Michaels Crag | Page 9

compromise--for he really wished his host to
enjoy that glorious view--Eustace Le Neve turned up the valley behind
the house, with Walter Tyrrel by his side, and after traversing several
fields, through gaps in the stone walls, led out his companion at last to
the tor on the headland.
As they approached it from behind, the engineer observed, not without

a faint thrill of pleasure, that Trevennack's stately figure stood upright
as before upon the wind-swept pile of fissured rocks, and that Cleer sat
reading under its shelter to leeward. But by her side this morning sat
also an elder lady, whom Eustace instinctively recognized as her
mother--a graceful, dignified lady, with silvery white hair and black
Cornish eyes, and features not untinged by the mellowing, hallowing
air of a great sorrow.
Le Neve raised his hat as they drew near, with a pleased smile of
welcome, and Trevennack and his daughter both bowed in return. "A
glorious morning!" the engineer said, drinking in to the full the lovely
golden haze that flooded and half-obscured the Land's End district; and
Trevennack assented gravely. "The crag stands up well in this sunshine
against the dark water behind," he said, waving one gracious hand
toward the island at his foot, and poising lighter than ever.
"Oh, take care!" Walter Tyrrel cried, looking up at him, on tenterhooks.
It's so dangerous up there! You might tumble any minute."
"I never tumble," Trevennack made answer with solemn gravity,
spreading one hand on either side as if to balance himself like an
acrobat. But he descended as he spoke and took his place beside them.
Tyrrel looked at the view and looked at the pretty girl. It was evident he
was quite as much struck by the one as by the other. Indeed, of the two,
Cleer seemed to attract the larger share of his attention. For some
minutes they stood and talked, all five of them together, without further
introduction than their common admiration for that exquisite bay, in
which Trevennack appeared to take an almost proprietary interest. It
gratified him, obviously, a Cornish man, that these strangers (as he
thought them) should be so favorably impressed by his native county.
But Tyrrel all the while looked ill at ease, though he sidled away as far
as possible from the edge of the cliff, and sat down near Cleer at a safe
distance from the precipice. He was silent and preoccupied. That
mattered but little, however, as the rest did all the talking, especially
Trevennack, who turned out to be indeed a perfect treasure-house of
Cornish antiquities and Cornish folk-lore.

"I generally stand below, on top of Michael's Crag," he said to Eustace,
pointing it out, "when the tide allows it; but when it's high, as it is now,
such a roaring and seething scour sets through the channel between the
rock and the mainland that no swimmer could stem it; and then I come
up here, and look down from above upon it. It's the finest point on all
our Cornish coast, this point we stand on. It has the widest view, the
purest air, the hardest rock, the highest and most fantastic tor of any of
them."
"My husband's quite an enthusiast for this particular place," Mrs.
Trevennack interposed, watching his face as she spoke with a certain
anxious and ill-disguised wifely solicitude.
"He's come here for years. It has many associations for us."
"Some painful and some happy," Cleer added, half aloud; and Tyrrel,
nodding assent, looked at her as if expecting some marked recognition.
"You should see it in the pilchard season," her father went on, turning
suddenly to Eustace with much animation in his voice. "That's the time
for Cornwall--a month or so later than now--you should see it then, for
picturesqueness and variety. 'When the corn is in the shock,' says our
Cornish rhyme, 'Then the fish are off the rock'--and the rock's St.
Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the hue and cry
from the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he stands on
Michael's Crag just below there, as I stand myself so often, and when
he sights the shoals by the ripple on the water, he motions to the boats
which way to go for the pilchards. Then the rowers in the lurkers, as we
call our seine-boats, surround the shoal with a tuck- net, or drag the
seine into Mullion Cove, all alive with a mass of shimmering silver.
The jowsters come down with their carts on to the beach, and hawk
them about round the neighborhood--I've seen them twelve a penny;
while in the curing-houses they're bulking them and pressing them as if
for dear life, to send away to Genoa, Leghorn, and Naples. That's where
all our fish go--to