon its side, 
 assumed so many varying appearances. 
 
 But now what of the people ? what of 
 that little flock in the wilderness whom Tre- 
 lawney had come to tend ? As may be said 
 also of their own country, when you open 
 your mouth to disparage, some redeeming 
 trait presents itself, and checks your utter- 
 ance. Blessed with an insatiable and ever 
 extensive curiosity about your affairs, yet 
 are they equally communicative of their 
 own, and habitually civil and courteous in 
 their demeanour. Fickle as their own cli- 
 
MR. TRELAWNEY'S FLOCK. 65 
 
 mate, they are only too easily led after any 
 novelty. The Cornish mind, hke the Welsh, 
 is eminently a religious one. They sing 
 hymns and carols ("curls"), instead of the 
 drinking and amatory songs wherewith the. 
 peasantry in other parts of England refresh 
 their spirits. You may often come upon a 
 "young youth," standing in the middle of 
 the road singing a hymn at a loud pitch, 
 either as a trial of his voice, or to summon 
 his companions, rather than as a religious 
 exercise, and he is sure to be joined by other 
 youths before long, who make the welkin 
 echo with their melody. For the Cornish, like 
 the people of Lancashire, are fond of music, 
 and whether in church, or going to "bal," 
 or returning home from the mine, naturally 
 betake themselves to this source of recrea- 
 tion. There is Uttle drunkenness amongst 
 the miners. Coffee and ginger-beer are the 
 two beverages most in demand. But still it 
 
 6 
 
66 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 must be said of tlie Cornisli miner that 
 only let him sing " curls " to his heart's 
 content, and he does not want any other 
 species of " refreshment," It would be well 
 if all this psalm-singing, and chapel-going 
 (for church-going is decidedly the exception 
 and not the rule in Cornwall,) commended 
 itself by the ordinary tests of morality which 
 we are in the habit of applying. But it 
 must be allowed, as in the kindred case 
 of the Welsh, that female virtue is at a 
 remarkably low ebb among the mining girls 
 and farm servants, and is seldom indeed 
 ever to be met with. However, we are not 
 writing a history of Cornwall, or its inha- 
 bitants. Enough has been said to give the 
 reader, who perchance has never been in 
 Cornwall (he would be called a "foreigner" 
 down in those western parts — for the inha- 
 bitants often speak of themselves, and still 
 oftener are spoken of by others, as if occu- 
 
MK. TRELAWNET'S FLOCK. 67 
 
 pying some island, or dependency of the 
 British Empire, and not as forming part 
 and parcel of Great Britain), — enough has 
 been said to give the non-Cornish reader 
 some idea of the place and people whither 
 Eeginald Trelawney's fate had brought 
 him. 
 
 The first thing to be done was to visit 
 the people — to make their acquaintance : 
 an embarrassing thing enough for a natu- 
 rally shy, sensitive man hke Trelawney — a 
 man dropped down from the clouds it 
 might seem to the people — to make his 
 way unasked into their houses — to have to 
 talk to them as if known to them aU his 
 life. There was no occasion for embar- 
 rassment, however. They were one and all 
 deUghted to see him. Those who were out 
 when he called would when he met them beg 
 that he would caU again as soon as possible. 
 Any member of the family who was absent 
 
 5—2 
 
68 ST, KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 would deplore it as a personal misfortune. 
 So far so good : only they all seemed to 
 be under the impression that some won- 
 derful piece of good fortune was to accrue 
 to themselves indi-vidually from the coming 
 of this stranger. Their glee, it must be 
 admitted, was that of children, or of some 
 primitive coloured tribes at the appearance 
 of a white man amongst them. They 
 would watch the stranger curiously, and 
 his going out and his coming in, and re- 
 peat with laborious precision anything that 
 had dropped from him, and speculate upon 
 his intentions towards themselves, and re- 
 gard with admiring awe anything remark- 
 able in his dress or proceedings at all. 
 This only until they got familiar with his 
 presence. Afterwards they would treat him 
 with as little ceremony as the savage who 
 whips his idol when it doesn't come up to 
 the mark — when it doesn't send the rain, 
 
MR. TRELAWNEY'S FLOCK. 69 
 
 or food, or whatever it is the worshipper 
 requires. 
 
 And then how they did crowd into that 
 little church of Montacute for the first few 
 Sundays after Trelawney came ! Why, 
 there was no getting a seat ! and the httle 
 Bible Christian place over the way was 
 quite deserted. The eagerness, too, of the 
 people to listen ! and how so many would 
 stand up in order to hear better ! Some even 
 would come and sit on the pulpit steps, so 
 as not to miss a word. It was most 
 gratifying. And then the display of musi- 
 cal instruments! Nebuchadnezzar's collec- 
 tion was nothing to it — flutes, bass viols, 
 vioUns, serpents, what not. It was a per- 
 fect ovation the arrival of this new parson! 
 
 "Who says that the Cornish are aU dis- 
 senters ? " thought Trelawney to himself 
 each Sunday as he walked back from 
 church for the first month or so after his 
 
70 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 arrival. "A better church feeUng than 
 there is in this place seemingly cannot be. 
 And there was Captain Sam as usual in 
 his place. It is certainly gratifying, after 
 hearing so much of the emptiness of the 
 church before I came." 
 
 Something of this sort would often cross 
 through Trelawney's mind, as each Sunday 
 witnessed the same overflowing congrega- 
 tions — the same eagerness to hear — the 
 same hearty crowding about the clergyman 
 (only there was a trifle too much of it) 
 as he came out of the church, and made 
 his way towards the gate. He was, how- 
 ever, greatly disgusted one fine Sunday 
 morning, when he had taken more pains 
 than usual, too, about his sermon, to find 
 the church almost entirely empty — musi- 
 cians and all disappeared — and to learn, 
 as he soon did from the sexton, that a 
 woman was preaching at the chapel, and 
 
MR. TRELAWNEY'S FLOCK. 71 
 
 that the people had all* gone to hear her. 
 And his mortification was not by any means 
 lessened when, upon passing the chapel 
 (as he was nnfortmiately obUged to do), 
 on his return from church, he was en- 
 countered by throngs of people flocking 
 out of the meeting-house ; some laughing 
 and talking ; some carrying , home their 
 musical instruments swathed in green 
 baize; and two or three throwing a care- 
 less nod of recognition towards their clergy- 
 man, and then jostling past him. Captain 
 Sam- was amongst the throng, and accom- 
 panied Trelawney on his way home as long 
 as their roads lay together. 
 
 " A capital sermon we have just had," 
 he said, " from Miss Trotter. How she did 
 give it to you parsons ! I was thinking 
 of poor Mr. Roberts aU the time. * Dumb 
 dogs,' these were her very words, ' loving 
 to slumber, lying down.' She said that 
 they thought of nothing but their tithes 
 
72 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 and their fees; and that if she had her 
 way a ■ person should have as much right 
 to choose his parson as his shoemaker or 
 tailor. We don't pay a shoemaker, she 
 says, if we don't wear his shoes ; and why 
 should we pay parsons if we don't go to 
 hear them, or want to ? I thought she was 
 right there. It must come to people 
 choosing their own ministers, she said, 
 and the parsons would have to try and 
 please their congregations better. Don't 
 you think so, sir ? Now, why should I 
 have to pay tithes to Mr. Praed — a man 
 I never spoke to in my life, and who 
 wouldn't know me if he met me on the 
 road to-morrow? But I am keeping you, 
 sir. I should like you heard Miss Trotter 
 for yourself. How she does knock the dust 
 out of the cushions ! She preaches again 
 this evening, and I am reckoning you 
 won't have much of a congregation. Good 
 day to you." 
 
78 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 KETKOSPECTIVE. 
 
 In the meantime the movements of the two 
 ladies at St. Knighton's cottage were sedu- 
 lously watched and reported on to the village 
 conclave. Nor was this eagerness to find 
 out something about them at all diminished, 
 but, on the contrary, it received a consider- 
 able accession, when it became known that 
 orders had been given by the steward who 
 had the management of the St. Knighton 
 property, that no persons should be allowed 
 to trespass in the valley ; and that, except in 
 going to and from the mill by the direct 
 
74 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 path, no persons whatever were to be allowed 
 to enter it without a written permission from 
 him, and notices to this effect were duly 
 posted. Of course, as we have said, this 
 but stimulated the curiosity of the villagers, 
 and others ; and many was the surreptitious 
 visit paid in consequence to the neighbour- 
 hood of the cottage, especially after dark, 
 and many were the concealed eyes which took 
 notice of the ladies and their habits. Not 
 much, however, could be gleaned even in 
 this way. To the daring intruders who con- 
 tiuued to peer ia through the window 
 shutters on those grey autumnal evenings, 
 when the ladies had come in from their walk, 
 when they had Ughted candles, and had shut 
 themselves in for the night, no other spectacle 
 usually presented itself than that of two 
 ladies sitting quietly at their work or reading. 
 The communication carried on between them 
 was by signals, though occasionally she who 
 
KETROSPECTIVE. 75 
 
 was apparently deaf and dumb was able so 
 far to articulate sounds as to attract her 
 companion's attention when necessary, and 
 even in some degree, as it would seem, to 
 make known her meaning. 
 
 The history of the younger of those two 
 ladies was plainly a sad one — she, I mean, 
 who might be seen at times with her head 
 leaning upon her hand, and buried in 
 reflection ; or who — sometimes it was within 
 doors, sometimes in the course of her walk 
 — might be seen convulsively pressing her 
 handkerchief to her eyes, and seemingly 
 overcome with sorrow. At such times would 
 her companion approach her, and with inar- 
 ticulate sounds and gentle dumb caresses try 
 to assuage that grief which passed utterance. 
 The only person who ever crossed the 
 threshold of the cottage after the ladies took 
 up their residence there was the person who 
 washed for them, and who lighted the fires 
 
76 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 in the morning, and did what simple cooking 
 was required. But the ladies were ahnost as 
 much a mystery to her as to others. The 
 younger of the ladies she seldom saw, and 
 the few directions she received from the other 
 were usually conveyed in writing — two or 
 three words, perhaps, written in a large clear 
 hand. It was remarked that no names were 
 written in any of their numerous books 
 which were supplied from time to time to 
 them by a neighbouring bookseller (who had 
 his orders from Mr. Pearce) , and that from 
 their table and bed linen, as well as from 
 their own body linen, the name had been 
 carefuUy cut out. All, however, was of the 
 finest quality, especially that which belonged 
 to the younger of the two ; and there was no 
 stint of anything which might be necessary 
 for their comfort. 
 
 It is time now to say something respecting 
 the past history of these two ladies, and of 
 
EETEOSPECTIVE. 77 
 
 the link whick connected one of them with 
 Trelawney. 
 
 Of the elder of the two — Mary Wilson — 
 little need be said. She comes upon the 
 stage merely as the companion — the devoted, 
 lifelong, attached companion — of the un- 
 fortunate, beautiful, highly-born Isabella 
 Arundel. The daughter of a clergyman of 
 small income in the north of England, Mary 
 Wilson had yet no expense spared upon her 
 education, in order to cultivate her mind, and 
 render her accomplished. It was hoped in 
 this way to alleviate the great privation of 
 speech and hearing she laboured under, and 
 to enable her to earn her own bread when 
 her natural protectors should be taken away 
 from her. She united with great quickness 
 of perception and natural ability a loving, 
 gentle, amiable disposition, and was remark- 
 ably unselfish and even-tempered. Thus it 
 happened that, when a short time after the 
 
78 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVB. 
 
 deaths of both her parents, it was proposed 
 to her to go as a companion to the unfor- 
 tunate Lady Arundel, who was then in a 
 species of confinement in her husband's 
 gloomy castle in Northumberland, she did 
 not refuse, but, on the contrary, flew to be 
 of any service and comfort she could to that 
 much-wronged lady, who, first as Isabella 
 Bertram, and afterwards as the wife of one 
 of the richest commoners in England, had 
 for a time appeared such an object of envy 
 to the country clergyman's daughter, whose 
 residence was at no great distance from 
 Bertram HaU, in the same county. 
 
 Isabella Bertram was the only child, by 
 the first marriage, of the representative of 
 one of the oldest families in Northumber- 
 land — Mr. Bertram, of Bertram Hall. Her 
 father, though keeping up a large establish- 
 ment, and the nominal owner of an extensive 
 estate, was in reality an impoverished man, 
 
RETROSPECTIVE. 79 
 
 and had only been enabled by repeated mort- 
 gages of his property to keep up appear- 
 ances in the county. The principal mortgagee 
 was Sir Edward Arundel (of the great bank- 
 ing house of Arundel and Treleaven), who 
 resided chiefly in London, but paid occa- 
 sional visits to his seat in Northumberland. 
 Sir Edward was, in fact, the real owner of 
 Bertram Hall, and it was entirely optional 
 with him when to call in the mortgage 
 money. 
 
 After Mr. Bertram, who was still in the 
 prime of life, had remained a widower for 
 several years, and after his only daughter 
 was grown up, he contracted a second mar- 
 riage, which, if it somewhat relieved his 
 embarrassments, by no means tended to 
 promote his domestic peace. For the second 
 Mrs. Bertram, who was a handsome, showy- 
 looking woman, and who soon gave promise 
 of offspring, had from the very first mani- 
 
80 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 fested an antipathy to her step-daughter, 
 and expressed a desire to see her married 
 off. At first there appeared to be every 
 prospect of a speedy fulfilment of her wishes, 
 for a sort of engagement had for a long time 
 existed, with her father's knowledge, between 
 Miss Bertram and the only son of the Rev. 
 Edward Trelawney, rector of Trelawney, the 
 adjoining parish to Bertram. The match 
 was considered a suitable one by all parties. 
 The families were of equal respectability, 
 and both of long standing in the county. 
 And though Mr. Trelawney himself was not 
 what could be called a rich man, yet his 
 brother in the same county was a man of 
 large fortune, a bachelor, and somewhat 
 advanced in life ; and to his property of 
 five or six thousand a year was Reginald 
 Trelawney, Edward Trelawney's only son, 
 for a long time considered the heir. He 
 was brought up almost entirely at Trelawney 
 
RETROSPECTIVE. 81 
 
 Castle, and never dreamt of a profession, 
 unless a little amateur soldiering be one, 
 for he had a troop ia the Northumbrian 
 Yeomanry Cavalry, and during a part of the 
 year was styled Captain Trelawney, and wore 
 his regimentals at the Newcastle assembhes. 
 Here it was he first met with Isabella Ber- 
 tram, then just come out. Hanging upon 
 her father's arm, and glittering with dia- 
 monds which had been her mother's (who 
 was an Osbaldiston) , she attracted general 
 admiration, and was the belle of the evening. 
 Reginald Trelawney, the heir presumptive 
 to the family estates, was somebody in the 
 eyes of Mr. Bertram, and of the maiden 
 aunt who accompanied them to the ball as 
 Isabella's chaperone. His attentions, there- 
 fore, were received with a good deal of satis- 
 faction by the family ; and, as he was to be 
 met with everywhere in the county, at balls, 
 in the hunting field, at reviews, wherever 
 
 6 
 
82 ST. KNIGHTON'S KBIVE. 
 
 the elite of Northumberland were brought 
 together, the wise ones were not long in 
 predicting it would be a match. Nothing 
 seemed more natural. And though Miss 
 Bertram was fond of admiration, and would 
 gladly have enjoyed her hberty a httle 
 longer, yet she not unwillingly fell in with 
 the general idea that Eeginald Trelawney 
 was to be her future husband; and it was 
 ■ not long before he declared his passion, 
 and was accepted conditionally upon suit- 
 able settlements being made by the uncle. 
 Hitherto everything had gone on smoothly 
 enough, and, now that Isabella had a step- 
 mother, and one too much of an age with 
 herself for them to get on very well together, 
 there was an additional reason why the mar- 
 riage should not long be deferred. 
 
 But what was everyone's consternation at 
 Bertram HaU one morning, when a letter 
 was received by young Trelawney, who was 
 
RETROSPECTIVE. 83 
 
 staying in the house at the time, from his 
 uncle, and dated Cheltenham, informing 
 him that he had been married that morning 
 to the youthful and accomplished widow of 
 one Captain Byrne, whose acquaintance, it 
 subsequently appeared, he had made about 
 a fortnight previously,, haying been struck 
 with her pretty face, rendered still more 
 interesting by a widow's cap, and the air 
 of dejection she stUl bore on account of the 
 demise of the gallant captain not quite 
 twelve months previously. 
 
 This unexpected event 'made a great 
 alteration in young Trelawney's prospects. 
 It would be necessary, he perceived, at 
 once to direct his attention to some profes- 
 sion, though rather late in the day for a 
 man turned of five or six and twenty. It 
 was true that his uncle expressed a hope 
 that what had occurred would not have the 
 effect of disturbing in the shghtest degree 
 
 6—2 
 
84 ST, kkighton's keive. 
 
 the affectionate intercourse that had so long 
 subsisted between them, and even conveyed 
 a message from the late Mrs. Captain Byrne, 
 to the effect that she hoped he would still 
 make the castle his home ; yet still it was 
 too evident that things could not go on 
 as they had done, and that his expected 
 inheritance had probably passed away from 
 him for ever. For the relict of the deceased 
 captain was by all accounts a fair comely 
 woman to look at, and in the bloom of youth, 
 which, now that she had cast off widows' 
 weeds, shone out conspicuously once more, 
 as in the days when she had captivated 
 Lieutenant Byrne, of Her Majesty's 101st 
 Kegiment of Foot, in her father's house 
 at Castle O'Rourke, on the banks of the 
 Shannon. There was every probability, 
 therefore, of a house-full of children at 
 Trelawney Castle : a probability, it may be 
 remarked, in passing, that in due time was 
 
KETKOSPECTIVE. 85 
 
 amply fulfilled; so that, what between the 
 children she bore to Mr. Trelawney, and 
 what between the frequent visits paid by 
 one or other of the five Miss O'Kourkes, 
 occasionally varied by the stay of one of 
 her brothers, the house was never empty 
 again during the remainder of Squire Tre- 
 lawney's days. 
 
 Something of this sort was foreseen by 
 young Trelawney, and so accordingly there 
 seemed nothing for it but to fall back upon 
 the family living of Trelawney, which, upon 
 his father's death, had been destined for 
 his old tutor, Mr. Wayte. 
 
 Beyond a natural disappointment, Isabella 
 Bertram did not care much for the change 
 in her intended husband's fortunes. She 
 was too devotedly attached to him for this ; 
 and, if the truth must be told, she was too 
 desirous to g€sfc away from her stepmother 
 to be wUhng to remain at home any longer 
 
86 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 than she could help. Besides, was not 
 Trelawney rectory said to be worth 600Z. 
 a year, and that would come to them one 
 of these days no doubt ? that is, so as none 
 of the little Byrne- Trelawneys wanted it. 
 And, then, had not Keginald two or three 
 hundred a year of his own — his mother's 
 fortune ? Altogether Isabella was quite pre- 
 pared to marry upon what they had got, 
 and what they had in prospect. Luckily 
 her stepmother seemed to take the same 
 view of the matter, and even undertook to 
 talk her husband out of his objections, 
 when an unlucky incident altered the whole 
 state of affairs, and completely crushed the 
 young lovers' hopes. What that was, we 
 proceed to narrate in the next chapter. 
 
87 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 SIK EDWARD AKimOEL. 
 
 It will be remembered that Sir Edward 
 Arundel, the London banker, was the prin- 
 cipal mortgagee of the Bertram estates. 
 Sir Edward, who was sprung from a younger 
 branch of the "great Arundels," as they 
 used to be called in Cornwall, (where the 
 family was originally settled), was a man 
 of middle age, and had the reputation of 
 being a person of extremely immoral habits. 
 He had taken to banking when a young 
 man, and had amassed such a large fortune 
 as to be able to become the proprietor of 
 the family place, with a portion of the 
 
88 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 estates, of the earls of Northington, in 
 Northumberland, very near the border. 
 Here he resided during a portion of the 
 year in a species of rude magnificence ; his 
 visitors betag mostly "fast men" from 
 town. For his society was not courted in 
 the county, and it would have been im- 
 possible for any married man who respected 
 himself to sit down to table at Northington 
 Castle with the mixed company, both male 
 and female, whom he was sure to meet 
 there. Even Mr. Bertram, though he knew 
 himself to be at the banker's mercy, never 
 visited at the castle, and had no intercourse 
 with Sir Edward, except in the way of 
 business. Indeed, the reports of his pro- 
 fligacy, and of the doings at the castle, 
 were such that there were some magistrates 
 who could not be prevailed upon to sit on 
 the same bench with him; and more than 
 once it was rumoured that a case of affilia- 
 
SIR EDWARD ARUNDEL, 89 
 
 tion brought against the baronet would have 
 to be decided on by the justices who acted 
 for that part of the division in which 
 Northington was situated. It was curious, 
 too, that one who was known in town prin- 
 cipally as an excellent attentive man of 
 business, and who hved so decorously, as 
 far as the world knew, at his splendid 
 mansion in Eaton Square, should, when in 
 the country, exhibit such a total disregard 
 to pubKc opinion, and revel in every species 
 of debauchery. 
 
 A grim satisfaction was it to Sir Edward 
 to know that he had Mr. Bertram, and one 
 or two other county magistrates, at his 
 mercy. By a very short process, he might, 
 in aU probability, have made himself master 
 of Bertram HaU, as he had of the place 
 which he now called his own. And if he 
 didn't exercise this power, it was rather 
 because it seemed to give him increased 
 
90 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 consequence in the county — the knowledge 
 that he had this power — than from any 
 feelings of mercy and humanity, to which 
 he was a total stranger. Though not visited 
 at his own house, or to be met with at any 
 houses of mark in the county, yet Sir 
 Edward occasionally made his appearance 
 at county balls, and on occasions of that 
 sort was usually accompanied by some of 
 the more respectable portion of his visitors 
 from the castle. And it was at one of 
 these balls, and very soon after she came 
 out, that he first met Isabella Bertram. 
 
 Sir Edward was a man of too much con- 
 sequence to be overlooked altogether, and 
 there was always this feeling respecting him 
 uppermost in the minds of prudent mammas, 
 and even of the young ladies themselves, 
 what an admirable catch he would be — with 
 his title, and fine place, and large fortune ! 
 Besides, he was a man of refined tastes as 
 
SIR EDWAKD ARUNDEL. 91 
 
 respects literature and the arts, and his 
 manners were pecuharly fascinating. Alto- 
 gether it was the fashion to speak of him 
 with some degree of leniency, and many 
 were the damsels who only desired to have 
 the opportunity (lawfully secured to them) 
 of seeking to turn this great sinner from the 
 evil of his ways, and to win him back — 
 supposing he had ever trod them — to the 
 paths of virtue and purity. Sir Edward 
 had no difficulty then in securing as a part- 
 ner any girl in the room he fancied, and 
 it needed only to have it made known that 
 he had parted with some of the extremely 
 undesirable inmates at Northington HaU, 
 and meant to reform, to have every house 
 in the country thrown open to him, and to 
 be in a position to see county society at 
 his own spacious castle. 
 
 Isabella Bertram at once attracted Sir 
 Edward's notice, and she had too much girlish 
 
92 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 vanity not to be pleased at her conquest. 
 Any serious thoughts about him she had not, 
 for though not actually engaged to Mr. 
 Trelawney (himself by no means a despicable' 
 catch), yet she could not be blind to his at- 
 tentions, or to what they would probably end 
 in. But when she noticed Clara Forster's, 
 or, again, Henrietta Musgrave's evident gra- 
 tification at having obtained the baronet as 
 a partner, and could even overhear the 
 former's praiseworthy efforts to engage Sir 
 Edward in something Uke improving con- 
 versation, it must be admitted that Isabella 
 Bertram could not resist showing, in the 
 eyes of the ball-room, what she could do 
 if she had a mind. Accordingly, much to 
 Trelawney's disgust. Sir Edward was allowed 
 to enjoy a larger share of Miss Bertram's 
 lively conversation, and bright animated 
 looks, than her lover approved of. 
 
 It did not require much of Sir Edward's 
 
SIR EDWARD ARUNDEL, 93 
 
 sagacrty to perceive how matters really 
 stood between Trelawney and the brilliant 
 Isabella Bertram. But he was too much 
 a man of the world to make any pubhc 
 display of his feehngs, or to seek to 
 enter into open competition with such a 
 formidable rival — who had youth on his 
 side, and the advantage of a previous inti- 
 macy. Sir Edward knew he must go to 
 work in a different way to oust his rival, 
 whom he already thoroughly disliked. Con- 
 tenting himself, therefore, with having made 
 an obviously favourable impression upon 
 both father and daughter by his quiet un- 
 assuming manner — so different from what 
 might have been looked for in a man about 
 whom such stories were told, and who was 
 reputed one of the richest commoners in 
 England, — Sir Edward gracefully vrithdrew 
 and left the field in possession of his 
 younger rival, who seemed inclined to assert 
 
94 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 a sort of right to Isabella's hand, and safe 
 keeping. 
 
 A gentle reminder from Sir Edward's soh- 
 citor that the interest payable half-yearly by 
 Mr. Bertram had been due for some time, 
 with an intimation that, "if perfectly con- 
 venient to Mr. Bertram," Sir Edward would 
 be glad to call in the mortgage money, as he 
 had a large purchase to complete, — a letter 
 to this effect having reached Mr. Bertram at 
 the breakfast-table one morning not long 
 after the meeting with Sir Edward at the 
 Newcastle ball — by no means tended to 
 promote the cheerfulness of the party as- 
 sembled at breakfast. For gloom is infec- 
 tious; and it was quite certain, both to 
 Isabella and her stepmother, that that busi- 
 ness-like looking letter written on blue paper 
 contained something the reverse of agree- 
 able to Mr. Bertram. His face wore an air 
 of anxiety for many a day afterwards, and it 
 
SIR EDWARD ARUNDEL. 95 
 
 was soon known to Ms wife and daughter 
 that some money transactions between him- 
 self and Sir Edward were the cause of his 
 disturbance. 
 
 Misfortunes proverbially never come alone, 
 and it was just at this juncture, when 
 Mr. Bertram did not very well know which 
 way to turn himself, that the news arrived 
 of Squire Trelawney's unexpected marriage 
 at Cheltenham. And this necessarily led to a 
 review of his daughter's engagement to Kegi- 
 nald Trelawney. Anything that the young 
 man had, must come to him after the death 
 of his father, who was far from being an 
 old man, and in the meantime the young 
 couple must Uve principally upon any allow- 
 ance which the two fathers could make. 
 This, in Mr. Bertram's case, and under 
 existing circumstances, would be merely 
 nominal. Even his daughter's moderate 
 fortune of 4,000L was "locked up," as her 
 
96 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 father expressed it ; which meant, in plara 
 EngHsh, had been spent by himself, though 
 ultimately secured on the estate. Altogether 
 Mr. Bertram viewed with much distaste his 
 daughter's engagement with Trelawney, now 
 that he was in a manner penniless, and 
 anticipated from it nothing but demands for 
 money which he was in no position to 
 comply with. 
 
 It was about this very time, that Mr. Ber- 
 tram was surprised one morning at receiving 
 a visit from an old hunting acquaintance 
 whom he had seen Httle of for years, and 
 his intimacy with whom indeed had been 
 principally confined to the field. 
 
 Being ac6identally in the neighbourhood, 
 was referred to casually as the cause of the 
 visit, and an invitation to stay and dine 
 was readily accepted. Nothing was thought 
 of it, and Mrs. Bertram was only too glad 
 that some one had dropped in to dissipate 
 
SIR EDWARD ARUNDEL. 97 
 
 the ennui of the dinner-table. Left alone 
 with Mr. Bertram when the ladies had with- 
 drawn, and after a preliminary glass or two 
 of port, Mr. Osbaldiston, who was a name- 
 sake, but only a very remote connection of 
 the first Mrs. Bertram, broke ground by 
 saying in a careless sort of way, — 
 
 "Your daughter, Bertram, has sprung 
 up into an uncommonly fine handsome girl 
 since I last saw her. I once thought her 
 a little too dark, when she used to ride 
 after the hounds ; but, by Jove ! you seldom 
 see such a fine girl now. She was the 
 admiration of the whole room, I can tell 
 you, at the last baU. By the way, do you 
 know that Sir Edward quite lost his heart 
 to her ? " 
 
 " Sir Edward Arundel ? " 
 
 "Yes : why we don't boast of any other 
 Sir Edward in the county, unless it be that 
 old gouty fellow, Sir Edward Blackett, our 
 
 7 
 
98 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Member. I thought Keginald Trelawney 
 seemed very sweet upon your daughter that 
 night, Bertram. Excuse me, but I have a 
 reason for asking you — is there an engage- 
 ment between them ? " 
 
 " There was," rephed Mr. Bertram, dryly. 
 
 " Ah, poor fellow ! since his loss of for- 
 tune, he must think of something else beside 
 marrying. Now listen to me, Bertram, what 
 I have got to say to you. I have come 
 over this morning all the way from North- 
 ington Castle, where I have been staying 
 the last week." 
 
 Mr. Bertram moved uneasily on his chair, 
 looked hard at his guest, and then filhng 
 a glass of port, and pushing the decanters 
 towards his friend, prepared to listen to 
 what Mr. Osbaldiston had to say. 
 
 "It is about your daughter I have come 
 to speak. I have told you how Sir Edward 
 admires her. But the fact is, he has heard 
 
SIR EDWARD ARUNDEL. 99 
 
 that she is engaged to Reginald Trelawney, 
 and, before stirring in the business, he 
 wished me to ascertain whether it is so or 
 not. I understand from you that the en- 
 gagement is at an end ? " 
 
 Mr. Bertram nodded assent. 
 
 " Indeed, nothing else could be expected 
 since old Trelawney has gone and made 
 such a fool of himself. Now, Bertram, you 
 know very well that Sir Edward Arundel 
 is not a young man — not exactly the man 
 whom you could expect to see coming over 
 here gallivanting after your daughter (who 
 is twenty years at least his junior), per- 
 haps to be rejected after all, or to have 
 that black-muzzled feUow Trelawney — who, 
 between you and me, gives himself a con- 
 founded deal too much airs — to have him 
 thrown in his teeth. You couldn't expect 
 it, I say. So what does Sir Edward do — 
 he is as honourable and straightforward a 
 
 7^2 
 
100 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 man as you could wish to meet — but he 
 commissions me to come over here and 
 make out how the land lies. ' Osbaldi- 
 ston,' says he, ' you are an old friend of 
 Mr. Bertram's :'just go over, and if there 
 is no engagement with that fellow Tre- 
 lawney — and I hear it is broken off — do 
 you go and ask Mr. Bertram's permission 
 for me to come over and cultivate his 
 daughter's acquaintance, with a view to 
 making her an offer of my hand. I have 
 been gay in my time,' he said, ' but I wish 
 to turn over a new leaf. When one is no 
 longer young, Osbaldiston,' he said, * one 
 gets tired of the sort of life I have been 
 leading, and if I could only meet with an 
 amiable accompHshed young lady who would 
 have me, and teach me better, why, I should 
 consider myself a fortunate man. Money, 
 you know,' he said, ' is no object with 
 me; and Isabella Bertram' — he knows her 
 
SIB, EDWARD AKUNDEL. 101 
 
 name, you see — ' would adorn a palace.' 
 Now I have told you, Bertram, exactly 
 what passed between us, and you must 
 decide on what answer I am to bring back 
 when I leave here to-night." 
 
 " Take a bed here, Osbaldiston, and I 
 will give you an answer in the morning. 
 This is a thing that requires to be well 
 weighed." 
 
 " Well, it is a long drive back to North- 
 ington, sure enough — a good twenty miles, 
 if it is a yard; and so if Mrs. Bertram 
 will give me a bed I'll stay, and hope to 
 bring back a favourable answer to Sir 
 Edward, for he is as keen as any young 
 lover after your daughter. When a man 
 of his age falls in love, he is up to his 
 neck and shoulders in no time." 
 
 " What about all those women and loose 
 fishes Sir Edward has had about him at the 
 castle ? " 
 
102 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 "All to be got rid of, upon my word and 
 honour. They are to get the sack directly ; 
 not that I know anything against them 
 myself. Indeed, when I have been staying 
 there, nothing could be better behaved than 
 they all were. People talk a great deal, 
 Bertram, about the goings on at the castle ; 
 I can only say, I never witnessed anything 
 wrong or improper there in my hfe. There 
 used to be ladies certainly sitting at table 
 with us, but who they were I never asked; 
 I never did, if you will believe me. They 
 used to take their glass of champagne and 
 enjoy themselves, but I never saw anything 
 wrong about one of them in my Ufe ; I never 
 did, upon my honour." 
 
 " Come, let us go upstairs, Isabella will 
 give us a cup of coffee." 
 
103 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE PROPOSAL. 
 
 Mr. Osbaldiston's mission was so far 
 successful that he was able to bring back 
 a message to his principal that Mr. Ber- 
 tram would be glad to receive a visit from 
 him whenever it was agreeable to himself to 
 come. It was thought better to keep Isabella 
 Bertram entirely in the dark as to the object 
 of Sir Edward Arundel's visit. She would 
 naturally connect it with the business trans- 
 actions which, she was aware, had passed 
 between him and her father. The engage- 
 ment between herself and Reginald Tre- 
 
104 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 lawney she looked upon rather as in 
 abeyance, than as being entirely broken 
 off. For, though obliged to turn to a 
 profession, and though possessed of but 
 limited means for a time, yet it was quite 
 certain that, upon the death of his father, 
 he would be the possessor of a competency 
 — small, indeed, when compared with what 
 he had looked forward to, or with what 
 the daughter of Mr. Bertram might natu- 
 rally have expected, but still enough for 
 all reasonable purposes of comfort and en- 
 joyment. Isabella Bertram, then, cherished 
 the hope that difficulties would disappear, 
 and that she might yet be the happy wife 
 of Eeginald Trelawney. He had, indeed, left 
 home for some time to complete his terms 
 at Cambridge, and to read for orders. 
 
 No objection was made on the part of 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bertram to an occasional 
 correspondence between Isabella and her 
 
THE PROPOSAL. 105 
 
 lover; for none could be insensible to the 
 great hardship of the young man's lot, 
 and to the cruel reverse of fortune he had 
 sustained. However, it is, we fear, human 
 nature all over to take a dislike to persons 
 in misfortune, and to avoid them, as the 
 deer do their wounded fellows. From being 
 first an object of very sincere sympathy 
 at Bertram Hall, Reginald Trelawney and 
 his change of prospects ceased after a 
 time to interest either Mr. or Mrs. Ber- 
 tram ; and the subject was tacitly dropped. 
 Though it was known that Miss Bertram 
 occasionally heard from him, yet no interest 
 was expressed as to his plans or present 
 occupations; and if this was the case 
 before Mr. Osbaldiston's visit, we may be 
 quite sure it was stiU more so after it. 
 
 For Mrs. Bertram espoused Sir Edward's 
 cause with a degree of interest from the 
 very first, and she was only restrained 
 
106 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 by tact and prudence from giving open 
 expression to her sentiments. Her indiffer- 
 ence to Trelawney, then, very soon turned 
 into open hostiHty, and one of her very 
 first proceedings was remorselessly to con- 
 sign to the flames, unopened, one letter 
 after another, which Trelawney had ad- 
 dressed to his intended wife, and to 
 pursue the same course with respect to 
 Isabella Bertram's letters to him. This 
 was not long in producing its effects upon 
 her stepdaughter, whose listless gait and 
 absent look betokened that aU was not 
 going on smooth between herself and her 
 lover ; nor did she ever suspect, until long 
 afterwards, the wrong that had been thus 
 done her. Not even Mr. Bertram himself 
 was aware of it. It happened thus very 
 naturally that Mr. Trelawney's name ceased 
 to be mentioned in the family; and, as 
 it was pretty well known that his father 
 
THE PROPOSAL, 107 
 
 was of opinion that a handsome young 
 fellow like Reginald might do better than 
 tie himself to the daughter of a struggling 
 man like Mr. Bertram, who was sure to 
 involve in ruin all belonging to him, Isa- 
 bella had no one to turn to for sympathy, 
 either in the one family or the other. 
 
 Such was the state of things when a 
 visit from Sir Edward was announced one 
 morning at Bertram Hall, and the an- 
 nouncement, for the reason given before, 
 caused little surprise, and did not seem 
 to afford any interest to Isabella. In 
 every country-house, however, an agreeable 
 visitor is an acquisition, and such was Sir 
 Edward, eminently. He was equally atten- 
 tive to all, and did not by his manner 
 indicate any special preference or admira- 
 tion for Miss Bertram, beyond what cour- 
 tesy and good breeding would suggest to 
 any gentleman in addressing a young and 
 
108 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 beautiful girl. Sir Edward soon fell into 
 the way of the family, and though occa- 
 sionally absent at Northington, or haviag to 
 run up to town upon matters of business, yet 
 at Bertram HaU he seemed very much to 
 have established himself; and whether it 
 was talking politics to Mr. Bertram (who, 
 like himself, was a staunch Tory, while 
 it was well known that all the Trelawneys 
 were strong Whigs), or amusing Mrs. Ber- 
 tram with on dits of the clubs, or seeking 
 to form Miss Bertram's taste- in works of 
 art, of which he was a connoisseur, he 
 contrived to make himself equally pleasant 
 and agreeable to aU. Nor were excursions 
 to Northington, and one or two other old 
 Border castles of interest in the neigh- 
 bourhood, which Miss Bertram had never 
 seen, wanting to give variety to the visit,' 
 and to make the days pass pleasantly. 
 All this time, the thought of Sir Edward 
 
THE PROPOSAL. 109 
 
 as a lover never entered Isabella Ber- 
 tram's mind. He was quite as attentive 
 to her mother as to herself, and was old 
 enough to be her father ; and it was only 
 after Mrs. Bertram had . one day expressed 
 an anxious desire that Sir Edward might 
 make her an offer of his hand, and had 
 dwelt upon how it would be the " saving" 
 of them all if he would, that Isabella 
 Bertram was led to bestow a thought upon 
 the subject. Her first impulse was to re- 
 ject such an idea with indignation. She 
 would despise herself, she thought — and 
 she said as much to her stepmother, — 
 if she was to forget in such a short 
 time the man to whom she had given 
 her heart, and that merely because he "was 
 no longer heir to a large fortune : she 
 wouldn't hear of such a thing, she said. 
 
 Mrs. Bertram didn't think it wise to oppose 
 her daughter's resolution too strongly. She 
 
110 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 said little about it at the time, but would 
 every now and then recur to the subject, 
 and give Isabella to understand that the 
 making or the ruin of the family was pretty 
 much iu her hands. 
 
 "You do not understand, perhaps, my 
 love," she would say with a tenderness of 
 tone unusual to her, " that your poor father 
 is a ruined man if Sir Edward insists upon 
 his rights. He has only got to call in the 
 money he lent your father, and this place 
 must pass out of our hands, after having 
 been in the Bertram family for generations. 
 We should have to leave the place, and 
 what would become of us all I really do not 
 know. It is quite natural, my love, that 
 you should wish to marry Keginald Tre- 
 lawney — that is, if he is willing to marry 
 you ; though they do say that he has fallen 
 in with some girl of large fortune in the 
 south, and wishes to marry her. 1 don't 
 
THE PROPOSAL. Ill 
 
 know whether this is true, perhaps not ; but 
 we all do know that the father, Mr. Edward 
 Trelawney, is averse to his son's marrying 
 you ; and this he makes no secret of. How- 
 ever, as I was saying, my love, though you 
 naturally first think of your own happiness, 
 and Eegrnald Trelawney' s too, yet you will 
 not, I am sure, forget your poor father 
 altogether, and how deeply he is interested 
 in your not refusing Sir Edward, should he 
 make you an offer; which is almost more 
 than I dare hope for. I say nothing about 
 myself, and your httle sister. We have of 
 course no claims upon you as your father 
 has; and I am afraid, dearest Isabel, that 
 you have never been very fond of your 
 stepmother." 
 
 Constant dropping will wear the hardest 
 stone, and by degrees Isabella Bertram 
 found herself weighing what was to be said 
 for the other side, as weU as on the side 
 
112 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 which had hitherto enlisted all her sympa- 
 thies. The long silence of Reginald was 
 perplexing; and it certainly was rumoured 
 that he was paying a good deal of atten- 
 tion to a young lady in the neighbourhood 
 where he was reading with a tutor. More- 
 over there was the dislike of his own family 
 to the connection ; owing a good deal, it 
 was said, to the political differences which 
 had always kept the two families apart, and 
 prevented any intimacy between them. Then 
 there was the point her stepmother was so 
 often referring to : If Sir Edward pleased, 
 he could turn them aU out of their home ! 
 And if the Trelawney family were averse to 
 the match now, what would it be when they 
 had lost their standing in the county, and 
 had not a roof to cover them ? Reginald, 
 too, was proud. Was it quite certain that 
 he would keep his engagement after it was 
 known that the family was ruined ? And then 
 
THE PKOPOSAL. 113 
 
 her father ! would he survive the disgrace ? 
 Prohably not, — and all to be averted, all to 
 be set right, if I only give up thinking 
 so much of my own happiness, and am 
 willing to make some sacrifice ? If Kegiaald 
 reaUy cared for me, he would have written 
 long before this. Would it in reality grieve 
 her to be quietly released, and by my own 
 act, from an engagem^^nt which neither of 
 the famihes approve of ? And then, woman- 
 hke, Isabella's thoughts would turn upon 
 the splendid demesne, grand castle, and 
 extensive estabhshment, which would call 
 her mistress, were she to accept Sir Edward's 
 hand in case he made her an offer. It was 
 some time before Isabella got accustomed 
 to such a train of thought, but once the 
 alternative presented itself to her mind, 
 she found it difficult to get rid of it. 
 
 At length the crisis arrived; she must 
 make her choice. From her father she 
 
 8 
 
114 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 learnt that Sir Edward had spoken upon 
 the subject, which he declared was nearest 
 his heart, he had offered princely settlements, 
 promised the devotion of a lifetime. 
 
 Mr. Bertram was not a man of many 
 words, but in making this communication 
 to his daughter, and in preparing her for 
 the interview which her lover sought with 
 her, he gave her to understand that the 
 offer had his own cordial sanction, and that 
 he trusted his daughter would well weigh 
 the consequences to them all before she 
 rejected it. Sir Edward's manner was all 
 that Isabella could have desired — ^tender, 
 and considerate for her feelings in his tone, 
 while there was a manly self-reliance, and 
 independence in what he said. He spoke 
 of the time when he first saw her, — of the 
 admiration she then excited in him, — of what 
 appeared at the time, the hopelessness of 
 seeking to engage her affections, as they had 
 
THE PROPOSAL. 115 
 
 been already bestowed, — of the obstacle re- 
 moved, as he had been informed, that he 
 was not a young man, he knew, — was per- 
 fectly conscious of his unworthiness to aspu*e 
 to the possession of such a treasure, — but 
 if the devotion of a lifetime, the tenderest 
 care for her happiness, would make amends 
 for disparity of years, and wipe out the 
 recollection of many faOings, — would she 
 deign to accept the hand which in all 
 humility he offered her ? The struggle in 
 Isabella's mind lasted but for a few mo- 
 ments, — something inarticulate escaped from 
 her, a burst of tears relieved her, and a 
 tender gentle embrace from Sir Edward 
 followed. She left the room as his affianced 
 bride. 
 
 8—2 
 
116 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE WEDDING. 
 
 A VISIBLE air of satisfaction pervaded the 
 house when it was known that Isabella had 
 accepted Sir Edward. Mr. Bertram's cleared 
 brow, and a warm embrace from her step- 
 mother, assured Isabella of their approval of 
 what she had done. And though there had 
 been no express stipulation upon the subject, 
 yet a tacit understanding there was, that 
 Isabella's acceptance of Sir Edward was to 
 be followed by some effort on the part of the 
 latter to put Mr. Bertram's affairs straight, 
 by means of pecuniary accommodation which 
 
THE WEDDING. 117 
 
 was at the banker's command. Nor was Sir 
 Edward slow in fulfilling this expectation. 
 For during one of his temporary absences, 
 Mr. Wenlock (his solicitor from town) paid 
 a visit to Bertram Hall, by, the- desire of 
 Sir Edward; the object of which was to 
 make an arrangement that would be satis* 
 factory to Mr. Bertram. Accordingly, by 
 advancing money at a lower rate of interest 
 than Mr. Bertram was paying. Sir Edward 
 enabled him to get rid of some of. his more 
 troublesome creditors, and to leave himself 
 a wider margin of income to Uve upon. The 
 purchase by Sir Edward of some of Mr. 
 Bertram-'s unentailed property, at a figure 
 considerably above the market price, con- 
 tributed still further to his relief. And 
 altogether Mr. Bertram found himself, for 
 the first time in his hfe almost, (for the 
 estates were encumbered when he came into 
 them), comparatively a free man, — that is, 
 
118 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 his only creditor was his future son-ia-law, 
 and from him annoyance was not to be 
 anticipated. 
 
 The preparations for the wedding were 
 pushed rapidly forward, as Sir Edward 
 wished to take his bride upon the Continent 
 while the fine weather lasted, as the season 
 was now pretty far advanced ; and the day 
 in October was already fixed upon when 
 Isabella was to bestow her hand upon him. 
 There was plenty to keep up her interest 
 in the meantime ; — a visit to be paid to 
 town in order to select her wedding dress, 
 and to be furnished with her trousseau; 
 carriages to be inspected in company with 
 her lover, and numerous consultations held 
 as to what additional furniture would be 
 required for his already handsomely fur- 
 nished houses in town and country. Time 
 sped rapidly thus employed, and Isabella — 
 with an occasional pang, certainly, — was be- 
 
THE WEDDING. 119 
 
 coming more and more reconciled to the 
 prospect before her. Her composure, how- 
 ever, was destined to be disturbed ; for 
 upon the very eve of her wedding-day, and 
 as she was taking a last solitary walk through 
 the Bertram plantations, she was suddenly 
 accosted by a man in the dress of a groom, 
 or stable-helper, who, after ascertaining that 
 she was Miss Bertram, placed a letter in her 
 hand, and then disappeared. 
 
 A thrill, prophetic of the contents of the 
 letter and of the writer, ran through Isa- 
 bella's frame, and compelled her to sit down 
 on a rustic seat at hand, before she could 
 summon up courage to open the letter, or 
 do more than glance at the address. It was 
 in the handwriting of Reginald Trelawney, 
 as she expected. She opened the letter at 
 length, and read as foUows : — 
 
 "I do not write to reproach you, Isabella, 
 for your breach of faith, much less to seek 
 
120 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 to win you back again. You have inflicted 
 the greatest wrong upon mej which it is 
 in a woman's power to inflict. I have 
 borne loss of fortune, total change of pro- 
 spects, even the indifiierence of friends, but 
 all was a's nothing to me as long as I be- 
 Heyed that my Isabella was faithful. Even 
 when you ceased to answer my letters, I 
 trusted you still. I could not believe it 
 possible that you — you who hung upon me 
 but a few months ago, in such an agony 
 of grief at our parting — you who pledged 
 a life-long constancy — who said that nothing 
 ia this world could ever alter your affections, 
 or induce you to forget me — that you could 
 now be guilty of such an act of incredible 
 heartlessness and cruelty towards me. 
 
 " Oh, Isabella ! I said I would not reproach 
 you, but it is hard not to do so. You have 
 spoilt all my plans and purposes of hfe 
 by the part you have acted. Only a week 
 
THE WEDDING. 121 
 
 ago, upon my return to England after 
 spending a couple of months reading with 
 a tutor in a remote part of France, I 
 was rejoicing in the brighter prospect that 
 seemed to be before us, for I found a letter 
 awaiting me from Sir Henry Throckmorton, 
 offering me the rich living of Ossulton as 
 soon as I was capable of holding it. And 
 then, on that very same day, this dreadful 
 news reaches me, that you have forgotten 
 all your vows and promises, and are going 
 to wed a man whose character for im- 
 morality has been such, that no respectable 
 persons would have him inside their doors. 
 What infatuation has possessed you? Is 
 it merely the vulgar attraction of title and 
 wealth, and a large establishment? Do 
 you suppose that the man who has so long 
 Uved with the most depraved and worth- 
 less — both of your sex and mine — can at 
 once alter his nature ? can at once throw 
 
122 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 off his life-long habits of sensuality ? No ! 
 Mark my words, Isabella ! from a long know- 
 ledge of this man's character, I know that 
 when he is tired of his new plaything, he is 
 capable of remorselessly casting you off, and 
 returning to those habits of indulgence in 
 which he has so long lived. But I check 
 myself. This man may be already your 
 husband, or just about to become it. If 
 I have wronged him, no one will more re- 
 joice at it than myself; but if I have not, 
 remember that, as long as life lasts, you 
 have in me one who would gladly die to 
 be of service to you. 
 
 ." What is to become of myself can hardly 
 now interest you. It is impossible for me 
 to go and live at Ossulton, which is, as you 
 know, the parish church of Northington. 
 I cannot make up my mind to be a witness 
 — necessarily a frequent witness — of your 
 married life, be it a happy one or the 
 
THE WEDDING. 123 
 
 reverse. I shall go to a distance in pre- 
 fereiice,-^it may be to my own far away 
 county, there to remain untU such time as in 
 the course of nature I succeed to Trelawney. 
 
 " And now farewell, beloved Isabella ! 
 Cruelly as you have acted, it is impossible I 
 can ever forget you— ever be indifferent to 
 you. Eeimember the great love I have borne 
 you, and how I have cherished it amidst the 
 disappointment of my expectations, and all 
 the trouble and anxiety which that change 
 necessarily involved. Farewell, beloved one ! 
 Think sometimes of one who was never un- 
 faithful to you even in thought, and who 
 even now in the hour of desertion and 
 misery, desires your happiness beyond every- 
 thing else in this world. — Reginald," 
 
 Isabella read this letter in an agony of 
 grief. It seemed to revive every scruple 
 and foreboding that had ever been in her 
 mind respecting this marriage. And then 
 
124 ST. kotghton's keive. 
 
 her cast-o£f lover — her once fondly loved 
 Reginald — what a heart must she have, 
 to have forgotten him even for a moment ? 
 All his losses and disappointments were 
 surely hard enough to bear, — but now to 
 find himself deserted by one he had loved 
 so well, to whom he had been so constant : 
 for did he not speak of letters of his un- 
 answered ? — and this at a time, when all 
 seemed coming right again ! With such 
 bitter thoughts as these was Isabella's mind 
 filled as she returned to the house. 
 
 What an effort it was to remove all traces 
 of her grief, and to clothe her face with that 
 brightness and with those smiles which are 
 looked for in a bride elect. And then there 
 were cousins, and aunts, and friends of the 
 family, arriving at the Hall for the ceremony 
 next day ; all to be greeted with kindly 
 welcome. To all must she exhibit a smiling, 
 happy face, while her heart within her was 
 
THE WEDDING. 1'25 
 
 fall of bitterness and remorse. It was in 
 vain that she pleaded to herself her father's 
 distressed circumstances, and the sort of 
 necessity laid upon her to sacrifice herself 
 in order to reheve them. It would not do. 
 Something very like perjury did it seem 
 to her, to vow to " love, honour, and to 
 obey" one for whom, she knew, she could 
 feel but little affection, and stiU less rever- 
 ence. But it was no use, she felt, indulging 
 in such thoughts — ^they came too late. The 
 sacrifice must be made ; and, accordingly, 
 putting by Reginald's letter, to which she 
 in vain attempted an answer, and shedding 
 a few last bitter tears over it, Isabella 
 Bertram prepared herself for next day. 
 
 The ceremony was to be performed quietly 
 by the rector at the parish church, and in the 
 presence of a few near friends and relations 
 of both famihes. Sir Edward arrived at 
 the church from Northington in his car- 
 
126 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 riage and four, accompanied by his friend 
 Mr. Osbaldistone, at exactly ten o'clock, 
 and in a few minutes afterwards three or 
 four carriages were seen approaching the 
 church from the Hall containing the bridal 
 party. The service was performed as usual ; 
 the books were signed ; and the whole party 
 conveyed back to Bertram HaU in the same 
 order as they came, only that now the bride 
 and bridegroom led the way in Sir Edward's 
 carriage. There was the usual breakfast ; 
 the customary healths were drank; there 
 were the same dreary attempts at wit, ordin- 
 arily exhibited on such occasions, but which 
 faU still-bom from the perpetrator, and are 
 felt by him and all the guests to be palpable 
 failures. Then there was the general rising 
 from table ; the leave-taking of the supposed 
 happy pair, who were setting off for the 
 Continent. 
 But we hurry over these details to 
 
THE WEDDING. 127 
 
 back all the sooner to those two deserted 
 women at St. Knighton's Keive. For one of 
 them-^she with the pale, placid face — was 
 a looker-on at the ceremony on that -wedding 
 morning — had gazed with admiration on 
 the bride's beauty, and half envied her the 
 brilliant lot that seemed to be before her. 
 WhUe the other — she with looks which 
 sorrow had touched, indeed, but not marred 
 — she was the bride of that eventful morn- 
 ing, resplendent in beauty, the admired of 
 all. Little could it have been foreseen that 
 the calm, attentive husband, who took his 
 place by Isabella's side in the carriage, and 
 waved adieu to the crowd of well-wishers 
 at the door, was to be the stern, implacable 
 tyrant of future, and not very distant days ; 
 to be his wife's relentless gaoler, the author 
 of her life-long niisery ! 
 
 Not much was heard of the married couple 
 for some time, beyond an occasional brief 
 
128 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 announcement of their plans, as they moved 
 about from one place to another on the con- 
 tinent. For there was no one at home to 
 whom Isabella could write confidentially. 
 Her father was, of course, out of the case ; 
 and there was not that sufficient cordiaUty 
 between her and her step-mother to invite 
 confidence on either side. 
 
 At length it was known that Sir Edward 
 and Lady Arundel had arrived at Northing- 
 ton, and a few formal visits were exchanged 
 between them and the surrounding families ; 
 but, from some cause or other, there was 
 little intercourse of a sociable kind kept up. 
 Sir Edward was away in town a great deal 
 upon business, which had fallen into arrears 
 in his absence, and it was soon rumoured 
 that he was so jealous of his wife as to have 
 forbidden her to go into society in his 
 absence. Certain it is, that Lady Arundel 
 seldom stirred from the castle grounds except 
 
THE WEDDING. 129 
 
 in her husband's company. Was it that 
 they were so devoted to each other, or what 
 was it ? The intercourse kept up with 
 Bertram Hall was slight, considering the 
 near relationship of the parties, and neither 
 side manifested any eagerness to increase it. 
 It has been said that Lady Arundel 
 seldom paid visits in Sir Edward's absence ; 
 but an unfortunate exception to her rule 
 which she made, about twelve months after 
 her marriage, paved the way for all her 
 after troubles. This was a morning call 
 which she paid at Throckmorton Park, some 
 six or seven miles distant from Northington ; 
 and here almost the first person she encoun- 
 tered upon entering the hbrary, into which 
 she was shown, was Reginald Trelawney, 
 who was staying on a visit at the Park. As 
 no one was in the room at the time but him- 
 self, the meeting was embarrassing enough ; 
 but the awkwardness soon wore off. No 
 
 9 
 
130 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 allusion was made to the past, and tlie con- 
 versation turned chiefly upon Continental 
 topics with which both were familiar. After 
 some little delay, Lady Throckmorton entered 
 from the garden, and seemed at first in no 
 small degree alarmed at the chance meeting 
 between the two former lovers. However, 
 as they appeared to be conversing together 
 calmly enough, the subject was dismissed 
 from her mind, and after a time a walk in 
 the garden and through the conservatories 
 was proposed, untU luncheon was ready. 
 Here, unluckily, they were joined by several 
 other visitors, with none of whom was Lady 
 Arundel more than slightly acquainted; so 
 that, as a matter of course almost, she fell 
 to Trelawney's care, and before long they 
 found themselves somewhat separated from 
 
 the rest of the party. There was a silence 
 
 « 
 
 at first between them, which Beginald at 
 length broke by saying — 
 
THE WEDDING. 131 
 
 " Are you happy, Isabella ?" 
 
 A hasty " Yes ; as happy as I could 
 expect," was the reply. 
 
 " Well, we must be good friends, and try 
 and forget the past," went on Trelawney. 
 " Were you very angry with me for my 
 letter? I wrote it in great trouble and 
 bitterness, but I am afraid I did not think 
 enough of your feelings at the time." 
 
 " Well, Eeginald, your letter certainly did 
 pain me very much at the time, and has so 
 since ; and I have sat down more than once 
 to tell you so. Oh, if you could have known 
 all, you would not have reproached me so ! 
 I never received any of your letters, and so 
 I thought you had forgotten me ; and then 
 your father said he did not wish us to marry 
 — and there were other reasons for acting as 
 I did, which I cannot explain to you. Do 
 you forgive me, Beginald ? I know how 
 very, very badly I have acted towards you ; 
 
 9-2 
 
132 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 but oh ! do forgive me ! I have been so 
 unhappy !" 
 
 " Dearest Isabel, I may not tell you aU I 
 have gone through on your account — all I 
 have suffered from your desertion : that is 
 past and gone. But believe me, that you 
 have been dearer to me than my own life ; 
 and that to my latest hour I will cherish the 
 remembrance of the love that once subsisted 
 between us." 
 
 A flood of tears was Isabella's only 
 answer for some time, but at length she 
 said — 
 
 " I am very sensible of your consideration 
 and forbearance. I know how much I have 
 wronged you, Reginald. Try and forget that 
 such an unhappy person as myself ever 
 crossed your path ! " 
 
 A servant at this juncture announced that 
 luncheon was ready, and Lady Arundel, after 
 composing her feelings as well as she could. 
 
THE WEDDING. 133 
 
 and, accompanied by Trelawney, rejoined the 
 rest of the party. 
 
 This short garden scene had not, however, 
 altogether escaped the eyes of the rest of the 
 party, nor were the traces of Lady Arundel's 
 tears so carefully removed, but that they 
 attracted some degree of notice. The 
 servant, too, who had been sent in search 
 of Lady Arundel had witnessed quite enough 
 of her ladyship's agitation to be able, with 
 embellishments of his own, to regale the 
 Arundel servants with gossiping surmises at 
 their mistress's expense ; which, as it after- 
 wards appeared, they were not slow in pro- 
 pagating. 
 
134 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XI. 
 
 THE FALSE STEP. 
 
 SiE Edward was still absent in town. 
 It was a week after the drive to Throck- 
 morton Park, and Lady Arundel had had 
 ample leisure to brood over what had passed 
 between her former lover and herself — for 
 visitors were few and far between at North- 
 ington — ^when the post brought one morning 
 a note, which she at once recognized to be 
 in the handwriting of Trelawney. It was 
 as foUows : — 
 
 "Deaeest Isabel, 
 
 "Do not be angry with me, if I 
 seek one more interview with you. I am 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 135 
 
 leaving this part of the country for a long 
 time, and going to reside in Cheshire as 
 chaplain at Cholmondeley Hall. Now, do 
 not refuse me. I must wish you a long 
 good-bye. We may, perhaps, never meet 
 again. But I feel as if I could not be 
 happy without once more seeing her whom 
 I have loved so well, and with whom I 
 had hoped to have spent my life. I shall 
 be to-morrow at the Obehsk at about four 
 o'clock, and you will not refuse to meet 
 him whom you once called your own 
 
 " Eeginald." 
 
 Lady Arundel paused long over this letter. 
 Pity, and recollections of old times, prompted 
 her to comply with the request; but pru- 
 dence whispered No! What had passed 
 at Throckmorton occurred through no 
 fault of hers. The meeting was unex- 
 pected on both sides. But this would be 
 
136 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 something deliberate- — a clandestine meeting 
 with one not her husband — with a former 
 lover. It was a thing that, if discovered, 
 must ruin her in her husband's eyes. She 
 knew herself to be surrounded with spies. 
 
 Unfortunately, she had not insisted upon a 
 total change of servants upon her marriage ; 
 for, though the upper servants were all new, 
 yet many lingered about the place in subor- 
 dinate situations, who had been accustomed 
 to Northington under the old regime, when 
 it had been ruled by mistresses, and the 
 taint of the past seemed stUl to infect the 
 household. What necessity, then, for cir- 
 cumspection ! How many would be glad 
 to make mischief between husband and 
 wife ! — how many had an interest in seeing 
 some deposed mistress take her place once 
 more in the household! And then her 
 husband! — who so exacting, so cold and 
 unrelenting as he was 2 What would it be 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 137 
 
 for such a thing to reach his ears ? — he so 
 suspicious and jealous, as it was, especiaEy 
 against this very Trelawney ! She felt she 
 could not dare to brave his fiiry in case 
 of a discovery. The knowledge, too, of 
 her own unprotected, friendless state, and 
 of the obUgations her father was under to 
 him, seemed to have hardened him against 
 her. And then his disappointment at there 
 being no prospect of an heir — this seemed 
 to have extinguished whatever httle affec- 
 tion he might ever have entertained for 
 her, and to have inspired him with some- 
 thing like hatred. His return home was 
 never looked for by his wife but with 
 uneasiness. The usual suddenness of it, 
 too, seemed to indicate suspicion, and his 
 departures for town or elsewhere were 
 equally unceremonious. 
 
 Lady Arundel was at a loss how to act. 
 She could not bear the thought of refusing 
 
138 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 Trelawney the last request he was ever to 
 make of her. She reflected upon his un- 
 varying tenderness, his unselfish considera- 
 tion shown towards her at all times, and the 
 unmistakeable grief he exhibited just lately 
 for his loss of her. No, come what might 
 of it, she would give him one last meeting 
 — say one word of kindness and farewell, 
 and then forget him for ever — devotiag her- 
 self ever afterwards faithfully and honestly 
 to fulfil her husband's wishes. 
 
 Accordingly, four o'clock came, and found 
 her approaching the Obelisk (erected in 
 memory of one of the Earls of Northing- 
 ton), situated on a gentle eminence which 
 formed the back-ground of an extensive wood, 
 about half a mile distant from the Castle. 
 Here she found Trelawney awaiting her. 
 
 " I fear I am doing a very indiscreet 
 thing," she said, "in giving you this 
 meeting. But I could not bear to refuse 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 139 
 
 you. Oh ! Beginald, let it be our last 
 meeting — ^if my husband were to hear of 
 it, I am undone : and you will not detain 
 me. I can never tell when Sir Edward 
 may not return : it is always without 
 notice, and he has been away now for 
 some time." 
 
 " Dearest Isabel, not for the world would 
 I risk your happiness. It has been incon- 
 siderate of me, I fear, to ask you to meet 
 me. But, oh! my love! — my first, and 
 only love, — I cannot leave this country — 
 perhaps for years — perhaps never to see 
 you again — without saying one word of 
 farewell to you — without telling you that 
 the remembrance of what you have been to 
 me, wiU accompany me to the grave." 
 
 They had descended by this time into the 
 wood, and had walked as far as the point 
 where the paths diverge — one conducting 
 direct to the castle, and the other leading 
 
140 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEITE. 
 
 to the main road. The few last words had 
 been spoken, and with a bursting heart 
 Isabella was turning away from Eeginald, 
 unable to suppress her emotion any longer, 
 when her eyes encountered the stem fixed 
 look of her husband ! 
 
 In a voice of thunder he asked his wife, 
 " What she did there ? " and then turning 
 with looks of fury towards Eeginald he 
 cried, "Begone, sir, out of my sight! Is 
 it thus you dare to tempt my wife from the 
 duty she owes to me ? Leave my presence, 
 sir, — you are upon my land. Your remaiu- 
 ing is a fresh insult to me. No; not one 
 word, sir, shall I hear out of your mouth. 
 What I have seen, what I have heard, is 
 enough." And with these words Sir Edward 
 turned away in fury from Trelawney, who in 
 vain endeavoured to address him, and pur- 
 sued his way to the castle by a different 
 path from that which his wife had taken. 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 141 
 
 Sir Edward's fary was, if possible, in- 
 creased rather than diminished, when he 
 entered his wife's dressing-room upon his 
 return to the castle. He loaded her with 
 every term of reproach that occurred to 
 him, — upbraided her with the benefactions 
 he had conferred upon her father — threw 
 in her face her interview with Trelawney at 
 Throckmorton (which had been communi- 
 cated to him in an anonymous letter written 
 by a female hand), and declared that 
 from that hour she should cease to rule at 
 Northington. He even insulted her, a few 
 days afterwards, by intruding on her pre- 
 sence a showily dressed female, who, it was 
 well known, had formerly Uved with him as 
 his mistress, and when Isabella's indignation 
 could no longer restrain itself, he even dared 
 to lift his hand to her. 
 
 This was too much to bear. In the course 
 of the day Lady Arundel was missed, and it 
 
142 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 was soon discovered that she had walked 
 down to the village, and, having engaged 
 a fly, had been driven in the direction of 
 Bertram Hall. Sir Edward was soon in 
 pursuit, and reached Mr. Bertram's within a 
 couple of hours after his unfortunate wife. 
 
 Her reception there had been far from 
 encouraging. The recital of her wrongs met 
 with Uttle sympathy, either from her father, 
 or step-mother, whUe the mention of her two 
 interviews with Trelawney, and her explana- 
 tion of the circumstances under which they 
 occurred, drew down upon her a storm of 
 reproach and even invective. She was ac- 
 cused of being insensible of the obligations 
 the family were under to Sir Edward, and 
 indifferent to the probable consequences to 
 her father of the step she had taken, — 
 unless that step were instantly disavowed. 
 The carriage should be ordered, then, and 
 back she must go to Northington. Mr. 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 143 
 
 Bertram would not for the world that she 
 should sleep out of her husband's protection 
 for a single night. 
 
 Matters were in this state, the carriage had 
 been ordered, and poor Isabella was consider- 
 ing where she could fly for refuge from her 
 husband's cruelty and -violence, — since even 
 her own father cast her off — ^when the arrival 
 of Sir Edward put escape for Isabella out of 
 the question. In a stem voice he demanded 
 whether it was with Mr. Bertram's sanction 
 he found his wife there? Was her father 
 aware how she had acted towards him in his 
 absence ? His wife should return that in- 
 stant with him, or never more set foot at 
 Northington. Mr. Bertram was only too 
 anxious to assure his indignant son-in-law 
 of his own and Mrs. Bertram's high 
 disapproval of their daughter's conduct, 
 and volunteered post-horses, that no delay 
 might take place in sending Lady Arundel 
 
144 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 back to her home. Thus, was the luckless 
 Isabella denied sympathy or shelter at her 
 father's house, which she had quitted a short 
 time before a seemingly happy bride. And 
 it was long before her last long look of 
 despair — or the remembrance of her fixed, 
 set features — faded from her father's me- 
 mory ; for he never saw his daughter more, 
 whom he had once loved so fondly : nor did 
 Isabella Arundel ever again cross the thresh- 
 old of her father's house ! 
 
 The Kttle that was known of her after 
 she had been brought back to Northington, 
 was this : — She was strictly confined to a 
 particular part of the house, and for a 
 long time was denied intercourse with any 
 human being. Even the servants were for- 
 bidden to speak to her, or to answer her 
 any questions, while a small garden close 
 to the house was assigned to her for pur- 
 poses of exercise. The most rigorous orders 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 145 
 
 were issued against any person approaching 
 Lady Arundel when taking exercise. So 
 far was this carried, that an old labourer, 
 who had worked for a good half century 
 upon the estate, was discharged upon the 
 spot for holding the garden-gate open for 
 Lady Arundel as she passed through it, and 
 saying, " God bless your ladyship." 
 
 Only once did Lady Arundel ever meet 
 her husband again, and that was when 
 accident brought him past the hurdle-gate 
 which admitted into the garden where she 
 was in the habit of taking exercise. It so 
 happened that at the very moment Sir 
 Edward was passing, this little gate opened, 
 and he and his wife stood face to face — ^the 
 first time for several months. Sir Edward 
 stood for a moment, as if uncertain what 
 to do, while his wife's altered looks seemed 
 to stab him to the heart. But unhappily 
 for Isabella Arundel, the lady who had taken 
 
 10 
 
146 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 her place in the house, was at Sir Edward's 
 elbow at the moment, and saying the words, 
 " Eemember your promise, Sir Edward," 
 drew him away. 
 
 Soon after Christmas, it was Sir Edward's 
 custom to leave Northington for some months, 
 and to occupy his town house, and then it 
 was intimated to Lady Arundel by the 
 steward, in writing, that she was at liberty 
 to walk about the grounds wherever she 
 pleased, only that she must submit to be 
 kept in sight by one of the under-gardeners. 
 Another indulgence, she was informed, had 
 been sanctioned by Sir Edward, namely, 
 that she was to be allowed the companion- 
 ship of a young lady, a little older than 
 herself, the daughter of a clergyman lately 
 deceased in the neighbourhood of her old 
 home. But as this lady, — though highly 
 accomplished and reputed to be of a most 
 amiable character, — was almost bom deaf and 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 147 
 
 dumb (the effects of scarlet fever in child- 
 hood), it was doubtful whether Sir Edward, 
 in consenting that she should live as com- 
 panion to Lady Arundel, was not actuated 
 quite as much by a species of refined re- 
 venge, as by any motive of pity or con- 
 sideration for his unfortunate wife. Under 
 the plea that his wife was suffering from 
 extreme nervous excitement, bordering on 
 derangement. Sir Edward contrived to keep 
 at bay all troublesome visitors, and to sUence 
 the inquiries which her father could not 
 avoid addressiug to him from time to 
 time. 
 
 A twelvemonth was passed by Lady Arun- 
 del in this species of confinement at North- 
 ington ; at length, her husband, wearying 
 of the restraiat which her presence in the 
 same house during a great portion of the 
 year imposed on him, or having satisfied 
 himself with revenge in this particular way — 
 
 10—2 
 
148 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 or perhaps afraid, from the report of her 
 altered looks, that she would die upon his 
 hands, and that this might lead to an inves- 
 tigation of the circumstances under which 
 she was kept in confinement — suddenly con- 
 ceived the idea, which he was not long in 
 putting into execution, of having his wife, 
 with her companion, transported to one of 
 the wildest solitudes in Cornwall. 
 
 How he carried out his purpose our 
 readers are already aware. The answer 
 respecting Lady Arundel was, that it had 
 been found necessary to place her under 
 some degree of restraint in the south of 
 England, but that with perfect quietness a 
 restoration of her health might be looked 
 for; that she had every comfort, and the 
 companionship of a clergyman's daughter 
 (rewarded by an ample salary). With 
 this explanation every one, including her 
 father, professed to be satisfied. Nor was 
 
THE FALSE STEP. 149 
 
 it until somethiag like the truth, though 
 not the entire truth, became known, that 
 pubUc indignation iu his own county, and 
 elsewhere, was drawn down upon the head 
 of Sir Edward Arundel and his advisers. 
 
150 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 CORNISH PEOPLE — A SKETCH. 
 
 We now return to Montacute and its In- 
 cumbent, whom we left rather disgusted, 
 if the truth must be told, at the sudden 
 desertion of his entire flock, drawn off by 
 the counter attraction of the meeting-house. 
 The problem that every newly-arrived 
 clergyman has to solve, when he undertakes 
 a charge in Cornwall, is to devise some 
 means of winning the people back to the 
 church ; of fixing them once more in the 
 faith of their fathers. For, notwithstanding 
 their love of novelty, and a certain fickle- 
 
CORNISH PEOPLE — ^A SKETCH. 151 
 
 ness of disposition and proneness to act 
 from impulse, (which they have in common 
 with other Celtic people) , none have adhered 
 more steadily than they have to their reli- 
 gious faith, or have given more repeated 
 proofs of their zeal and constancy. For — to 
 go back to a very remote period, indeed 
 — where did Druidism take such a strong 
 hold as among the ancient Britons of Corn- 
 wall ? Look at the numberless Cromlechs, 
 Holed Stones, Logan Eocks, Druidical circles 
 still to be found in this (as it might almost 
 seem) enchanted landj the natural home 
 of giants, whose traces in the shape of 
 enormous, fantasticaUy-shaped stones, meet 
 the traveller's eye throughout the entire 
 of the Land's End district. .Or — to come 
 to a later, though still a very remote period r 
 (the time when Christianity was first preached 
 to the ancient inhabitants of Cornwall by 
 devoted missionaries from the Irish shores)— 
 
152 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 observe the numberless crosses erected, 
 especially throughout the west, to com- 
 memorate the event, — observe how almost 
 all the parish churches are named after 
 these men of God, in grateful commemora- 
 tion of their labours ! What a revolution 
 in men's minds in these remote regions do 
 not these things witness to ! What a zeal 
 in replaciag the human sacrifices once offered, 
 it may be, on that very stone, which stands 
 yonder upon pillars in the midst of the moor, 
 by the unbloody offering of the Christian 
 altar ! 
 
 And when Christianity, in this form, had 
 taken firm root in the Cornish mind, and 
 had abolished Druidism with its cruel rites, 
 where did the ancient Cathohc worship 
 linger longer amongst the people, and retain 
 a firmer hold over their minds than in this 
 very county, where now it can hardly be 
 said to have a footing ? Long after the 
 
CORNISH PEOPLE — ^A SKETCH. 153 
 
 Eeformation had been firmly established in 
 other parts of England, the sacrifice of the 
 Mass continued to be offered up in many 
 a Cornish church, and the clergy etiU 
 acknowledged the authority of the Eoman 
 Pontiff. 
 
 Then to pass over a century and a half, 
 when Wesleyism had its rise, who more 
 stoutly resisted it ? — who more vahantly stood 
 up for the faith of their fathers, than these 
 same Cornish miners ? But it was aU iu 
 vain. Methodism broke in like a fiood. 
 It met, it may be, some craving of the 
 Cornish mind, which had slumbered for 
 ages since the overturn of the ancient faith. 
 At any rate, it spread, and now covers 
 the land. 
 
 And so that devotion which once showed 
 itself in magical circles, Logan Eocks, and 
 Holed Stones through, which to drag their 
 children, and which in succeeding ages led 
 
154 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 the Cornish to erect their noble granite 
 churches, and name them after their deU- 
 verers — to cover western land with holy 
 crosses, and to make pilgrimages to the 
 holy wells of St. Madron and St. Uney, and, 
 when called on, to fight fiercely for the 
 creed of their fathers and for the ancient 
 CathoHc worship, and which in succeeding 
 ages made them rise up as one man to expel 
 the emissaries of schism from their ocean- 
 washed shores — that devotion now expends 
 itself in Eevivals and Camp-meetings. 
 
 The parish churches in west Cornwall, as 
 a rule, are deserted by the descendants of 
 those who fought so stoutly for them, and 
 whose remains are mouldering under the 
 shadow of many a lofty grey tower. 
 
 As we have said, Trelawney was not a 
 little disgusted at the sudden disappearance 
 of his flock, and began very much to quaUfy 
 the favourable opinion he had at first formed 
 
CORNISH PEOPLE — A SKETCH. 155 
 
 as to the state of Church feeling at Monta- 
 cute. He had not, indeed, come down into 
 the country with any pet project of his own, 
 and proclaiming that all that his clerical 
 hrethren had been hitherto doing was " a 
 mistake " (as some have been known to do); 
 that, only try his plan, and all would be 
 right again. No : he had a much humbler 
 opinion of himself and of his own attain- 
 ments ; but stUl, he thought that earnestness 
 of purpose, and steady work in his new 
 parish, would tell in the long run. But he 
 began to fear he was mistaken. The Captaiu 
 Sams, and the Captain Dicks, of his neigh- 
 bourhood had a vested interest in the little 
 whitewashed meeting-house. It was their 
 own property; they made money by it. 
 None must hope to be employed in the 
 mines under their command, unless they 
 attended the meeting-house and contributed 
 towards its support. 
 
156 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 The Church might do well enough for 
 great people and the parson's own family, 
 but the meeting-house for the people — ^that 
 was their own, and they wanted no other ! 
 Such were pretty much the sentiments 
 which Trelawney heard daily echoed amongst 
 the miners and mine captains whom he 
 encountered. The interest they took in the 
 Church or its prosperity might be repre- 
 sented by a very low figure indeed. It was, 
 indeed, a more respectable place to be 
 married at, than the meeting-house, or regis- 
 trar's office : that was allowed. There was 
 some lingering notion that it might be just 
 as well to bring their children, and get 
 them " named " there ; and the church -yard 
 was certainly the usual place to bury in. 
 Here begin and end pretty much the 
 Cornish miner's notions of the use of the 
 parish church, and its appendages. 
 
 And then the clergyman, he is with them, 
 
CORNISH PEOPLE— A SKETCH. 157 
 
 emphatically, the gentleman of the place — 
 a person to touch your hat to, and to " sir." 
 He may he a hit of a doctor, or a bit of 
 a lawyer, and if so, his medical, or legal 
 skill, is sure to be in frequent requisition. 
 Anything irregular, anything contraband, 
 for the Cornish miner. He has much more 
 faith in the parson's medicine, than in the 
 doctor's drugs, and would sooner consult 
 him any day ; and that not merely to save 
 expense, but from a real behef that " parson 
 knows more about it than t'other." And 
 the same with law, or business of any sort ; 
 the Cornish peasants invariably prefer the 
 parson as an adviser, to any regular prac- 
 titioner. But let it be about a matter of 
 theology, of religious " experience," of 
 clearing up some difficulty in Scripture, and 
 the parson is the last person the Cornish 
 miner will think of coming to consult. No, 
 the village cobbler, the mine captain, the 
 
174 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVB, 
 
 called Ding-Dong,) said to have been worked 
 by the Jews ages and ages ago; and say 
 what can exceed the awful solitary grandeur 
 of the scene ! 
 
 Many then were the sociable out-of-door 
 parties which Trelawney was invited by his 
 hospitable clerical neighbours to join ; fre- 
 quently it was in the company of his friends the 
 Tressilians : not great monster gatherings 
 were they, where one half the party is 
 scarcely, or not at all, acquainted with the 
 other half ; but really friendly, sociable meet- 
 ings, where the main object is, not so much 
 to eat and drink — though that is not to be 
 overlooked, either — but rather to scramble 
 about the rocks, to stroU along the shore, to 
 pick up shells and sea-weed, and to have a 
 pleasant chat with the fishermen or their 
 wives. Or, it may be, that you have a fancy 
 to stretch yoijrself — ^with a companion by your 
 side, or, book in hand — on the gorgeous 
 
ST. PLUVIUS RECTORY. 175 
 
 purple heath, with its many shaded blossoms, 
 or on the smooth, short turf, and to think 
 of the time when you were young, or in 
 love, or when last there, and with whom: 
 good, kindly, soothing thoughts, which you 
 feel all the better for having dwelt upon. 
 Thoughts which draw together in spirit the 
 absent and estranged ; which soften the 
 most worldly heart, inspiring it with tender 
 recollections of the past, and do not fill it 
 with gall and bitterness, or waste themselves 
 in useless, unavailing regrets. 
 
 Such is one good in pic-nics. You do 
 not go to eat and drink merely ; you take 
 just enough of everything that is pleasant 
 and good, in order to promote cheerfulness, 
 and would then do well to abandon your- 
 seK to the enjoyment of the coast scenery, 
 (for aU the pic-nics in Cornwall are to some 
 favourite rock, or headland), listen to the 
 soft ripple of the waves lapping the rocks 
 
176 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 at your feet, or feast your eyes — say upon 
 yonder fairy-land, witli its serpentine spires, 
 and columns, and pinnacles, all glittering 
 in the sun, and resplendent in colours of 
 green, and red, and purple ; or listen to 
 the merry ringing laugh which proceeds 
 from yonder group who are adventuring to 
 the extremest westerly point of England. 
 
 Some such thoughts must have been 
 passing through Trelawney's mind as he 
 lay at length upon the smooth, short turf 
 which overhangs Pardenack Point — the most 
 remarkable, with one exception, of all the 
 headlands about the Land's End, and which 
 has been immortahzed by Turner's pencil. 
 The rest of the party, consisting as it did, 
 of Charlotte and Loveday TressUian, and 
 two or three of the juvenile members of 
 the family, with a couple of young ladies 
 on a visit at the rectory, were scattered 
 about the rocks, sketching, or in pursuit 
 
ST. PLUVIUS RECTORY. 177 
 
 of samphire, or exploring dark caverns in 
 pursuit of maiden-hair fern, or what not. 
 
 " How one could dream away one's life 
 here ! " exclaimed Trelawney; " so far from 
 the turmoil of life; with these unchange- 
 ahle rocks aU ahout one, and the tides 
 perpetually ebbing and flowing. How 
 glorious would be a storm here with the 
 spray dashing up over these gigantic rocks ! 
 Where was it I was reading lately that all 
 between this and Scilly yonder was once 
 a fair and beautiful land rich and fertile, 
 but that the sea broke in upon it and swept 
 all away ? " 
 
 " Exactly so, sir ; that's very true," 
 said a voice close beside him. " There is 
 no doubt about it. There was such a 
 country; and me and others have many 
 a time, when out fishing, puUed up the 
 remains of windows, and doors, and planc- 
 tions." 
 
 12 
 
178 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 The speaker was a hardy, bronzed-faced 
 old fisherman, carrying an empty basket 
 upon his back, and apparently making his 
 way to the Uttle fishing village of Sennan 
 Cove, a short distance further on. 
 
 " Sit down here, and tell me something 
 about it: but first have a glass of ale." 
 Complying with both these invitations, the 
 hardy old fisherman took his seat on a 
 piece of rock close by where Trelawney was. 
 
 " Have you got any of those windows, 
 and doors, and floors, you speak of, or 
 where are they to be seen ?" 
 
 " Bless you, sir, I have something else 
 to do than to be keeping such things by 
 me. They be of no mortal use to any one. 
 They were old-fashioned looking enough to 
 have been some of the fittings of Noah's 
 Ark; but what's become of them, I can't 
 rightly say. They have been made away with 
 somehow. But you see, sir, there, where the 
 
ST. PLUVroS EECTORT. 179 
 
 Scilly Islands are in the distance, right 
 before us. Well, it is said that once upon 
 a time there was a fine country between 
 this coast and those islands, and plenty 
 of houses, and as many as a hundred 
 and forty churches. But that one night 
 a great flood arose and covered the whole 
 country, and swept away all those houses 
 and churches. Only one man escaped, and 
 he was the ancestor of Squire Trevelyan. 
 His horse swam ashore, and he upon its 
 back." 
 
 "Yes, I know, and that is why the 
 Trevelyan family have a white horse rising 
 out of the sea as their family arms." 
 
 "Yes, sure, the same as is over the 
 inn door at Goldsinny. I have been there 
 many a time and oft selling fish; and 
 the rocks you see there id the dis- 
 tance, sir, they be at the top of the hills 
 which are under the water. There be curi- 
 
 12—2 
 
180 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 ous sights, sure enough, seen here by us 
 fishermen ; especially after dark." 
 
 "I should think so," said Trelawney 
 dryly. "What are they?" 
 
 " You noticed, sir, that long strip of 
 beach on the other side of the rock?" 
 
 " Whitsand, you mean — ^where we got 
 this bag of shells?" 
 
 " The same. Well, will you beHeve 
 me, sir, I have many a time seen ghosts 
 and spirits moving up and down the shore, 
 and none of us fishermen dare go down 
 there after dark — that is, alone. If I have 
 to go near it, I bring a little child with 
 me." 
 
 " Wliat for ? " 
 
 " To protect me ; for ghosts never harm 
 little children. Even the coast-guardsmen 
 don't much Hke going down there by them- 
 selves. There have been so many wrecks 
 off that part of the coast that it is believed 
 
ST. PLUVIUS RECTORY. 181 
 
 the spirits of those that were wrecked walk 
 about there still. I spoke to our parson 
 once about laying them, but he only laughed 
 at me. I wish the Werdron parson was 
 aUve again ; he was the man for laying 
 ghosts. Why, sir, if he wanted his horse 
 held, he had only to plant his stick in 
 the ground, and a spirit would rise up and do 
 his bidding. My father's greatgrandmother 
 has seen him do it scores of times. Why, 
 she minds the time when he raised a spirit 
 to appear as a witness at a trial, and the 
 cause was won, too, by that means. But 
 after the trial the ghost was not wiUing 
 to leave, and so the parson had to say the 
 Lord's Prayer backwards seven times before 
 he could lay the ghost. Ah, he was a 
 wonderful man, that parson ! " 
 
 "Is there any smuggling or wrecking 
 carried on now, as there used to be ? " 
 
 This question the old fisherman, seemed 
 
182 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 to have some difficulty in answering. But, 
 after casting a shrewd look at his interro- 
 gator, and taking in by his dress a general 
 notion that he was one of the quaUty, he 
 went on, though in a lower key than he 
 had used before: 
 
 "With regard to smuggling, sir, it is 
 more difficult than it used to be. Not 
 but that I know where a gentleman hke 
 your honour could be well served with real 
 old French brandy and the best of tea, if 
 you were willing to pay a moderate price 
 for it. I think I know of a man who has 
 got some to dispose of now. But your 
 honour wouldn't peach ? " 
 
 " I don't want any. But how is it 
 managed?" 
 
 "Why, you see, sir, when a boat runs 
 in with its cargo into any of those creeks 
 along here, we are ready — or, leastways, 
 there are some ready — ^with two or three 
 
ST. PLUVIUS RECTORY. 183 
 
 horses, and the tea and brandy are put 
 into panniers, and the horses are off in 
 no time. It is not often that we are 
 caught. They burn a blue Hght from the 
 shore to show that none of the coast- 
 guardsmen are about, and the thing is 
 soon done. It is more di£&cult than it 
 used to be, howsoever. I mind, when I 
 was a boy, that so long as we supplied 
 the officer of the coastguard here with 
 lots of brandy — he was a drinking, swearing 
 sort of chap — he would let us do as we had 
 a mind, and never took no notice of what 
 we ran ashore ; except sometimes, for the 
 show of the thing, he would seize, maybe, 
 a keg or two only half fiUed, which 
 we had left purposely in his way. Why, 
 bless you, sir, in those times we sup- 
 plied the parson and all, and old Mr. 
 Penglaze — that is grandfather to the pre- 
 sent man — with aU the brandy and tea 
 
184 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 they mostly required. There is scarce an 
 old house about here but you may see 
 the hiding-places, where they used to con- 
 ceal the things they got in this way, and 
 by reason of mishaps at sea." 
 
 " There is no wrecking now, is there ? " 
 " You have hardly the chance given you. 
 It is a shame ; if the sea throws anything 
 ashore, it is taken from those who have 
 the best right to it, and carried off to 
 Penzance, or to somewhere else, and I'll 
 be bound little is heard of it afterwards. 
 Those officers divide it snugly between 
 themselves, they do say. Why, it was 
 only last winter the shore was strewed with 
 as fine a wreck as you would wish to see, — 
 kegs, and barrels, and jars, and boxes, and 
 what not, all knocking about, and bumping 
 up against the rocks about a couple of mile 
 from where we are sitting — round Cape 
 Cornwall way, and forenent the Brisons : 
 
ST. PLUVIUS RECTORY. 185 
 
 it was they that did the job ; but before a 
 poor man could gather up an armful of 
 things, and while the women were scrabbling 
 away and all was a mingle-cum-por, down 
 came those thieves of coast-guardsmen and 
 revenue officers, swoggering and cursing like 
 mad, and vowing they'd clunk us all up, 
 and have the law of us — I don't know 
 what they weren't going to do, and aU 
 because we wanted to get a few bits of 
 things the sea had brought to us. I don't 
 hold with 'ticing ships on the rocks by 
 means of false lights, as they used to do 
 in my father's days — though he never saw 
 any harm in it, he said ; but it is a shame 
 we should be deprived of aU our rights as 
 we are now-a-days. But I must be jaleing 
 along. I wish you good-day, sir." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Trelawney, who has your 
 companion been ? " was Loveday Tressilian's 
 greeting as she scrambled up the rocks, and 
 
186 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 stood beside him, flushed with exercise and 
 the sea breeze. " Do you know Charley 
 has been making a sketch of the fisherman ? 
 He looked so picturesque with his white hair 
 floating in the wind. Who is he, and what 
 can you two have been talking about so 
 long ? " 
 
 "He is an old smuggler, and he has 
 been pleading for the practice of wrecking. 
 Come, shall I go and order the horses ? 
 They must be refreshed by this time." 
 
 " That is what I came tp say. Charley 
 thinks it is time to go home." And so 
 Eeginald set himself to get his httle party 
 under weigh. 
 
187 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 LADY ARimDEL'S LETTER. 
 
 Sir Edward Arundel had not managed 
 matters with so much secrecy but that the 
 truth began to ooze out, not many months 
 after the hapless Isabella had been removed 
 to a distance. It is easy indeed, for a cer- 
 tain time, to baffle the inquiries of relations 
 by an ingenious mystification, by speaking 
 in grave measured tones of such a one 
 being under " medical surveillance," of 
 "disordered state of the nerves," "mental 
 excitement," " need of perfect quiet," " dis- 
 like to see any one," — expressions and modes 
 
188 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 of speaking which may mean anything, from 
 the privacy of home to confinement in a 
 lunatic asylum under the tender mercies of 
 a "mad doctor." And though Sir Edward 
 was an adept at such mystification, from long 
 experience in the art, yet such were the 
 rumours — the dark mysterious rumours— 
 abroad in the county respecting his wife's 
 fate — some affirming that she had been 
 made away with — was dead, in fact, and 
 others that she was in close confinement 
 somewhere — that at length, urged by the 
 remonstrances of friends of the family, 
 Mr. Bertram made up his mind to call 
 his son-in-law to account as to what he 
 had done with Lady Arundel. A letter was 
 accordingly written to this effect, and de- 
 spatched to Sir Edward's address in town. 
 
 It was some time before any reply was 
 received, and when it did come, it consisted 
 merely of a few lines guardedly expressed, 
 
LADY AEUNDEL'S LETTER. 189 
 
 intimating that Lady Arundel was well in 
 health, and provided with every comfort 
 she could require; but declining to afford 
 any further information. The writer con- 
 cluded by stating that, as he was on the 
 eve of starting for the continent, and as 
 his movements would be uncertain for some 
 time to come, any further letters must be 
 addressed to him under cover to his soUcitors, 
 Messrs. Wenlock and Gooch, Gray's Inn. 
 
 As may be supposed, such an answer was 
 far from allaying the anxiety that began 
 to be felt and openly expressed as to 
 Isabella's fate ; and there is no saying what 
 steps parental anxiety, now thoroughly 
 aroused, might not have induced Mr. Ber- 
 tram to adopt, when just at this time a 
 letter was received from the unhappy victim 
 herself. An aunt has been spoken of — her 
 father's sister — and to her this letter was 
 addressed. 
 
190 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 As it is almost the only authentic account 
 we have of the confinement this much- 
 wronged lady underwent at the hands of 
 her husband in Cornwall, it is thought 
 proper to give the letter entire; only sup- 
 pressing one or two passages in it, for 
 reasons which will be obvious to every one. 
 
 August 19, 18 — 
 " My much-loved Aunt Gary,— 
 
 "I AM afraid that you have been 
 all very unhappy on my account for this 
 some time past ; and I would have written 
 before only that I was under a promise not 
 to do so, as the condition of being allowed 
 to take exercise and to have what books 
 we require in this most solitary of all spots. 
 Siberia can be nothing to it, as there you 
 have some one to speak to. But here from 
 one week's end to another we never hear 
 the sound of a human voice. I had almost 
 
LADY ARUNDEL'S LETTER. 191 
 
 said we never see a human face, but that 
 a poor woman from some neighbouring 
 village comes every morning to light the 
 fires and make out the rooms, and to do 
 whatever is required — which is very little, 
 as our wants are but trifling. In our walks, 
 too, which seldom extend beyond this 
 valley in which we Uve, we have seen 
 persons intently watching us from a dis- 
 tance, and even imagine that at night 
 we are spied in upon through the shutters. 
 But this may be fancy ; for, leading such a 
 hfe of seclusion as we do in this remote 
 shaded valley, through which the sun's 
 beams hardly ever break, you can imagine 
 how nervous and fanciful we both get. 
 
 " You may wonder why we do not address 
 ourselves to some of the neighbours, seek 
 out the clergyman, or some one of influence. 
 But we dare not, dearest Aunt Gary. The 
 only condition upon which Mary Wilson is 
 
192 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 allowed to remain with me — and how tender 
 and affectionate she is words cannot de- 
 scribe — is that she strictly conforms herself 
 to the rales Eonaldson (Sir Edward's steward) 
 laid down when he brought us here. And 
 one of those rules is that we are not to 
 address ourselves to any human being, either 
 by letter or word of mouth, nor to receive 
 any visitors. We are not to walk to the 
 village, nor in any direction where there are 
 houses, nor where we are likely to meet 
 people. 
 
 "Upon observing these conditions, we have 
 a good deal of liberty extended to us, and 
 can be supplied with what books we please 
 from a neighbouring town. Indeed sad as 
 this sort of life is, it is one degree better 
 than the miserable time I spent latterly at 
 Northington, when daily insult (from which 
 we are here happily exempt) was my sorrow- 
 ful portion. And much, dearest aunt, as I 
 
LADY ARUNDEL'S LETTER. 193 
 
 yearn for home, and to see dear papa and 
 you again (though he did let his poor Isabel 
 be dragged away from her father's house), 
 yet sooner than return to Uve with Sir 
 Edward Arundel as his wife, or be confined 
 in one of his houses, and daily insulted 
 by the presence of those "vile creatiires 
 he has about him, I would prefer remain- 
 ing in this gloomy valley. Here, at any 
 rate, I have peace. I am not much worse 
 off than one of the nuns at Lanheme, 
 whom we used to read of. Their imprison- 
 ment is for Ufe — ^hopeless — and they cannot 
 stir beyond the convent walls, and garden ; 
 but we can walk about here with tolerable 
 freedom, and amuse ourselves with our 
 books, and flowers, and needle-work. 
 
 This is better than violent altercations with 
 Sir Edward ; who spared no term of bitter 
 reproach in addressing me, and would taunt 
 me most ungenerously with having married 
 
 13 
 
194 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 him merely for his money, while my heart 
 was really Trelawney's : indeed, upon one 
 occasion he struck me, — that was when he 
 discovered in my desk (which he had broken 
 open) a letter which poor Eeginald had 
 addressed to me just before my marriage, 
 when he was very unhappy, poor fellow, at 
 my cruel desertion of him. There was 
 something about Sir Edward, I know in the 
 letter, which irritated him when he had 
 read it, and then unfortunately I had com- 
 menced answering it. Altogether we had a 
 scene, which ended, as I said, in his actually 
 striking me, and from that day forth, I 
 think he has hated me. And as for poor 
 Trelawney, his fury when he met him in the 
 wood that day, was something frightful to 
 witness. And then he had been told by 
 one of those wretched women who haunted 
 Northington, that I had given Trelawney 
 a meeting at Throckmorton, and was seen 
 
LADY AKUNDEL'S LETTER. 195 
 
 alone with him there in the gardens, — alto- 
 gether, he vowed he would never forgive me 
 to the longest day he lived, and said that I 
 should have bitter reason to rue my conduct. 
 " You know, dearest aunt, that it was by 
 mere accident I met poor Keginald at Lady 
 Throckmorton's, and chance threw us toge- 
 ther in the gardens. And then as for giving 
 him a meeting at the obeHsk on that unfor- 
 tunate day, it was certainly very imprudent 
 of me, and I know I oughtn't to have done 
 it; but it was the last time, ia aU proba- 
 bility, I was ever to see him — so he said. 
 I felt how cruelly I had used him, and how 
 I had spoUt aU his prospects ; and you know 
 how fond we had been of each other, and 
 that once it was aU settled we were to be 
 married, and papa and Mrs. Bertram were so 
 pleased at it. Altogether I could not refuse 
 him one last meeting, just to say farewell for 
 ever ; and we were about separating — and I 
 
 13—2 
 
196 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 do not deny, aunty, that he held my hand in 
 his, and was imprinting a last kiss upon it — 
 when Sir Edward was upon us in a moment, 
 and apphed such words to me, charging me 
 with wickedness of which I was entirely 
 innocent, so that a reconciliation between us 
 became, from that hour, an impossibUity. 
 
 " Oh, dearest aunt Gary, my heart melts 
 within me when I think of home, and of 
 all that I have lost, and how happy I 
 might have been with poor dear Keginald, 
 if Mrs. Bertram had not interfered, and 
 stopped our letters — as I know now she did. 
 And then she worked upon my feelings about 
 dear papa's circumstances, and said it was in 
 Sir Edward's power to set them all right 
 again : altogether I was over-persuaded to 
 commit a great sin, for which I am now 
 suffering bitterly, in vowing to be fond of a 
 man whom I did not really love, and in 
 casting off one who deserved better at my 
 
LADY ARUNDEL'S LETTER. 197 
 
 hands — who would have made, I know, a 
 fond, tender, indulgent hushand, and who 
 would never have shut me up m this dark, 
 gloomy valley, to die here, perhaps. 
 
 " And now, farewell, dearest, best beloved 
 Aunt Gary. I was always your pet when I 
 was a child, and when you used to stay at 
 Bertram after my own dearest mamma's 
 death. You wiU not forget your poor for- 
 saken Isabella, imprisoned in this valley by 
 that hard, cruel man, who has embittered my 
 hfe. I dare not teU you where we are. It is 
 only upon this condition that Mary Wilson has 
 promised to enclose this in a letter to a friend 
 of hers in London, so that it may be put 
 into the post there ; and some time to-night, 
 when it is quite dark, we shall steal down to 
 the Uttle village post-office, and put this 
 letter in. 
 
 " Give my fondest love to dear, dear papa, 
 and a Mss from me to Uttle Emmy, my god- 
 
198 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 daughter. My health is, on the whole, good ; 
 though the dampness of the climate, espe- 
 cially in a valley Hke this, affects me some- 
 times. Farewell. 
 
 " Your own fond, 
 
 " Isabel." 
 
 Great was the emotion shewn both by 
 Mr. Bertram and his sister on the receipt of 
 this letter, and many were the plans dis- 
 cussed for finding out where poor Isabel had 
 been conveyed. There was only one clue to 
 it in the letter, and that might be purely 
 accidental — the allusion to Lanheme Con- 
 vent in Cornwall. But, though a letter of 
 inquiry was addressed to the rector of the 
 parish in which Lanherne is situated, (which 
 proved fruitless), yet upon consideration 
 it was not thought that any importance 
 could be attached to the allusion, as in the 
 early days of Sir Edward's acquaintance, 
 
LADY ARinSTDEL'S LETTER. 199 
 
 Lanheme, and its convent, which had for- 
 merly been the seat of Sir Edward's 
 ancestors, used to form a frequent topic of 
 conversation between him and Isabella ; Sir 
 Edward being in possession of some fine 
 engravings of the convent and of the 
 romantic valley of Mawgan, in which it is 
 situated. Application to Sir Edward's soli- 
 citors met with no better success than the 
 letter addressed to the rector of Mawgan. 
 They professed entire ignorance upon the 
 subject, and absolutely declined giving any 
 information respecting their client and his 
 affairs. Lastly, Miss Wilson's relations were 
 made out ; but they could give no informa- 
 tion either. A letter had been occasionally 
 received from her, but it had been invariably 
 dropped into the London Post-office, and so 
 forwarded to its destination. Indeed, when 
 it was known that, as a condition of the 
 handsome salary received by Miss Wilson, — 
 
200 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 which enabled her to give a good educa- 
 tion to several brothers and sisters who had 
 been left slenderly provided for, and were in 
 a great measure dependent upon their eldest 
 sister's exertions — absolute secresy as to her 
 abode was to be observed, it was not to be 
 expected that any information was to be 
 gained in such a quarter. 
 
 There was nothing for it, then, but to wait 
 for another letter, which might be more 
 exphcit ; or for Sir Edward's death, which, of 
 cfturse, would have the effect of terminating 
 Isabella Arundel's seclusion from the world. 
 
201 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 MISS WILSON'S LETTER — LADY AKUNDEL'S 
 JOUKNAL. 
 
 As throwing some additional light upon the 
 narrative of Lady Arundel's sufferings, and 
 her melancholy fate, it may be as well to 
 insert here a letter which has been placed at 
 the writer's disposal for the purpose of this 
 narrative, and which would appear to have 
 been written by Miss Wilson to a friend in 
 London some months after she and her 
 companion had taken up their abode at 
 St. Knighton's. The cover bears the London 
 post-mark only, so it is -probable that, as 
 
202 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 with Lady Arundel's letter, given in the last 
 chapter, it had been enclosed to some third 
 party who posted it. The letter now lying 
 before me, and which is written in a bold, 
 legible hand, rmis as feUows, viz. : — 
 
 " Deaeest Fanny, 
 
 " You wiU easily imderstand that 
 there are difl&culties in the way of writing, 
 and forwarding a letter, from this most out of 
 the way place, which will account for my 
 silence. You know that the only condition 
 upon which I am here at aU, is exact obedi- 
 ence to Sir Edward's orders ; and one of 
 those orders is, that I am to afford no clue 
 whatever to Lady Arundel's residence. Were 
 I to do so, I should deprive her of what I do 
 believe she clings to as her mainstay and 
 support under her great trial — that is, my 
 being with her ; while I should do her no 
 good by disclosing her place of residence. For 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 203 
 
 nothing would be easier than for Sir Edward 
 to carry her abroad, and shut her up in a 
 convent, or mad-house ; or else, even in this 
 country, to bury her in some place equally 
 remote or distant as this — only without its 
 advantages. These advantages are personal 
 Uberty — freedom from molestation and in- 
 sult, and a supply of most of the requisites 
 and conveniences of hfe, including a good 
 supply of books. 
 
 " You know, too, dearest, that in my case 
 there are other considerations not to be lost 
 sight of. My affliction makes one place much 
 Hke another to me, — as respects society at 
 least : indeed, I have a sort of morbid dis- 
 like to towns, or even to meeting people. 
 This has grown upon me since I have 
 been in this secluded valley: this much I 
 may tell you, as there are many ' secluded 
 valleys' in England! Though we hardly 
 ever see a creature, and in this way have 
 
204 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 no variety, yet what between our walks — 
 we have once or twice even stolen down to 
 the sea-shore at night (what do you think 
 of that ?) — and our books, and our drawing 
 and painting — (for you know how beautifally 
 Lady Arundel draws ? and a good deal of 
 pains was taken with me in this way, and 
 no expense spared by dearest papa,) — what 
 between these employments, the time does 
 not hang so very heavy upon our hands. 
 
 " Lady Arundel is affection and tenderness 
 itself towards me, and I cannot, for one, 
 believe that she has done anything to de- 
 serve her husband's treatment of her. We 
 get on very weU together, and can talk 
 almost as fast on our fingers as you and 
 I used to do when we were girls at school 
 
 together. Lady A has at times her 
 
 fits of weeping, and deep depression of 
 spirits. She will sit for an hour together 
 lost in thought, or walk up and down near 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 205 
 
 the cottage, seemingly in great trouble. I do 
 what I can to comfort her ; but I think she 
 generally wishes to be left alone, and so I do 
 not intrude upon her grief, which is sacred 
 in my eyes. Often when I look at her, 
 especially when she is in trouble, I think of 
 the wonderful change in her circumstances — 
 from having been the mistress of a fine 
 house, with servants and carriages at her 
 command, now to be shut up in this Uttle 
 cottage, with poor me for her sole com- 
 panion, and only a charwoman to wait upon 
 us ! Or, as I remember her, Isabella Ber- 
 tram, a fine, handsome, spirited girl, fond 
 of riding, and so much admired by gentle- 
 men at aU the Newcastle balls ; and now look 
 at the almost heart-broken Lady Arundel, 
 who keeps walking up and down hour by 
 hour as if chafing at her confinement and 
 longing to flee away and be at rest ! 
 
 " The cottage we Uve in is too damp. 
 
206 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 and the valley too mucli shut in by the 
 hills and overgrown with wood, for either 
 of us to enjoy good health. Lady Arundel's 
 looks have altered for the worse since we 
 have been here : she has lost almost all her 
 colour, is very easily fatigued, and com- 
 plains often of headache. As for me, I 
 suffer more from rheumatism, and neuralgic 
 complaints. However, on the whole we 
 keep pretty well, so do not be alarmed. 
 
 " I do beUeve people here consider one, 
 or both, of us — probably it is me from my 
 scarcely ever speaking, and having to make 
 signs — as out of our minds ; they accord- 
 ingly avoid us on all occasions (though this 
 may be by orders) , and eye us curiously 
 from a distance. Lady A. is a great fern 
 collector, and takes an interest in comparing 
 the different varieties we have here — the 
 Asplenium marinum, Maiden's hair, &c. 
 
 "And now I must draw this letter to a 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 207 
 
 close. What is to be the end of this 
 
 banishment, I know not. Lady A thinks 
 
 that it will only end with Sir Edward's Ufe. 
 But this would be a sad prospect for us. 
 I don't mean Sir E.'s death, but having 
 to await that event before we can be set 
 free and return to the world. Lady A. 
 says she wiU forget how to speak soon, as 
 weU as myself, if she remains much longer 
 here. And from the motion of her Hps I 
 perceive that she is often talking out loud, 
 or perhaps repeating something. God help 
 us ! — two poor forlorn women, cast out from 
 aU human sympathy, and shut into this 
 valley ; it may be, for our Hves ! 
 
 " Ever your affectionate 
 —May, 18— " Mary Wilson." 
 
 Except from these two letters, and from 
 a few scraps of writing in the shape of a 
 journal, which were afterwards found at 
 
208 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 St. Ejiighton's, little can be known, now, 
 of the interior life of that cottage. AU 
 that ordinarily met the eye, was the spectacle 
 of two ladies, whose walks appeared to be 
 principally confined to the vaUey and its 
 precincts, but who have been occasionally 
 met, or more frequently seen returning as 
 if from some distant walk. 
 
 The strangest accounts were in circulation 
 respecting their habits ; some affirming that 
 they never addressed each other, while it was 
 as stoutly contended by nightly eaves-droppers 
 that not only shrieks and cries, but distinct 
 words issued from the room which they 
 usually occupied. The explanation is simple 
 enough to us who know the real circum- 
 stances of the case. The cries and ex- 
 clamations, and seeming conversation, were 
 not all imaginary; as will be seen in the 
 fragment of Lady Arundel's journal that 
 has been preserved, and which, with her 
 
anss WILSON'S letter. 209 
 
 letter already given, were long treasured up 
 by the female relative to whom they were 
 addressed, and subsequently, upon that rela- 
 tive's death, passed into the hands of the 
 present writer. Her agony at times would 
 find vent in words — would expend itself in 
 bitter cries, wrong from her by a sense of 
 loneliness and desertion, which threatened 
 to deprive her of reason. 
 
 To turn her thoughts from preying on 
 themselves, she would, she says, " commit to 
 memory long passages of poetry, and make 
 the soUtary valley echo to her recitation." 
 Hence, the exaggerated reports that pre- 
 vailed of cries and shrieks to be heard in 
 the neighbourhood of the cottage, breaking 
 on the stillness of the night. Hence, the 
 imputation of insanity which, even down 
 to the present day, is not unfrequently 
 hazarded. Who, indeed, can teU what may 
 have been the effects of such seclusion — 
 
 14 
 
210 ST, KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 with one almost a mute for her companion 
 — upon a highly-wrought, sensitive mind, 
 such as we know Lady Arundel's to have 
 been ? Who could answer for his own senses 
 in solitary confinement ? The prisoner has 
 the chaplain, and others of his kind, to 
 exchange a few words with daily. 
 
 But in Lady Arundel's case, throughout 
 the period of what may be called her con- 
 finement — that is, down to the last stage of 
 it — it is perfectly certain that she never 
 exchanged a word with any one (Miss 
 Wilson can hardly be considered an excep- 
 tion), and scarcely did a human being's voice 
 ever fall upon her ear. Who, then, can 
 altogether reject the notion of occasional 
 mental derangement ? Who can say, abso- 
 lutely, that this poor lady's misfortunes 
 did not sometimes get the better of her 
 reason, and induce her as a rehef to 
 rush out into the coolmg night air, and 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 211 
 
 vent her sorrow in mournful, incoherent 
 exclamations ? 
 
 And, in her companion's case, it is not 
 surprising that — to one unacquainted with the 
 distressing privation she laboured under — 
 the frequently mysterious movements of her 
 hands, and the unnatural sounds, so pain- 
 ful to hear, which occasionally proceeded 
 from her when she would make known her 
 meaning otherwise than by signs, might 
 well suggest the notion of something un- 
 earthly — something that had nothing in 
 common with human hopes or fears, with 
 human joys or sorrows. Especially might 
 this be the case, when coupled with those 
 fixed, stony-grey eyes of hers, always endea- 
 vouring, as it were, to read your meaning. 
 It was a face not to be forgotten when once 
 seen : that self-contained, immoveable ex- 
 pression, as if dead to every human passion. 
 
 As said before, we have merely fragments 
 
 14—2 
 
212 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 of Lady Arundel's journal, kept during the 
 period of her seclusion at St. Knighton's. 
 They are written on detached pieces of paper 
 without much order or method, and would 
 seem, from expressions that occur here and 
 there, to have been intended for her aunt's 
 eye alone ; or, perhaps, to serve as memo- 
 rials of what she had gone through, to recur 
 to in some imaginary future, fondly pictured 
 to herself, but, alas ! never to be realized — a 
 future to be spent, she may have imagined, 
 in the society of that loved aunt to whom 
 her letter was addressed, when she could 
 look back, as upon a vision of the night, 
 upon that dark, secluded valley with its 
 running stream and ever falling water. 
 
 Some of those entries are interesting, as 
 constituting the few remaining records of a 
 compulsory seclusion from the world which 
 has few parallels. Mixed up with them, and 
 written in the same disjointed form, are a 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 213 
 
 few fragmentary prayers and meditations, 
 evidently intended for the writer's eye alone ; 
 and which, out of deference to the wishes of 
 her almost only surviving near relative, are 
 here omitted. The first of these entries was 
 plainly written two or three months after the 
 arrival of the two ladies at St. Knighton's, and 
 they are continued, though at long intervals, 
 until almost to the close of the vmter-'s cap- 
 tivity — the last entry, consisting of a few 
 hlotted lines, having been written before her 
 final dehverance firom the sorrows of life, and 
 from the hard usage she had so long experi- 
 enced at the hands of one who had vowed to 
 " love and cherish her " unto his life's end ! 
 ' ' Aug. 3. — A day of gloom and sadness. It 
 was on this very day three years I accepted Sir 
 Edward's offer, to my sorrow, and forgot all 
 R.'s past love and tenderness for me. Most 
 justly have I been punished ! Oh, how well 
 do I recollect poor papa's look of satisfaction 
 
214 ST. kihghton's kbive. 
 
 all the evening, and how tenderly he kissed 
 me before going to bed ! And here I am, 
 in this gloomy valley, hundreds and hundreds 
 of miles away from my father's house, and 
 from dearest Aunt Gary, whom I may never 
 see again ! 
 
 "Aug. 10. — Such a sad -dream! Dreamt 
 I was at home, and with R. by my side, 
 walking in the garden ; he telling me all 
 his plans and hopes for the future, and saying 
 that his father was quite anxious to receive 
 me as his daughter-in-law ! And then we 
 strolled out into the orchard, as we used to 
 do in those happy days, and sat down near 
 the river on a stump of a tree that had 
 been blown down ; little Carlo was frisking 
 about, and he somehow got into the river, 
 and tried to clamber up the steep bank, but 
 wasn't able. And I dreamt that Reginald 
 got up and was puUing him out, when the 
 bank gave way, and there was a splash, and' 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 215 
 
 I awoke in a fright. I listened for a mo- 
 ment, and couldn't think where I was ; but 
 soon the sound of the water-fall brought 
 everything back to my sorrowful memory ! — 
 reminded me of perished hopes — of bye-gone 
 happiness never to return — of friends whom 
 I shall never, perhaps, look on again ! 
 
 " Sept. (no date.) — Dearest Mary Wilson 
 in low spirits to-day; and no wonder, for 
 she seldom hears anything of her family ; 
 she would like to write and make in- 
 quiries, but she is afraid of giving Sir E. a 
 handle to remove her from me altogether : 
 and then she is sacrificing herself also, I 
 know, for the benefit of her brothers and 
 sisters, whom she is able to educate by re- 
 maining in this gloomy solitude. Oh, how 
 much of good and self-denying kindness is 
 there in her ! and I do not think enough of 
 it, and of all she is giving up for my sake, 
 and that of her family. What a mystery 
 
216 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 is she to me, with that pale, anxious, inquir- 
 ing face of hers — and I am, no doubt, to 
 her ! When she sheds tears, there is some- 
 thing fearful about it ! She weeps so 
 silently — doesn't sob, or moan, or anything 
 of that sort. Well, if ever I am released 
 from here, she shall experience my gratitude 
 for all she has done for me. 
 
 " Sept. 21. — What a profusion of wild 
 flowers all about this valley, and fern, and 
 lichen, and heath, and mosses ! I have been 
 all this fine morning arranging my collection 
 of them, with Mary Wilson's assistance^ and 
 we have both been aU the better for the 
 occupation, I think. I have felt more hope- 
 ful, and she, poor thing, brightened up at 
 times, so as quite to surprise me. 
 
 " Oct. 5.— I have been turning over plans 
 of escape. There would be no difficulty 
 about getting away ; but where could I go ? 
 who would receive me ? Papa gave me up 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 217 
 
 at once, when I fled to him for protection, 
 though I told him how cruelly Sir E. had 
 used me; and then I know how powerless 
 poor dear papa is, after aU, to help me. 
 He told me himself on that miserable day 
 I drove to Bertram — or it was Mrs. B., I 
 think — ^how completely they were aU at the 
 mercy of Sir Edward : really as much so as 
 ever ; and that if papa were to take my part, 
 or receive me into his house, it would be 
 in Sir Edward's power to ruin him ; which 
 he would not be slow in doing. Did not, 
 indeed, my husband teU me as much — 
 threaten me what he would do to papa — on 
 that day we had such a violent quarrel about 
 Mrs. Barry being in the house ? Then, if 
 I was to go to dear Aunt Gary's, Sir Edward 
 could take me from her : and besides he 
 would visit papa with his displeasure all the 
 same. 
 
 " Where, then, can I go, if I leave this ? 
 
218 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Who -will tave me ? Would Sir Edward 
 have any scruples in locking me up in a 
 lunatic asylum ? How easily, with all his 
 money and cleverness, to get persons to 
 swear that I am mad, and doctors to sign 
 away my liberty for life ! Alas ! I feel at 
 times as if I should go mad. The desolation 
 and silence of this place, only for that 
 eternal water-fall, appals and frightens me. I 
 fancy I see spirits moving about the valley in 
 the dusk of the evening, and hear wailing 
 voices and lamentations, and I long to add 
 my own to them out of very bitterness of 
 spirit ! How gladly could I lie down and die 
 in this sequestered spot, with the distant 
 sound of the waves in my ears, far away 
 from my own dear home, and from all whom 
 I have loved there so well ! " 
 
 Here there is a gap in the journal. Either 
 no entries were made for the next few months, 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTEB. 219 
 
 or the detached pieces of paper on which the 
 journal was written have heen lost or ab- 
 stracted. At any rate no entry occurs again 
 until 
 
 " May 17. — How pleasant and mild the 
 air feels after the unusual severity of the 
 winter — unusual, at least, I should think, 
 in these western parts ; — for what can the 
 winters be here in comparison with the 
 north ? At my own dear home, this month 
 is frequently as cold, almost, as any in the 
 year. And then how the wild flowers abound 
 in this beautiful vaUey ! — for beautiful it 
 would be in my eyes, but for being confined 
 to it. Wild hyacinths, cowsKps, primroses, 
 fern, wood anemone — how they aU abound, 
 and how fragrantly smeU ! And then, the wild 
 clematis — in what picturesque folds does it 
 hang from the trees ! how gracefully cluster 
 about the porch ! Ah, me ! Even in this 
 place one might be happy if one had one's 
 
220 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 liberty, and with a mind at ease ! What 
 have I not gone through in the winter, 
 during the wet weather, when there was no 
 Stirling out — alone with poor Mary Wilson 
 and my own dismal thoughts ? I have felt, 
 at times, as if I could not endure this sort of 
 hfe much longer. I am sure my health is 
 faihng. Those spasms about my heart return 
 oftener and oftener, and I fear that there is 
 no cure for them ! I have suffered from them 
 more or less almost as long as I can recollect ; 
 but they have lately increased in violence, 
 and this damp situation must be bad for me. 
 I have written once to Sir Edward since 
 I have been here, but have had no answer. 
 Well, I sometimes fear that I am fated never 
 to quit this place : indeed, I have ceased to 
 care much about hving ! 
 
 " Everything has seemed to go wrong with 
 me stace I broke faith with Reginald. Where 
 is he now ? Can he have any idea of the 
 
MISS WILSON'S LETTER. 221 
 
 place of my confinement ? He would hardly 
 leave me here if he knew of it. How I should 
 like to see him again, if it was only once, 
 just to ask his forgiveness — to be sure that 
 he had quite forgiven me aU the misery and 
 wrong I have wrought him ; and then, if it 
 was God's will, to lie down and die — die in 
 this sequestered valley, and be forgotten ! 
 for my life has been nothing but a burden 
 to me for this ever so long, and I do not care 
 how soon I part with it. My husband has 
 cast me off, and I know his temper too well 
 to suppose that he will ever relent or change 
 his purpose ; and there are those about him 
 now who will take care that he never does, 
 even if so inclined. He believes I have 
 wronged him past forgiveness : imprudent 
 I have certainly been, and so there is no 
 help for me." 
 
 With this long extract closes Lady Arun- 
 del's diary, so far as it has been preserved. 
 
222 ST. KNIGHTON'S KBIVE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 A CHAPTER UPON CHUECH MATTERS. 
 
 Ebginald Teelawney's labours at Monta- 
 cute did not appear to be crowned with any 
 remarkable share of success. The same 
 wayward, impulsive character, which has been 
 already remarked on as a peculiarity of the 
 Cornish peasantry, showed itself in every- 
 thing. An eager curiosity, and overwhelm- 
 ing interest exhibited, followed almost di- 
 rectly by total indifference, and a turn- 
 ing to something else. It might be said of 
 most of them (when not at "Bal") that 
 "they spent their time in nothing else but 
 
A CHA.PTBR ON CHURCH MATTERS. 223 
 
 either to tell, or to hear some new thing;" 
 or they might be compared to children with 
 a new toy — all eagerness to examine it at 
 first, but ready to throw it aside a few 
 moments afterwards. 
 
 Was it lectures, or night-schools, or 
 singing-classes that Trelawney tried ? — the 
 success would be most encouraging, the 
 room crowded, an enlargement -talked of. 
 But the misfortune was that all this ex- 
 citement lasted but for the first few 
 times— it would subside quite as rapidly 
 as it sprung up ; and the whole herd — true 
 to their Cornish motto, " one and all," — 
 would disappear en masse, much as they had 
 arrived. No particular reason would be 
 assigned, only that they had got tired of 
 the thing, and wanted novelty. They are a 
 gregarious race, are these Cornish miners. 
 If one youth, tired of having been in the 
 same place for so many minutes, and with 
 
224 ST. KNIGHTON'S KE1\T!. 
 
 having nothing to amuse him, gets up in 
 the middle of service-time — and, with the 
 most complete disregard as to what the parson 
 or any one else may think of him, claps 
 on his hat and walks out of church, making 
 as much noise and clatter as he can — half- 
 a-dozen other youths in different parts of 
 the church, or who have been sitting all 
 in a row together, looking over a sheet of 
 " curls," it may be, and humming the tunes, 
 are almost sure to start up and follow their 
 companion's example, stamping out of church, 
 and indulging in a good hearty laugh when 
 just outside the door : it may be presumed, 
 either at the parson's expense, who seemed 
 so put out, or in order to assert their own 
 free British independence. And it is well, 
 if at intervals during the service, or the 
 sermon, the same thing is not kept up — a 
 perpetual going in and out of church. 
 
 Nor is this practice by any means con- 
 
A CHAPTER ON CHURCH MATTERS. 225 
 
 fined to the young men. They are fully 
 kept in countenance by the mine-girls, 
 who of the two possess a trifle more 
 of assurance. But what are their parents 
 and sober elders about ? Unfortunately, 
 when a person takes a " serious turn " in 
 West Cornwall, he immediately thinks it 
 necessary to attend the meeting-house, 
 otherwise his pretensions to spirituaUty 
 would be pretty generally called in question. 
 No " converted " person, it is thought, 
 has any business in church : he wUl hear 
 nothing there that has any " savour of 
 doctrine " about it. No ! the meeting-house 
 is the place for him ; and, perhaps, he may 
 be prevailed on, nothing loth, to give a 
 minute account of his " conversion," or to 
 relate his " experience," for the edification of 
 those grave, sober-looking, rather severe coun- 
 tenanced individuals of both sexes, who regu- 
 larly frequent the Bible- Christians' Chapel. 
 
 15 
 
226 ST KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 So the " young youths," and the " maids " 
 who work at the stamps, have it pretty 
 much all their own way in the spacious 
 half-empty church over the way — ^buUt with 
 a view rather to what might be hoped than 
 expected in the way of church-going amongst 
 the miners. The " serious " people are 
 all at the meeting-house, and the few elders 
 who do come to church are too often either 
 dependants upon the parson's charity, or 
 employed by him; or else persons whose 
 reputation for morality or sobriety has been 
 blown upon, and who favour church rather 
 than chapel principally from a notion that 
 there is less strictness required in one than 
 the other, and from a general distaste 
 to over-much religion, or any interference 
 with a man's private habits, be they what 
 they may. 
 
 Unfortunately it is the universal feeling 
 among the lower orders in Cornwall that 
 
A CHAPTER. ON CHURCH MATTERS. 227 
 
 there is greater strictness observed, and 
 more extensive- religious privileges to be 
 enjoyed,; by chapel people than by church 
 people; and it is easily seen to what ex- 
 tent this is true. " What every one says 
 must be true," is a generally received 
 though most fallacious maxim ; and as 
 long as it is the popular opinion among 
 the lower orders in Cornwall that. Metho- 
 dism and sanctity are convertible terms — as 
 much so as chuich and worldliness — the 
 mischief will keep increasing,: the assertion 
 wiU be its own fulfilment. If a man wishes 
 to be thought serious, he considers it necesr 
 sary to attend the meeting-rhouse in prefer- 
 ence to the church; and that, quite irrespective 
 of his clergyman's merits or demerits. 
 
 Every clergyman in West Cornwall knows 
 what is the usu3,l result of a " revival " in his 
 parish,. His most promising Sunday school 
 phUdren disappear from their class next Sun- 
 
 15—8 
 
228 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 day: they have been "converted," and inti- 
 mate their intention of going to chapel in 
 future. And the same vdth any rather 
 promising young men or women, who may 
 have interested him. They have perhaps 
 been prepared for Confirmation by him, 
 and they have hitherto passed scathe free 
 through Eevivals ; but their turn comes. So- 
 and-so has been "converted," "has been 
 taken-down," as they say, and their empty 
 place in church confirms the intelligence. 
 
 As to the immorahty which results from 
 these Eevivals, there can be no second 
 opinion amongst competent judges. Coupled 
 with prayer-meetings at night, — their ordi- 
 nary accompaniment — no one thing has 
 contributed more than they have to the low 
 state of morals, and of feminiae virtue, in 
 Cornwall. Simple Methodism has its use in 
 that country, and on the whole is not ill 
 adapted to the peculiar temperament of its 
 
A CHAPTER ON CHURCH MATTERS. 229 
 
 inhabitants. Something more stirring — 
 something that appeals more to the senses — 
 that lays more hold on the imagination than 
 the church's ordinary service (well adapted 
 though it be for the educated and refined 
 classes), is what the Cornish miner requires. 
 And then service only once a week — ^with 
 possibly a school-room lecture — does not 
 satisfy his spiritual requirements. Would not 
 a shorter — more musical, and, if possible, 
 daily — service be best calculated to fix the 
 naturally unstable Cornish miner, and retain 
 him in the church's fold ? 
 
 All praise is due to that eminent man who 
 has so long filled the see of Exeter, and who 
 has done all that one man can possibly do 
 for his extensive diocese; yet who can tell 
 the benefit that might accrue to Cornwall 
 and its inhabitants by the residence amongst 
 them of a bishop of their ovra, who would 
 apply his mind to adapt the church's minis- 
 
230 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 trations to the habits of thought and 
 idiosyncracies of the very pecuhar' people 
 over whom he would be placed ? 
 
 Our readers must be pleased to attribute 
 the foregoing reflections in substance to Tre- 
 lawney, as the result of his labours at 
 Montacute, and as accounting for the small 
 measure of success which seemed to attend 
 them. 
 
231 
 
 CHAPTER XVn. 
 
 A CLERICAL DINNER PARTY. 
 
 As is the case in most country districts 
 thinly iahabited by gentry, and where the 
 clergy, who live necessarily at some distance 
 apart from each other, make up the 'society, 
 a spirit of hospitality is widely difiused in 
 Cornwall. Where your nearest visiting neigh- 
 bour Uvea some half-dozen miles off, and 
 with an execrable road between you, there is 
 httle probabiUty of your seeing very much of 
 each other imless it be at the social board. 
 Either you must tempt him, or he must 
 tempt you, with a good dinner to make 
 
232 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 it worth any one's while to brave the ele- 
 ments ; which are frequently in a very 
 uproarious, uncomfortable state during the 
 dinner-giving season, that lasts some three 
 or four months, until aU festivities are put a 
 stop to by grim Lent. When that season 
 is over, and winter has passed away with 
 a few parting hail-storms, then it is that 
 the Cornish parson begins to spread his 
 wings, and thinks it is time, after being 
 cooped up in such an outlandish place 
 for so many months, to take a flight some- 
 where, and see what is going on in Lon- 
 don, or have a look at Paris, or climb the 
 Grands Mulets, 
 
 Accordingly, after the archdeacon's visita- 
 tion, which takes place in May — and which 
 has the effect of gathering together, from 
 many a distant and sea-washed parsonage, 
 friends who, except upon such occasions, 
 never meet: — when this important event is 
 
A CLERICAL DINNER PARTY. 233 
 
 over, and the name has been duly answered 
 to ; when the elaborate sermon (which has 
 been a twelvemonth in. preparation, and is 
 expected to produce such a sensation — only 
 it doesn't,) has been decorously Hstened to, 
 with fervent aspirations from high and low 
 that it might shortly come to a close ; 
 when the charge has been delivered — ^which 
 is usually composed of a summary of the Acts 
 of Parliament relating to the Church passed 
 during the previous session, of some en- 
 livening statistics about the " Eeligious 
 Societies," of a few quiet hits at theological 
 and political opponents of the Church, and 
 an oflf-hand disposal of any doctrinal dis- 
 putes which may have been disturbing the 
 minds of the Church people since the period 
 of the last visitation; then — after the dinner 
 has been partaken of at the " Eoyal George," 
 or the " King's Arms," or wherever it may 
 be, and the standard toasts, " The Queen," 
 
234 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 " The Bishop," " The Preacher, with thanks, 
 &c. &c., for his truly able and excellent 
 sermon," " The Archdeacon," have been 
 duly honoured — comes the general breaking 
 up, and shaking of hands, until another 
 twelvemonth comes round, and brings 
 them together again from their remote 
 parsonages. 
 
 Aftfer aU this is over {the great event of the 
 year to the clerical mind, unless it be the 
 visitation of the Lord Bishop himself), and 
 when the wives, and httle olive-branches who 
 have attained to years of discretion, have 
 been summoned by Pater-famihas out of the 
 confectioner's shop, where they have been 
 consuming their frugal meal of veal pies and 
 buns; and after carriages and vehicles of 
 all sorts have driven off — from the smart 
 barouche with its pair of horses, and liveried 
 servant, and which is occupied by the gaily- 
 dressed wife and daughters of the rector of 
 
A CLERICAL DINNER PARTY. 235 
 
 St. Timothy, who is himself driving, down 
 to the httle dingy rattle-trap of a phae- 
 ton in which the pei^petual curate of St. 
 Mmigo is "tooling" himself and his fat 
 wife out of town : after one and aU these 
 events are over, then ensues a flight of 
 parsons^-that is, of the rector of St. 
 Timothy stamp: men who can afford it — 
 eastward, not to see much of each other 
 until the return of wiutei* brings with it the 
 usual rotmd of festivities. Then it is that 
 weU-endowed rectors and vicars spread for 
 each other the ample board, and gladly sum- 
 mon to the feast, any " weU-conditioned " 
 clerical strangeif in the neighbourhtfbd, 
 who may haply have aUghted on Cornish 
 soil. 
 
 Under this head Trelawney was unani- 
 mously pronounced to dome, and so his in- 
 vitations' to "good men's feasts" during the 
 season were unintermitting. There was a 
 
236 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 trifle of sameness, it must be allowed, 
 amongst the guests; for, except in the 
 case of a stranger hke himself, Trelawney 
 usually met the same people over and 
 over again. Those who didn't entertain 
 were socially extinct : no one seemed to 
 know anything about them — hadn't seen 
 them for ever so long, though living in the 
 adjoining parish ; so that etiquette and good 
 taste forbade any mention of such people : 
 there were much pleasanter subjects to talk 
 about. • 
 
 Let us listen to the conversation upon one 
 of these festive occasions : — What is the 
 rector of St. Timothy, that tall, gentle- 
 manly, middle-aged looking man, who 
 looks so well preserved, and so young to 
 be the father of grown-up daughters, — 
 what is he talking about to the young 
 Rector of St. Julian, whose arrival in 
 the neighbourhood, with his pretty highly- 
 
A CLERICAL DINNER PARTY. 237 
 
 bom wife, has been pronounced such an 
 acquisition ? Why, what should those two 
 be talking about but their Cochin- China- 
 fowl ? — in praises of which they are quite 
 enthusiastic. Then they get to the subject of 
 the best breed of pigs, and modes of fatten- 
 ing them. So that you see clerical and 
 theological subjects did not by any means 
 engross the after dinner conversation ; but 
 politics, agriculture, mining affairs, all in 
 their turn came under review. For is not 
 the vicar of St. Crispin the best authority 
 in the county on the subject of mines — 
 which are " safe," which " shaky ? " — and 
 could he not give you a wrinkle or two as to 
 the best mine in which to take shares ? So 
 that the words, " consols," " sets," "lodes," 
 "grass" and "mine captains," came to be 
 pretty well mixed up with such expressions 
 as " such spurs," " such a comb," " such a 
 crow as it has," or, " splendid boar," " beau- 
 
238 ST. kotghton's keive. 
 
 tiful little porker," "short hair," "good 
 grain," &c. 
 
 Thus some such cross-conversation as 
 this would go on, — 
 
 " I have it on Captain Dick's own autho- 
 rity ; " " but then you should see my 
 bird's taU, and legs, they are beauties : " 
 "why the water is coming, in so fast that 
 I expect shares will be below par as soon 
 
 as ever the adventurers come to : " " I 
 
 like to hear it crow myseK, and then its 
 eggs — ^some people object : " " Depend upon 
 it, that Captain Michael Oats knows what 
 he is about ; why he told me himseK ia con- 
 fidence that he and Mr. Gully : " "I 
 
 expect her to litter next month, and you 
 shall have one of them if you like : " " and 
 so that is the way. Captain Dick says, those 
 people in London got so fearfully let in : " &c. 
 
 Much of this was not of a nature to 
 interest a stranger ; however, there were 
 
A CLERICAL DINNER PARTY. 239 
 
 not wanting those who were disposed 
 for something more general. Accordingly 
 some such conversation as this would be 
 started : — 
 
 " Well, how do you hke Cornwall, Mr. 
 Trelawney, and where you are ? " 
 
 " I shall be able to answer you better 
 after a time, when I get more acquainted 
 with the place and people." 
 
 " You will never be able to make anything 
 of them ; they are all Dissenters in these 
 parts." 
 
 " Well, I mean to try, by haviag short 
 services of an evening, and lectures." 
 
 " All that has been tried by me at 
 St. Bridget's, but to no purpose. I now 
 go on the plan of being very strict with 
 them, — requiring forty-eight hours' notice 
 before I perform any funerals, and I take 
 no one into church who hasn't been in the 
 habit of attending regularly," 
 
240 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 " How do they like that, Marsh ? " asked 
 the vicar of St. Lawrence, " for I have 
 thoughts of doing it too." 
 
 " They don't seem to hke it at all, but I 
 am determined to reduce them to obedi- 
 ence." 
 
 "You two men, Marsh and Thresham, 
 mustn't think to do anything by driving 
 your people ; you must try and lead them. 
 If you were Cornishmen you would know 
 that," observed Mr. Polcam, a mild-eyed, 
 quiet, useless little man, who had scarcely 
 ever been out of the county since his college 
 days. 
 
 " Well, Polcam, it seems to me to come 
 to pretty much the same thing whether you 
 lead them or drive them ; they seem fully 
 determined to have their own way." 
 
 " How is your church attended ? " asked 
 Trelawney of Mr. Marsh. 
 
 " Very few come now, I am happy to 
 
A CLERICAL DINNER-PARTY. 241 
 
 say. You look surprised ; but I am sick 
 of humouriag these Methodists, and I let 
 them know that I only want to have good 
 sound Churchmen about me, and so I have 
 weeded my congregation most effectually; 
 and now, though only a few come, yet it 
 is a comfort to know that they are aU sound 
 church people." 
 
 "I never," observed meek little Mr. 
 Polcam, who seemed anxious to say some- 
 thing, and who plainly considered that, on 
 the strength of his being a Cornishman, he 
 alone knew how his countrymen ought to 
 be "managed;" "I never, for my part, 
 interfere with them in any way whatever, 
 where their own peculiar customs are 
 concerned, but take it all very quietly, 
 and this I find to be the best plan ' after 
 all.' " 
 
 " No doubt it is the easiest and quietest," 
 said Trelawney, with a smile at the little 
 
 16 
 
242 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 man's self-complacency ; " but what do you 
 mean by not interfering with them ? " 
 
 "Why, Marsh there objects, I know, to 
 their habit of crowding into church at 
 funerals and weddings, and keeping their 
 hats on there, and seizing on the bells, and 
 ringing them, and going out of church during 
 service time, and those sort of things." 
 
 "WeU, and your plan ? " 
 
 " My plan is not to make or meddle with 
 them. They would never give me any peace 
 if I did. They would do to me what they 
 used to do to my predecessor, I am told." 
 
 "What was that?" 
 
 " Why, wait for him untU he came out 
 of church, and then form an avenue, and 
 obUge him to walk through their ranks for 
 some distance, they all the time singing 
 Methodist hymns (which they knew he hated) 
 at the very top of their voices, and finishing 
 up with a loud laugh before they would let 
 
A CLERICAL DINNER-PARTY". 243 
 
 Mm go. And they did the same very often 
 when he went out for a walk, and happened 
 to fall in with them. He was a nervous 
 man, was poorFraser — he is dead now — and 
 so he used, I am told, to jump over the hedge 
 whenever he saw any of these young men 
 standing in the road together, in order to 
 avoid them. They used to give him no end 
 of trouble ; at last he was glad to exchange 
 livings with me, and he went eastward to 
 St. Uney, and there died. He got all this 
 ill-wUl because he tried to stop the Methodist 
 hymn they are so fond of singing at funerals. 
 So I say the best plan is to leave them 
 alone." 
 
 " How is your church attended?" asked 
 Trelawney : " well, I hope, as the result of 
 all this conciUation." 
 
 " I can't say* it is. Indeed, with the ex- 
 ception of Sir Eoger Pendragon and his 
 family and servants, and my own family, 
 
 16—2 
 
244 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 very few attend : but I have ceased to trouble 
 myself about it." 
 
 " Each leaves the other alone ? " 
 
 " Exactly." 
 
 " And that is the best plan you can devise 
 with all your experience ?" 
 
 " It is." 
 
 The little man refreshed himself with 
 another glass of sherry, and then joined in 
 the general move into the next room. 
 
245 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 MRS. TRESSlLIAl^ GIVES HER OPINION. 
 
 " Well, but you must allow, my dear, that 
 he is pecuhar — that he has got some odd 
 ways about him. He looks so strange and 
 startled at times." 
 
 These and similar remarks Mrs. Tres- 
 silian was pouring into her husband's re- 
 luctant ears one morning after breakfast, as 
 they were alone in the latter's study. Now 
 Mr. Tressilian was particularly busy at that 
 very time upon his celebrated work on 
 zoophytes (noticed so favourably in a Journal 
 of Philosophical Transactions, published by 
 
246 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 the Cornish Literary Society), and, if the 
 truth must be told, was very desirous to have 
 his Httle room to himself; so that his 
 answers were rather vague, and by no means 
 came up to his wife's notions of the exigencies 
 of the case. He was, besides (hke many 
 other men), much more taken up in studying 
 the habits and pecuharities of birds and 
 animals about him than in noticing what was 
 passing in his own family and under his eyes. 
 His wife — a plump, busy, active httle body 
 — was, he thought, quite capable of taking 
 care of the concerns of the family, without 
 appealing to him. When, therefore, she 
 pressed him so perseveringly for his opinion 
 about Trelawney, the worthy man was some- 
 what at a loss what to say. 
 
 " Well, my love, I don't know that I ever 
 remarked anything particular about him, or 
 unlike other people. I know we get on very- 
 well together. He has got some odd notions 
 
MRS. TRESSILIAlf GIVES HER OPINION. 247 
 
 about poetry, if that's what you mean : he 
 admires Spenser, and Chaucer, and the early 
 Enghsh writers, while, as you know, I'm a 
 devout Miltonian." 
 
 " My dear Charles, I am not likely to 
 trouble myself about his poetical fancies. 
 No, what I say is that he evidently admires 
 our Charlotte, and if you were anybody else 
 you would take notice of it." 
 
 " How does he show it ? Has he said 
 anything to her ? " 
 
 " No ; that is the puzzle. But I am not 
 blind, my dear ; and if you were not so taken 
 up with those stupid creatures that you are 
 writing about all day long, you would see 
 things as I do." 
 
 " Well, what do you want me to do 
 exactly?" asked Mr. Tressihan, making a 
 great display of settling himself to go on 
 with his writing, and dipping his pen in the 
 ink. " If you wiU only tell me what I am 
 
248 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 expected to do, and then leave me in peace 
 to go on with my writing. I have come to 
 the most important part of my treatise — 
 about the organs of respiration, and really 
 I shall get confused if I am not left 
 alone." 
 
 " How tiresome you are ! and aU about 
 those miserable Uttle wretches, or whatever 
 they are. I want you to be Hke other 
 fathers, and to talk about our girls, and to 
 see what is for their advantage. Whenever 
 I speak to you at night you are so sleepy that 
 I am sure you are not paying any attention." 
 
 " Very possibly. Well, come, what is 
 it ? " and the rector put down his pen in 
 despair. 
 
 " Oh, I think that we ought to make some 
 inquiries about Mr. Trelawney's previous 
 history. He is on a very intimate footing in 
 our family, and I can't help thinking has 
 some views with respect to Charlotte ?" 
 
MRS. TRESSILIAN GIVES HER OPINION. 249 
 
 " Well, what if he has ? He is of a very 
 respectable family, we know that. I just 
 remember his father hving ia this county. 
 They took the name of Trelawney, you know, 
 upon coming in for some property in the 
 north ; or this young man's grandfather did, 
 at any rate, and the family have not resided 
 in Cornwall for ever so long." 
 
 "It is not so much about his family I 
 •want to speak, for that is all right enough ; 
 or about his property, for I have heard him 
 allude casually to some family Uving in the 
 north that is to be his some day or other. 
 It is not about these I am uneasy; but I 
 should like to know something about his own 
 previous history. There always seems to me 
 to be an air of mystery about him. He is so 
 reserved ; he seldom speaks about himself. 
 Do you know, I sometimes think he may 
 be already married, — or engaged perhaps. 
 There is something I am sure on his mind, 
 
250 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 and which prevents him from proposing for 
 Charlotte." 
 
 " Why, you women are all such match- 
 makers ! You are always fancying that 
 people are in love, or going to propose, or 
 something of that sort." 
 
 " Well, perhaps we are ; but you wiU 
 admit that women are much more keen- 
 sighted than you men." 
 
 " I readily admit it, — too keen-sighted, • 
 by far, for you see things that have no 
 existence except in your own imagination." 
 
 "However, we wiU not talk about that 
 now, as I perceive you are longing to get 
 back to your dear little zoophytes. Only 
 I would have you keep your eyes open, and 
 instead of having long conversations with 
 him about poetry and nonsense of that sort, 
 try and make out from him something of 
 his own early history. It may lead him to 
 say something; for it is never an advantage 
 
MRS. TRESSILIAN GIVES HER OPINION. 251 
 
 to a girl to have her name coupled with a 
 yoimg man's, as Charlotte's is with his, I 
 know, unless something is Hkely to come 
 of it." 
 
 "WeU, I am a bad hand at trying to 
 fish anything out of a person. But perhaps 
 he may say something of himself that might 
 give the conversation a turn in the direction 
 you wish." 
 
 " Well, I wouldn't lose any time about it. 
 Ask him to dine, and talk about Northum- 
 berland ; that is what I should do." 
 
 •' I wish you would, then ; you would 
 do it much better than I should. How- 
 ever, we can't ask him to dine at present, 
 for he has gone from home for the week." 
 
 " Men are such cowards. But where is 
 he gone to ? You can speak to him when 
 he comes back." 
 
 "Well, we'U see about it. He has gone 
 upon an excursion up the north coast as 
 
262 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 far as Tintagel. He has never seen the 
 place, he told me. I don't suppose he will 
 be back for a few days." 
 
 " Well, there is nothing to be done about 
 it at present, I see." 
 
 " Nothing," echoed her husband, in a 
 tone of great satisfaction. " And now for 
 my essay." 
 
 In the meantime the unconscious subject 
 of Mrs. TressiHan's strictures was carrying 
 out a project upon which he had long set 
 his miad — a pedestrian tour along the north 
 coast. For any one suffering from depression 
 of spirits, or over anxiety, there is no remedy 
 like a tour on foot through interesting 
 scenery; especially if that scenery lies, as 
 in this instance it did, along the coast. 
 
 The north coast of Cornwall is pre-emiuent 
 for its wild savage grandeur, for its pre- 
 cipitous cliffs, and for the ceaseless thunder- 
 ing noise of the waves which are dashed 
 
MRS. TRESSILIAN GIVES HER OPINION. 253 
 
 up against it in mighty bUlows. On other 
 sides of the Cornish coast the sea is fre- 
 quently calm, but here on the north coast 
 it never is ; for, owing to a continual ground- 
 swell, the sea rolls in with terrific grandeur, 
 and breaks upon the rocks with a voice of 
 thunder. You have nature here in aU its 
 majesty; and, whether you are alone, or 
 with another, the spectacle is alike well 
 calculated to take you out of yourself — ^to 
 stiU all mere human passions; to fill you 
 with unspeakable awe and reverence. And 
 it was not long before Trelawney experienced 
 the sedative effects derivable from a con- 
 templation of such glorious works of nature. 
 To him Isabella Arundel was now as one 
 dead, — so long was it since he had seen 
 her, or had any sure tidings of her fate. 
 That fate was wrapped up in mystery; 
 though the opinion gradually gained ground 
 that she had been placed in a convent 
 
254 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 abroad. Her husband was travelling in the 
 East, and, having reUnquished the active 
 part he had formerly taken in the manage- 
 ment of his bank, it was thought probable 
 that his stay abroad would be a lengthened 
 one. Any communication now with Isabella 
 seemed to Trelawney hopeless, and hardly 
 to be desired even if it were possible. 
 
 What were the thoughts rising in her 
 former lover's mind only a twelvemonth ago ? 
 — when he stood upon that lonely hill of 
 Montacute, and saw aU nature in sweet 
 repose about him — aU seemingly happy, be- 
 cause pursuing their peaceful caUings, and 
 " dweUing amongst their own people." And 
 then when he reflected upon himseK — driven 
 in a manner from his own home and belong- 
 ings — baulked of his long-expected inherit- 
 ance — robbed most nefariously of his affianced 
 bride — what were the wild, stormy thoughts 
 which once had had possession of him ? 
 
MRS. TRESSILIAN GIVES HER OPINION. 255 
 
 Why, to throw up an uncongenial employ- 
 ment, to walk over Europe, if need be, in 
 search of his early and first love, to tear 
 her from her tyrant's grasp, and carry her 
 triumphant to distant lands. 
 
 But better thoughts than these had been 
 since gaining the ascendancy over him^ 
 thoughts of Grod and holiness — thoughts of 
 purity and self-denial — thoughts of submis- 
 sion to the divine wiU, and of devotion to 
 that work to which he had " set his hand." 
 The soothing effects of his intercourse with 
 the Tressilian family, and a participation in 
 their quiet home pursuits and innocent recre- 
 ations, had begim to tell upon his embittered 
 spirit ; to turn his thoughts away from his 
 own misery and disappointments ; to make 
 him long for the quiet happiness of home and 
 a domestic hfe. Such a holy calming in- 
 fluence may the spectacle of a bright, happy, 
 refined family circle exercise over the most 
 
256 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 distempered mind — over the most seemingly 
 blighted affections ! And then as for the 
 girls, where in aU Cornwall were there any 
 prettier, more lively, good, useful, cheerfal- 
 tempered girls than were Charlotte and 
 Loveday TressOian ? And if Trelavmey did 
 not throw himself at the feet of one of 
 them, and beseech her to accept him — as 
 their fond careful mamma seemed to think 
 he ought — we may suppose it was more 
 from an unwillingness to sever the last tie 
 which seemed stUl to bind him to Isabella — 
 the fond, often-dwelt-upon recollection of 
 what they had been to each other — than 
 any insensibility to the charms of Charlotte 
 Tressilian, or indifference to be thought 
 worthy of such a treasure. 
 
 Such thoughts as these coursed through 
 and through the tourist's mind, as, leaving 
 behind him the towans of Hayle, Trelawney 
 turned his face towards St. Agnes and 
 
MRS. TRESSILIAN GIVES HER OPINION. 257 
 
 Perranzabuloe, and allotted himself three 
 days to explore aU the wild interesting 
 scenery which lay between him and the far- 
 famed castle of Tintagel — the birthplace of 
 King Arthur, and scene of so many of his 
 achievements. 
 
 17 
 
258 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE " VALLEY OF THE MILL." 
 
 We do not propose accompanying Trelawney 
 very closely in Ms tour along the north 
 coast. We shall not, therefore, stay to 
 narrate how he ascended St. Agnes' lofty 
 beacon, or explored the sandy dunes of 
 Perranzabuloe — an immense waste, with 
 countless rabbits as the only denizens, and 
 the arundo arenaria the only vegetation ; 
 where clouds of sand, in perpetual motion, 
 darken the horizon ; where, after wandering 
 by the hour amidst a scene of appalling 
 desolation, the traveller may chance to light 
 upon an old four-holed cross in the midst of 
 
THE " VALLEY OF THE MILL." 259 
 
 the desert, and stumble upon some scattered 
 ruins : once a church — and buried for a thou- 
 sand years beneath the sand. We need not 
 dwell upon these things. Are they not written 
 in John Murray his book ? Nor shall we "be 
 tempted — though great the temptation — to 
 turn aside with Trelawney, and rest a while 
 in Lanherne's pleasant vale, with its grey 
 convent of Carmehte nuns ; once the manor- 
 house of the " great Arundels," and whose 
 cloistered inmates are never visible to mortal 
 eye : a vale where, despite the few scattered 
 cottages, an almost unbroken silence ever 
 prevails, save from the murmuring of the 
 little stream, which courses along ; and 
 where wide-spreading trees and steep banks 
 covered with moss and fern, all contribute 
 to the air of perfect repose which here reigns 
 supreme. 
 
 We pass on with unwilling steps to 
 where Trelawney's fate is conducting him, 
 
 17—2 
 
260 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 " not knowing," and where all the secret, 
 mysterious influences which have heen so 
 long drawing him, are converging, before 
 being dissipated for ever. 
 
 It was on a .bright, sunshiny morning, 
 then, that Keginald Trelawney at length 
 stood beneath the grey dismantled walls of 
 Tintagel — the "dark Dundagil by the 
 Cornish sea ; " the scene of so many 
 romantic tales. There King Arthur reigned, 
 and Sir Launcelot of the Lake, and Sir 
 Galahad, and Sir Tristram, and others of 
 the "Knighthood-errant of the Kealm," 
 were drawn in that fair order of the Table 
 Round — 
 
 "A glorious company, the flower of men," 
 
 who were 
 
 " To ride abroad redressing human wrongs ; 
 To speak no slander ; no, nor hsten to it ; 
 To lead sweet lives in purest chastity ; 
 To love one maiden only, cleave to her, 
 And worship her by years of noble deeds. 
 Until they won her." 
 
THE " VALLEY OP THE MILL," 261 
 
 Some hours had elapsed before Trelawney 
 could quit a place fraught with so many 
 stirring recollections of the past; whose 
 ruins, — now almost surrounded by the waves, 
 and against whose foundation-stones the 
 billows of the sea are ever breaking with 
 tumultuous -violence — had in the days of 
 their pristine glory beheld so many knightly 
 warriors and fair dames, the fair and 
 beauteous Guiuevere at their head, gathered 
 within their walls,- Time sped swiftly by 
 while wrapt up in such thoughts, and the 
 shadows were beginning to lengthen before 
 Trelawney could fairly turn his back upon 
 the castle, and begin to descend from the 
 lonely heights upon which it stands. His 
 face was now to be directed homeward. 
 He had reached the extreme point of his 
 tour, as arranged before quitting Montacute ; 
 the week, too, was drawing to a close, and 
 the Sunday's duties to be thought of. 
 
262 ST. KmGHTON'S KEIVB. 
 
 It was before the days of John Murray 
 and his red books ; but Itineraries, and 
 books of roads, with their bald description 
 of places, and names of inns, and lists of 
 gentlemen's seats, and accurate accounts of 
 mileage, supplied their place. In one of 
 these interesting Itineraries, which Trelaw- 
 ney had chanced to take up at the little 
 wayside inn where he had slept on the 
 previous night, he had read, under the head 
 of Tintagel : " "Within a short distance to 
 the east is the valley of St. Eoiighton's, 
 remarkable for its waterfall. The cascade 
 faUs a distance of thirty feet and seven 
 inches. There are several rare ferns and 
 mosses to be found here, amongst the rest 
 the asplenum varigosa, a great rarity, as 
 also the cladophora Brownii. 
 
 " Come, I'll go and see this waterfall," 
 thought Trelawney to himself, " It will 
 just fill out the day; and I may be able 
 
THE " VALLEY OF THE MILL." 263 
 
 to pick up a fern or two, or some of 
 this moss, for Charlotte Tressilian." 
 
 A short walk brought him to the en- 
 trance of a valley with high hiQs on either 
 side. The foliage was more than usually 
 
 4 
 
 profuse, and mosses, and ferns, and trail- 
 ing plants which love the shade, abounded. 
 Trelawney had not advanced far up the val- 
 ley when he felt the persuasion that the 
 place was familiar to him. He must have 
 visited it when a child, he thought, though 
 he had forgotten aU about it; or perhaps 
 he had seen a picture of it somewhere. 
 " How strange ! — and there's that mill — all 
 looking so picturesque about it, — why, 
 surely I have seen it before ! It seems 
 aU so perfectly familiar to me — this run- 
 ning stream and all — and the branches 
 dipping in the water — and then these steep 
 banks with all this fern. It reminds one 
 of what people say — that we have often a 
 
264 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 consciousness of a previous state of exist- 
 ence; for it certainly seems as if I tad 
 been here before." 
 
 The path which Trelawney was pursuing 
 was getting more and more entangled, and 
 he almost despaired of ever reaching the 
 waterfall; the noise of which, however, 
 was heard distiuctly enough. At length 
 he reached a place where the hand of 
 man was visible, where a tolerable foot- 
 path was formed, and where the brambles 
 and underwood had been kept ia something 
 like order. The sUence, save for the 
 splashing sound of the waterfall, was com- 
 plete — ^hardly even broken by the occa- 
 sional twittering of a bird. An air of 
 perfect stillness pervaded the place, and 
 the arching trees overhead, with the de- 
 clining dayhght, all contributed to the pre- 
 vailing gloom. It was not until Trelawney 
 had caught sight of the waterfall — the 
 
THE "VALLEY OP THE MILL." 265 
 
 water falling first into a sort of basin 
 (Cornice, Zeive), and then tumbling down 
 several feet into a lower level, and so 
 finding its way down the vaUey — it was 
 not until his eyes rested upon the waterfall 
 that the truth rushed iato his miad. 
 
 " My dream ! my dream ! " he cried out. 
 " This is what I dreamt of at Cholmondeley : 
 it was there I saw it all — this dark valley — 
 these high hills shutting it in — this stream 
 dancing and gurgUng at my feet, and all 
 about. I remember it now distinctly. Oh! 
 can it be here — to this lonely place — they 
 have brought my poor Isabel ? She may 
 not be abroad after aU ; but here, in 
 this very vaUey — in this remote comer of , 
 England ! Oh ! what a heart could that 
 man have to choose such a sohtude for 
 her ! " 
 
 As Trelawney, in a whirl of excitement, 
 was uttering these passionate exclamations 
 
266 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 out loud, while leaning against a large ash- 
 tree which then stood a few yards to the 
 right of the cascade, and which partly con- 
 cealed him, he was startled by perceiving, 
 standing within a few yards of him, the 
 identical figure in black which he had 
 seen in his dream. She was not, indeed, 
 wringing her hands, as then he beheld 
 her, but was perfectly stiU and motionless, 
 and gazing intently on the stream. There 
 was just the same stony look of despair 
 about her face that he remembered, only 
 she appeared older, and, if possible, more 
 sad. 
 
 Though Trelawney's emotion had led 
 him to utter wild, passionate exclamations 
 of grief, yet no impression was seemingly 
 made by them upon this sad lady : she 
 plainly did not hear them. Then all 
 at once it rushed upon Trelawney's mind 
 who Isabella's companion was : it must 
 
THE " VALLEY OF THE MILL." 267 
 
 be Mr. Wilson's deaf and dumb daughter ; 
 as he remembered to have been told all 
 about it some time back, though it had 
 almost escaped his recollection until now. 
 It could, then, no longer admit of doubt 
 that he beheld Isabella's companion iu 
 that sad, silent woman, who stood almost 
 beside him. 
 
 Checking his first impulse to come forth 
 from his place of concealment, Trelawney 
 watched her motions ; when, after pausing 
 by the side of the stream for a few minutes, 
 lost in thought as it would seem, the lady 
 pursued her path, passing close by her 
 observer, and took her way up a narrow 
 path to the top of the bank. There stood 
 a lonely cottage which TrelaA^mey had not 
 observed before ; passing through the open 
 door of it she disappeared. For some 
 minutes Trelawney stood irresolute, whether 
 to advance boldly to the house and claim 
 
268 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Isabella's liberty in the name of her father, 
 or to wait his opportunity. 
 
 What if Miss Wilson should deny his 
 right to interfere ? Was not Isabella still 
 legally under the authority and protection of 
 her husband ? and might it not aggravate 
 the miseries of her confinement if a former 
 lover were to step forward and claim an 
 interest in her ? Nay, who could teU but 
 that Miss Wilson had both the wiU and the 
 power to enforce Isabella's submission to her 
 authority ? Was it quite certain that the 
 unhappy captive might not prefer residence 
 even in such a place, and with such a 
 companion, yet with still some degree of 
 liberty, to being immured once more at 
 Northington with hateful insults as her daily 
 portion ? 
 
 Trelawney was balancing in his mind 
 these doubts — at one time resolved, come 
 what might of it, to demand to see Isabella, 
 
THE "VALLEY OF THE MILL." 269 
 
 and then to act according to circumstances — 
 but a moment afterwards arresting his steps 
 by the dread of increasing rather than 
 diminishing her sufferings, if he were to 
 do anything rashly — of perhaps hopelessly 
 riveting her chains instead of loosening 
 them. 
 
 While fiUed with these thoughts, from the 
 same door which Miss Wilson had entered, 
 issued another figure which, though ob- 
 scured by the faiHng light, Trelawney recog- 
 nized instinctively as none other than Lady 
 Arundel. Oh, how his heart bounded within 
 him at the sight ! What wild tumultuous 
 thoughts coursed through his mind as he 
 beheld his own beloved Isabella — his own 
 affianced wife that -was, his all and all — as 
 he beheld her, after a turn or two in front 
 of the cottage, slowly approaching the 
 waterfall, and preparing to descend by the 
 httle path which conducts into the valley ! 
 
270 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Now was the time for disclosing himself. 
 Trelawney waited until he could do so 
 without the chance of being observed from 
 the windows of the cottage. 
 
 Isabella approached his place of conceal- 
 ment ; there was still some light, and when 
 she threw back her veU, he saw that all her 
 colour and animation were departed. It 
 needed not that languid step of hers to pro- 
 claim that her health was suffering, that her 
 captivity was teUing upon her. Her pale 
 face and sunken eyes told the truth plainly 
 enough. She looked years and years older 
 since Trelawney had last seen her. She de- 
 scended the bank by the little foot-path, and 
 passed near where Trelawney was. Slowly 
 then she pursued her w&y down the valley, 
 untU coming to a rustic seat, she sat her- 
 self down with apparent listlessness, and 
 seemed absorbed in thought — or in prayer, 
 for her eyes were closed. When she opened 
 
THE "VALLEY OP THE MILL." 271 
 
 them, her former lover was standing by 
 her side. 
 
 " Oh, Isabella, my love, is it here I find 
 you ? Yet, thank God, I have found you, 
 and before it is too late. How is it you 
 look so pale and thin ? I will never leave 
 you until I take you out of this place and 
 restore you to your family." 
 
 For a few moments Isabella was speech- 
 less with astonishment; and when words 
 came to her relief, she spoke in feeble, 
 faltering tones, very unhke her former 
 clear, animated voice. 
 
 " Oh, Reginald, what can have brought 
 you here ? has it been to seek me out ? 
 Who has sent you? The time was, and 
 that not so long ago, only this time last 
 year, that I could have welcomed you — 
 welcomed almost any one, as a deliverer. 
 But it is now too late. Something tells me 
 that my course is nearly run — that I am 
 
272 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 to end my days in this lonely valley : and 
 better that it should be so. My life has 
 not been so happy a one that I can wish 
 to have it prolonged. I have brought 
 nothing but trouble and sorrow upon those 
 belonging to me, by my own levity and 
 breach of faith towards you. I have been 
 to blame, as well as my husband. I should 
 have studied his temper, and been more 
 careful not to have given him any cause 
 of jealousy. God forgive those who have 
 set him against me, and who have told him 
 that about me — for their own ends, as I now 
 know — which might excuse him for hating 
 me, and putting me from him. But it was 
 all false. I had done nothing for which I 
 should have been imprisoned as I was at 
 Northington, or banished to this remote 
 place." 
 
 Isabella was deeply affected as she 
 uttered these words : her voice was fre- 
 
THE "VALLEY OF THE MILL." 273 
 
 quently broken by hysterical sobs. Tre- 
 lawney judged it better, considering her state 
 of weakness, rather to strive and tranquillize 
 her than to agitate her by a recurrence to 
 the past. 
 
 " Dearest Isabel, you are not strong ; and 
 it is late for you to be out ; the mists are 
 rising in the valley. Let me meet you here 
 to-morrov? at mid-day, and we shaU be better 
 able than we are now to decide upon what 
 is to be done." 
 
 Soothing her with many kind words, 
 but inwardly much disturbed and alarmed 
 himself at the state of utter prostration in 
 which he had found the once lively and 
 high-spirited Isabella Bertram, Trelawney 
 conducted her towards the cottage. The 
 surprise and consequent agitation had been 
 too much for her weak frame. She made 
 an attempt or two to talk of old times, 
 but had to relinquish so painful an 
 
 18 
 
274 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 effort; and leaning heavily on her former 
 lover, she was conducted by him to -within a 
 few yards of the door of the cottage. Here 
 they parted, but with the understanding that 
 they should meet the next day. 
 
275 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 "DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 
 
 On the next day, Trelawney had not long 
 to wait for Isabel. She slowly approached 
 him, coming from the cottage ; and, if he 
 had serious misgivings on the previous 
 evening as to her state of health, the day- 
 light only served to confirm his unfavour- 
 able impressions. Her features were shrunk, 
 and her eyes looked unnaturally large. Her 
 voice, too, was altered, and the least fatigue 
 seemed too much for her. 
 
 "I have been thinking, Eeginald, over 
 the past, and of what you said last night 
 
 18—2 
 
276 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 about taking me away. I should like cer- 
 tainly to see papa again, and, if it were 
 God's win, to close my eyes at Bertram. 
 But I cannot leave here without the per- 
 mission of either papa or my husband. If 
 they knew how iU I am, and have been 
 for some time past — though I have con- 
 cealed it from Miss Wilson as weU as I 
 could — they 'Would not be for leaving me 
 here any longer. I want to see home and 
 friends once more — and then, God's will be 
 done ! Do you let them know at home 
 where I am, and that I feel as if I had 
 not long to hve : the rest I leave in God's 
 hands." 
 
 There was a tone of the deepest dejection 
 and hopelessness about Isabella's manner, 
 and in every word that feU from her, which 
 alarmed Trelawney more than he cared to 
 own. He could not but allow to himself 
 that, situated as Isabella was, with a jealous 
 
"DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 277 
 
 and tyrannical husband, and with his spies 
 possibly in the neighbourhood — and con- 
 sidering all the unfortunate consequences 
 that had resulted from the last stolen inter- 
 view between himself and the object of his 
 former love — the utmost circumspection 
 and prudence was required on both their 
 parts to shield Isabella's fair fame from 
 reproach. 
 
 Trelawney's own passions were now allayed. 
 Time and reflection, and serious thoughts 
 on the past, had effected this for him. 
 And, as for poor Isabella herself, it was 
 plain she had well nigh done with earthly 
 passions, whether of love or hate ; she her- 
 self was now no object to excite either. If 
 she could be brought home to die, it was 
 as much as could be expected. 
 
 Exacting, therefore, a promise that in 
 the event of her health becoming worse, 
 she would at once have recourse to the aid 
 
278 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 of the nearest medical man, Trelawney 
 quitted her; with a sore heart, indeed, and 
 •with many pangs and misgivings. He had 
 to hasten back to Montacute for the next 
 day's duty ; and on Monday he would pro- 
 ceed to the north without delay, in order to 
 see Mr. Bertram, and arrange with him 
 for Isabella's return home. They took a 
 last tender farewell of each other, and then 
 parted — 'for ever ! 
 
 Monday saw Trelawney speeding his way 
 northward. There were no railways in those 
 days ; but, as fast as four-horsed coaches 
 could take him, he proceeded on his journey. 
 StiU the journey was then one of several 
 days, go about it how you liked, from the 
 extreme west to the extreme north of 
 England ; and it was past the middle of 
 the week before Trelawney found himself 
 driving up the approach to Bertram Hall. 
 He was the bearer of important inteUigence, 
 
"DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 279 
 
 besides that which related to Isabella. For 
 in passing through Newcastle, and while 
 changing horses, he had taken up the pre- 
 vious evening's London paper just arrived, 
 and the following paragraph instantly arrested 
 his attention under the head of " Constan- 
 tinople. — (From our own correspondent). 
 Sir Edward Arundel died here on the 18th, 
 of cholera." 
 
 It was necessary to break the intelligence, 
 with which Trelawney was fraught, some- 
 what carefully to Mr. Bertram, whose health 
 was broken, and his temper rendered ex- 
 tremely irritable, by repeated attacks of gout. 
 Under the circumstances, another messenger 
 than Trelawney would have been preferable ; 
 for he was ostensibly the cause (so, at least, 
 Mr. Bertram chose to believe) of all Sir 
 Edward's cruelty towards his wife. 
 
 It was some time before the father could 
 quite understand, or be induced, indeed, per- 
 
280 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 fectly to credit, the circumstances under 
 which Trelawney had accidentally become 
 acquainted with the place of his daughter's 
 concealment. There was, besides, an uneasy 
 feeling of self-reproach on the part of Mr. 
 Bertram, that Isabella had been made a sacri- 
 fice on account of his own pecuniary diffi- 
 culties. He felt that but for them, and the 
 unfair means resorted to by Mrs. Bertram to 
 break off her daughter's engagement, she 
 would long since have been the happy wife of 
 Eeginald Trelawney. Altogether, some httle 
 delay and difficulty intervened before Mr. 
 Bertram could be induced thoroughly to 
 bestir himself. 
 
 At length, and now that all real difficulties 
 were at an end, owing to Sir Edward's death, 
 Trelawney took his departure, armed with Mr. 
 Bertram's authority that his daughter should 
 be at once released from her banishment and 
 sent home. It was at first intended that 
 
"DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 281 
 
 Mr. Bertram should accompany Trelawney 
 on this welcome errand; but failing health 
 forbade him. So, requesting Trelawney to 
 make arrangements for the reception of his 
 daughter and her companion at the house 
 of a female relative of Isabella's, who hved 
 at Exeter, he saw his guest depart west- 
 ward a few days after his arrival at Bertram 
 Hall. 
 
 As may be imagined, Trelawney seemed to 
 fly on his errand; and travelling day and 
 night whenever it was possible, he finally 
 found himself alighting from the Exeter 
 coach, in the street of Carnelford, exactly on 
 the tenth day since his departure to the 
 north. He was soon on the road to St. 
 Knighton's, being driven in some nondescript 
 vehicle from the hotel. The driver was not 
 particularly communicative, nor was Tre- 
 lawney in any mood for conversation; so 
 they pursued the drive in silence. 
 
282 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 In the distance he saw the gray, pin- 
 nacled tower of the parish church of St. 
 Knighton's; presently, a duU, heavy sound, 
 as of a bell, fell on his ear — and then 
 another stroke after a time — and another. 
 In certain frames of mind, and especially 
 after an absence, long or short, the mind is 
 pecuKarly sensitive of impressions. Tre- 
 lawney feared to ask any questions of the 
 driver: he dreaded the answer. As they 
 approached the churchyard, a funeral pro- 
 cession was seen issuing from the church; 
 the white surpUced minister appeared, fol- 
 lowed by the coffin and its bearers. 
 
 "Whose funeral would it be?" at last 
 Trelawney summoned up courage to inquire 
 of the driver. 
 
 •' Don't know rightly, sir," he answered 
 carelessly — " one of the ladies of the cot- 
 tage, it may be — ^I hear one of them is 
 gone dead." 
 
"DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 283 
 
 " Which of them, for God's sake ?" cried 
 Trelawney, grasping his arm. 
 
 " Can't say, sir — wUl ask this man. I 
 say, my son, whose funeral be it ? " 
 
 " One of the ladies of the cottage," the 
 man said, indifferently. 
 
 "Which of them?" 
 
 "Don't know their names, sir, — nobody 
 does. But it is the younger of the two, I 
 heard our folks say." 
 
 A mist passed across Trelawney's eyes. 
 He stopped the horse, and got out of the 
 carriage, hardly knowing vhat he did. He 
 made his way through the crowd which 
 surrounded the churchyard. He approached 
 the grave side. 
 
 "We give Thee hearty thanks for that 
 it hath pleased Thee to dehver this our 
 sister out of the miseries of this mortal life," 
 said the clergyman, solemnly. 
 
 " Oh, God ! oh, God ! it is true, then,— 
 
284 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 it is aU true, — and I have come too late. 
 Dear, dear beloved Isabella, and have you 
 died after all in your prison house ; and has 
 freedom come to you too late ! Dear, dear 
 love, would to God I could have died for 
 you ! " 
 
 Trelawney had turned aside in bitter 
 anguish as he uttered these words. 
 
 The crowd was dispersing, and the 
 clergyman — a middle-aged, matter-of-fact 
 looking man — after a slight glance of pro- 
 fessional curiosity at the stranger, took his 
 departure. Trelawney looked into the open 
 grave. There was no plate on the coffin. 
 The sexton gave him what information he 
 could. 
 
 "We heard tell on Saturday, sir, that 
 one of the ladies was dead. She was found 
 dead in her bed, sir, I beheve. The 
 doctor said it was heart complaint, and 
 that it had been coming on some time. 
 
"DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 285 
 
 So my wife and some of tlie neighbours 
 went up there, and had her laid out, and 
 tried to comfort the other poor lady, and 
 to take her away. But she wouldn't come. 
 She wept a deal, they say, but couldn't 
 be got to utter a word. And some do say 
 that she be deaf and dumb like. But 
 Captain Will — he who owns the cottage — 
 says he thinks the lady is possessed of 
 a spirit : she is not altogether Uke one of 
 us. She do shed tears in an odd fashion, 
 he says ; that is, she makes no noise : doesn't 
 sob, or moan, or cry out Uke other people." 
 
 "And this is all that is known of the 
 other poor lady's death ? " asked Trelawney, 
 endeavouring to restrain his emotion so as 
 not to attract the sexton's notice, who was 
 busy shovelling in the earth over all that 
 remained of the lovely and high-spirited 
 Isabella Bertram. 
 
 " This is all that is known of her death. 
 
286 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 sir. They lived very retired, them two 
 ladies did, in the cottage in the valley, 
 and aU kinds of tales were told of them — 
 as how they Uved on slugs, and things of 
 that sort. No one knows their names ; and 
 parson was saying just now that he was 
 at a fine loss what to put in the register 
 about her. They kept her as long as pos- 
 sible in hopes of some of her friends turning 
 up to claim her." 
 
 " And how is the other poor lady ? " 
 "I haven't seen her myself this brave 
 bit, but my missus has been up there two 
 or three times since the death of the other 
 one, and has tried to get her to eat summat, 
 but she can prevail nothing. And so Captain 
 WiU talks of going over to Lawyer Pearce 
 in Wadebridge, to ask him what is to be 
 done." 
 
 It was now dusk and too late for any- 
 thing to be done that evening; so Trelawney, 
 
"DEATH, THE CONSOLER." 287 
 
 with a heavy heart and blighted hopes, went 
 to the inn where he had previously stopped, 
 determining to seek out the lonely occupant 
 of the cottage in the morning. 
 
288 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 But " man proposes, God disposes." The 
 fatigue and excitement of the last ten days, 
 coupled with the mental anguish endured on 
 finding that death had forestalled him, and 
 opened the doors of the prison-house without 
 his intervention, proved too much for Tre- 
 lawney's strength. In the morning he was 
 in a high fever. Racking, shooting pains, 
 accompanied with shiverings and burning 
 heat, and soon succeeded by delirium, left 
 no doubt that Trelawney was dangerously 
 iU ; and so quickly did the fever gain on him 
 
CONCLUSION. 289 
 
 that he became soon perfectly unconscious of 
 all that was going on about him. For days 
 and days did he toss about on that sick bed 
 in the httle inn — his thoughts turning almost 
 entirely on home and early days. The name 
 of Isabella was perpetually on his hps : some- 
 times he upbraided her, sometimes fondly 
 called upon her ; sometimes it was as if he 
 endeavoured to save her from some great 
 danger — sad, plaintive words did they seem 
 to the attendants in the sick room. Then 
 his thoughts would seem to fly off at once to 
 the gloomy valley of St. Knighton's, and he 
 would shudder, and cry out, and moan most 
 piteously. Still, no one who heard his 
 broken words thought of connecting the 
 two together — the poor lady he was so con- 
 stantly raving about, and the valley of St. 
 Knighton, which it was supposed he must 
 have lately visited, from his frequent allusions 
 
 to it, 
 
 19 
 
290 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 " He got a chill there maybe — staying out 
 too late — and so he got the fever." This 
 was nurse's explanation. She was too much 
 accustomed to her business to attach much 
 importance to the ravings of any one in a 
 fever. And so, for many a day, with Tre- 
 lawney it was a battle for life or death : 
 the village doctor came and went, and shook 
 his head and gave ambiguous answers, and 
 every morning it was expected that the 
 church bell would denote the passing of 
 another soul into eternity. The simple 
 villagers would inquire of the landlady of the 
 little inn as they passed, how the sick gentle- 
 man was going on ; and for days together 
 the answer would be the same—" No better 
 — the doctor thinks he can't hold out much 
 longer." But at length it began to be whis- 
 pered that the sick gentleman was likely to 
 get over it, after all. " With great care," the 
 doctor had said, " he might pull through it ; " 
 
CONCLUSION. 291 
 
 and then, through gradual steps of convales- 
 cence, with occasional relapses, Trelawney 
 began to regain his strength — was able to 
 thank his doctor, and finally was pronounced, 
 " aU right again." 
 
 It was during these first stages of recovery, 
 and from the Ups of the bustling, good-tem- 
 pered landlady, that Trelawney was put in 
 possession of what had occurred during his 
 illness. 
 
 " We did all we could, sir, to comfort the 
 other poor lady that was at the cottage, after 
 the death of the first one ; and I brought hei 
 up myself a sup of broth and a pudding, to 
 see if she could be got to take anything ; but 
 all to no purpose. She wished to be ' left 
 alone,' so she wrote upon a piece of paper. 
 And so, finding it was all in vain, I came 
 away; but some of the neighbours went up 
 to the cottage every day. They didn't hke 
 to go in — being timorous hke — and especially 
 
 19—2 
 
292 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 after what Captain Will had said — that she 
 was possessed of an evil spirit, which pre- 
 vented her speaking. But they looked in 
 at the window, and there they always saw 
 the poor lady sitting in the one seat which 
 she had always occupied. And so this went 
 on for ten days or a fortnight; at last 
 one of Hanibal Polkinghorne's httle maids 
 going up there — she is a forward, daring 
 httle thing, and always was — and, looking 
 through the window, espied the poor lady 
 sitting a Uttle on one side in her arm- 
 chair, and her handkerchief had dropped on 
 the floor by her side ; so what does the 
 httle maid do but runs and fetches her mother 
 and some of the neighbours; and so they 
 raise the window and go in, and, sure 
 enough, they find the poor lady quite dead, 
 and as if she had been so for some days; 
 and she was nothing but skin and bone when 
 they took off her clothes. It is my opinion 
 
CONCLUSIOJf. 293 
 
 she fretted herself to death after her com- 
 panion; and so they have taken the poor 
 lady — yesterday it was a week — and have 
 laid her heside the other one in the church- 
 yard, and there is ne'er a line to show who 
 she was, any more than the other one. Even 
 Lawyer Pearce, from TTadehridge, who came 
 over here after the faneral, says he doesn't 
 know who either of them was. But them 
 lawyers don't always tell what they know, 
 and it is my opinion he must know; for he 
 went off to London iu a great hurry after the 
 first lady died, and had only hut just come 
 hack on the day that the last funeral was." 
 
 '■ And is any one at the cottage now ? " 
 asked Trelawney in an agitated voice. 
 
 " Indeed, then, there is not, sir, — nor 
 likely to he. For immediately after the 
 funeral. Lawyer Pearce went up to the 
 cottage along with Captain "Will, and had 
 every stitch of clothes and mortal thing 
 
294 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 collected together that belonged to the 
 ladies. Sure they might have give some 
 of the clothes to the poor charwoman who 
 waited on them ! But they didn't, and the 
 things were all huddled together, books and 
 all, and packed up in great boxes, and sent 
 off to London, as I have heard tell. And 
 the furniture has been all removed, and so 
 the house is as empty now as on the day 
 it was buUt." 
 
 To this account of the landlady's, little 
 remains to be added. From Lawyer Pearce, 
 whom he visited on his way through Wade- 
 bridge, Trelawney learnt that, acting under 
 instructions received from Sir Edward Arun- 
 del's nephew — a sister's son, who had suc- 
 ceeded to his property, though not to the 
 title — Mr. Wenlock had directed that the 
 secret of Lady Arundel's name and that 
 of her companion should be maintained, 
 and that, for the sake of avoiding scandal, 
 
CONCLUSION. 295 
 
 and sparing the feelings of Mr. Bertram, 
 no publicity should be given to the cir- 
 cumstances under which Lady Arundel had 
 died ; no entry of her name or that of her 
 companion was to be made in the parish 
 register, or engraven on a stone. Accordingly 
 no monument was ever erected to the memory 
 of these unfortunate ladies, and the secret 
 was so well kept by the few who were 
 .acquainted with the circumstances, that the 
 names of the two recluses of St. Knighton's 
 never transpired in the village, and has 
 remained a mystery there down to the pre- 
 sent hour. 
 
 As for the cottage, its ruined walls may 
 still be seen, overgrown with weeds and , 
 brambles. For some time after the deaths 
 of the ladies, a persevering effort was made 
 by Captain Will to let the cottage. It 
 figured for a long time amongst the adver- 
 tisements in the county paper, under the 
 
296 ST. KNIGHTOlSfS KEIVE. 
 
 head of "To let," as "a^ cottage most 
 romantically situated in a picturesque valley, 
 near a favourite waterfall, within a short 
 walk of the far-famed castle of Tintagel, 
 the birthplace of King Arthur," " well 
 adapted for a summer residence," &c. &c. 
 But all would not do. The puhhc mani- 
 fested a decided repugnance to having any- 
 thing to do with the cottage, or with a resi- 
 dence in the "haunted vaUey," as it began^ 
 to be called. And, finally, Captain WiU 
 was obHged to give up as hopeless the 
 idea of getting a tenant for his cottage ; so 
 after disroofing the house and removing 
 the doors and windows and as much of 
 the woodwork as could be got at, he aban- 
 doned the place for the remainder of his 
 lease ; and so it has been allowed to fall 
 into its present forlorn and ruinous condi- 
 tion. 
 
 As for Trelawney's after history, it may be 
 
CONCLUSION. 297 
 
 summed up in a few words. When the first 
 shock was over, he felt more and more the 
 necessity of active employment, if 'he was 
 ever to regain peace of mind, or be aught 
 else than a cumberer of the earth. Taking 
 counsel, then, of the rector of St. Faith's — 
 the church with the tapering spire pointing 
 towards heaven, on which he had gazed 
 when standing that summer morning on 
 the top of Montacute HiU — Trelawney 
 threw himself, heart and soul, into the 
 work of his extensive parish; content with 
 small results at first, hut which brightened 
 and became more hopeful every year, he 
 gradually formed a nucleus of church feeling 
 about him, and drew together a congrega- 
 tion ; not large, indeed, but such as enabled 
 him to celebrate the holy seasons of the 
 Church ia the Church's way, and to present 
 a picture of a " reasonable, holy, and lively " 
 service. 
 
298 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 With active employment, health of mind 
 and health of body returned, and twelve 
 months had scarcely rolled over his head 
 before he stood the accepted suitor of 
 Charlotte Tressihan. 
 
 The family hving might have been his 
 upon the death of his father, but Trelawney 
 had chosen his portion, and elected in pre- 
 ference to live and die amongst the Cornish 
 miners. 
 
 Mr. Bertram lived to an advanced age, 
 and to the last fostered the delusion that 
 his daughter, with her companion, had by 
 preference resided somewhere in the south of 
 England ; he perseveringly ignored aU that 
 related to the tragedy of St. Knighton's 
 Keive. 
 
299 
 
 POSTSCRIPTUM. 
 
 In order to throw light upon some of the 
 provincialisms which occur in the course of 
 the story, as well as to amuse the reader, 
 a few of the phrases and expressions which 
 are in commonest use amongst the Cornish 
 peasantry, are here set down in the shape 
 of a glossary. They are given mostly from 
 memory, with an occasional suggestion from 
 a certain person at the writer's elbow. 
 But, for some of the most expressive, and 
 especially the foreignly- derived words, the 
 writer is indebted to a talented Cornish 
 
300 ST. Knighton's keive. 
 
 lady, whose attachment to her own native 
 soil, and interest in its old-world phrases 
 and customs, are only equalled by her 
 kindly home sympathies, which years have 
 not been able to chill, or iutercourse with 
 the world to estrange. 
 
301 
 
 GLOSSAKY. 
 
 Player, pleasure, " a fine deal of player." 
 
 Juice, use. 
 
 Passivanting, pursuing a headlong course (i. e. dashing along) ; 
 
 derived, probably, &om the French poursuivre, or poursuivant. 
 Planching, flooring. 
 Corracy, an old grudge, derived, perhaps, from the French 
 
 corrasif du coeur. 
 Vent, to sell (from vendre). 
 
 Scabble-and-gow, tumultuous talking, as amongst angry women. 
 Mingle-cum-por, a medley. 
 Stir a cause, busffing. 
 Capper-house, noise, stir. 
 TTiirl, empty, hoUow. 
 Leary, nearly the same signification. 
 Clunk, to swallow. 
 Stank, to trample. 
 Fouche, to push. To fouch-along is nearly synonymous with the 
 
 phrase of "making both ends meet," or, "keeping the head 
 
 above water." 
 Ballyrag, to vituperate. (Q«. Imported from the sister isle ?) 
 A swagger, a scolding. 
 Randigale, a concourse of people. 
 Padgetty-pows, lizards. 
 Joking, labouring strenuously. 
 
302 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE, 
 
 Jaleing-along, laborious walking. 
 
 Trapesing, a lazy, loitering course. 
 
 Scat, a heap, plenty, as " a scat of fine weather." 
 
 Mwrely, truly, literally. 
 
 Fouse, to rumple. 
 
 Fang, to realize, to make sure of. 
 
 Likely, comely. 
 
 Slock-away, to take slyly. 
 
 Soase, a friendly interjection, analogous to gossip. 
 
 Leuih, a sheltered place. 
 
 Quilquin, a frog. 
 
 Leu, sheltered. 
 
 Goosing, gossipping. 
 
 Uprised, " churched." 
 
 Upscud, spilt, upset. 
 
 Figgy, made of raisins, e. g., a plum-pudding. 
 
 Squab-pie, a pie composed of mutton, onions, apples, raisins, 
 
 sugar, salt, and spice — ^a great favourite with the Cornish. 
 Feastn Sunday, answering to our Wake Sunday. 
 " A good churchman " means a clergyman possessed of strong 
 
 voice (not " riews ") — one who can " make himself heard." 
 Brave, considerable, as a " brave bit," a " good step," as we 
 
 should say. 
 A " bra' keenly mine," a mine likely to do well. 
 Tender-dear, a term of endearment applied to children. 
 Spell of work, a piece of work. 
 Grass-captain, a subordinate mine " captain " employed above 
 
 the surface, in contradistinction to an underground captain, 
 
 employed under the surface. 
 Day-corps — night-corps, the gang of miners who work by day, 
 
 and night, respectively. The day and night work alternates 
 
 weekly, or, in some cases, fortnightly. A spell of work is for 
 
 eight hours. 
 Adventurers, those who work the mine. " Simple " ditto, those 
 
 who bear the loss. 
 
GLOSSARY. 303 
 
 " The lord," the proprietor of the land where a mine is sunk. 
 
 A " dish," the " lord's " share, an eighteenth of the ore raised. 
 
 Fitty, neat, suitable. 
 
 Benefits of a living, the tithes, and income generally. 
 
 Barton, farm-yard. 
 
 Church-town, any collection of houses about a church. 
 
 Town-place, the buildings in a farm-yard. 
 
 Drisky, misty, foggy. " A Cornishman is never in such spirits 
 
 as in drisky weather." 
 Vn', for uncle, applied to seniors indifferently, as An', for aunt, 
 
 applied in the same way. 
 Every young man is " my son," as every young girl is " my little 
 
 maid." 
 Shape, a mess, disorder. 
 • To camey, to wheedle, to coax. 
 Cheal-vean, a little child. 
 Cairn, a pile of rock. 
 Forth, a cove. 
 Flay-gay, a plaything. 
 Star-a-gaze pie, a mackerel pie with the heads above the paste, 
 
 gazing upwards, as it were. 
 Palched, weak, sickly, as a " palohed man." 
 Bal, the surface of a mine, as " going to bal." 
 Kidleywink, a public-house. 
 Spirty, spirited, as a " spirty cheal." 
 Shrim, a creeping cold. 
 Fouthiest, forwardest. 
 Crum, a bit. 
 
 To Tnarrinade, is to pickle, as " marrinaded fish." 
 For the noanes, for the nonce, or occasion. 
 All a samsawdled andjabbled up, i.e., bad cooking. 
 A blast of fuzz, i.e., a faggot of furze. 
 Furmades or Fairmaids. (Q«. Fumades ?) Pilchards. 
 A pitch, a piece of work. 
 Curls, carols. 
 
304 ST. KNIGHTON'S KEIVE. 
 
 Gnarly, cross-grained. 
 
 " Brave," " clever," " charming,'' in good health, that is. 
 Tre, a town, i.e., a house and buildings ; Pol, a piece of water ; 
 Pen, a head, or headland. 
 
 Some of the Cornish names, too, are very pecnliar. Thus of 
 " Christian " names, Hanibal, Zenobia, Boadicea, Lavinia, and 
 Iiucretia, are all favourites, and amongst surnames, we find — 
 Penaluna, Pallamountain, Pucky, Botheras, Jacka, Polking- 
 home, &c. But, generally speaking, especially in the mining 
 districts, these are plainly borrowed from Christian names ; thus 
 almost every miner answers to the name of Bichards, Harry, 
 Johns, James, Rogers, Thomas, Edwards, or some such names — 
 a Christian name obviously turned into a surname. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 London : Smith, Eldee and Co., Little Green Arbour Conrt, Old Bailey, E. C. 
 

 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891