Michaels Crag | Page 8

line, no doubt pregnant with meaning for him. "Look
homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth." He was thinking of his
own boy, most likely, not of the poet's feigned Lycidas.
"He'll stand like that for hours," the coastguard went on confidentially,
"musing like to himself, with Miss Cleer by his side, reading in her
book or doing her knitting or something. But you couldn't get him, for
love or money, to go BELOW the cliffs, no, not if you was to kill him.
He's AFRAID of going below--that's where it is; he always thinks
something's sure to tumble from the top on him. Natural enough, too,

after all that's been. He likes to get as high as ever he can in the air,
where he can see all around him, and be certain there ain't anyone
above to let anything drop as might hurt him. Michael's Crag's where
he likes best to stand, on the top there by the Horse; he always chooses
them spots. In Malta it was San Mickayly; and in Gibraltar it was the
summit of Europa Point, by the edge of the Twelve Apostles' battery."
"How curious!" Le Neve exclaimed. "It's just the other way on now,
with my friend Mr. Tyrrel. I'm stopping at Penmorgan, but Mr. Tyrrel
won't go on TOP of the cliffs for anything. He says he's afraid he might
let something drop by accident on the people below him."
The coastguard grew suddenly graver. "Like enough," he said, stroking
his chin. "Like enough; and right, too, for him, sir. You see, he's a
Tyrrel, and he's bound to be cautious.'
"Why so?" Le Neve asked, somewhat puzzled. "Why a Tyrrel more
than the rest of us?"
The man hesitated and stared hard at him.
"Well, it's like this, sir," he answered at last, with the shamefaced air of
the intelligent laboring man who confesses to a superstition. "We
Cornish are old-fashioned, and we has our ideas. The Tyrrels are new
people like, in Cornwall, as we say; they came in only with Cromwell's
folk, when he fought the Grenvilles; but it's well beknown in the county
bad luck goes with them. You see, they're descended from that Sir
Walter Tyrrel you'll read about in the history books, him as killed King
William Rufious in the New Forest. You'll hear all about it at Rufious'
Stone, where the king was killed; Sir Walter, he drew, and he aimed at
a deer, and the king was standing by; and the bullet, it glanced aside--or
maybe it was afore bullets, and then it'd be an arrow; but anyhow, one
or t'other, it hit the king, and he fell, and died there. The stone's
standing to this day on the place where he fell, and I've seen it, and read
of it when I was in hospital at Netley. But Sir Walter, he got clear away,
and ran across to France; and ever since that time they've called the
eldest son of the Tyrrels Walter, same as they've called the eldest son of
the Trevennacks Michael. But they say every Walter Tyrrel that's born

into the world is bound, sooner or later, to kill his man unintentional.
So he do right to avoid going too near the cliffs, I say. We shouldn't
tempt Providence. And the Tyrrels is all a conscientious people."

CHAPTER III.
FACE TO FACE.
When Eustace Le Neve returned to lunch at Penmorgan that day he was
silent to his host about Trevennack of Trevennack. To say the truth, he
was so much attracted by Miss Cleer's appearance that he didn't feel
inclined to mention having met her. But he wanted to meet her again
for all that, and hoped he would do so. Perhaps Tyrrel might know the
family, and ask them round to dine some night. At any rate, society is
rare at the Lizard. Sooner or later, he felt sure, he'd knock up against
the mysterious stranger somewhere. And that involved the probability
of knocking up against the mysterious stranger's beautiful daughter.
Next morning after breakfast, however, he made a vigorous effort to
induce Walter Tyrrel to mount the cliff and look at the view from
Penmorgan Point toward the Rill and Kynance. It was absurd, he said
truly, for the proprietor of such an estate never to have seen the most
beautiful spot in it. But Tyrrel was obdurate. On the point of actually
mounting the cliff itself he wouldn't yield one jot or tittle. Only, after
much persuasion, he consented at last to cross the headland by the
fields at the back and come out at the tor above St. Michael's Crag,
provided always Eustace would promise he'd neither go near the edge
himself nor try to induce his friend to approach it.
Satisfied with this lame