"The law's minion would have us mistake him' for a mightier than he !

Then he glanced at the star, and turned again to the carving over the door: but the head was mostly hidden as before behind the trails of ivy. Careless now of nettle-sting and burr, Mr. Trevenna cleared a way with his ground-ash staff and entered his church by the North Door. It closed behind him with its own clang. There was a light within and the font shone dimly. The little parson gazed long and earnestly at the mouldering wall-painting of St. Christopher. "A divine burden, but a heavy, for one that is neither saint nor giant," he murmured, and straightened his bent figure with a sigh.

Then he remembered Lady Evangeline's words: Celui qui est sur les épaules d'un géant, voit plus loin que celui qui le porte." He passed into the sanctuary and knelt before the crucifix.

As he rose he found he had exchanged his staff for a spade. He left the dread door again, with a sense of being led forth to dig his own grave; and the churchyard, he perceived, extended away and away up on to the desolate moor, where the scattered blocks of granite served for headstones. He was become one of those "which long for Death but it cometh not; and dig for it more than for hid treasure, which rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they can find the grave." So be began to dig ardently like one who digs for gold in a land where those inherit the earth who obey the law thereof; the land of Uz where men's incentives to worship were sons and daughters, sheep and camels, oxen and asses and great households. Yet none the less he must dig there for his own treasure-perchance find his lost lambs.

After long labour, his digging was so deep that the world and the church, the nettles and cast-up soil were

lost to his view; though the star overhead now shone into the grave and gave him light. Remembering that he had no coffin to lie down in, no friend to read his burial service, and with sense of an utmost need to bid Lady Evangeline farewell, he scrambled out of his grave. Then he knew he had not been alone; for though the church stood before him more ruinous than any of the other graves at its feet, was it not the tomb of the living Lord?

But he was now among the great moor-stones, the country of the old Cornish giants. He found them a mighty host, carrying the huge blocks of granite to and fro, doing nothing with them at all, until one and all, having dug each his own great grave, set up its head-stone. They also must be miners adventuring treasure.

But Mr. Trevenna knew that himself was become far and away too big for the grave he had been digging by the church: he feared, so weary was he growing, that no digging of his own could make one large enough. Simon Muggetty must help. For the present, however, his own grave and the children beyond it could wait: he must go bid his lady farewell. So he set out upon his travels, and the star shining overhead led him coastwards again, down the rocky course of a silent brook, into a coombe he did not recognize, ever more steeply, till the running water was lost among black rocks and yellow sand that stretched immeasurably out to a silent surf on the horizon. He turned along the shore, and, as he went, his long spade and feet sank ever deeper into the wet sand, as if himself were growing heavier with the burden of some great care. He rested and looked over the ocean; but there was not even light enough to see the sky-line. Somehow he knew he had brought his burden, whatever it might be, safely through the storm. God be praised for that! He turned back towards the land and his footsteps soon found surer going. There were dim cliffs rising ahead,

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and beneath them, people went to and fro with lanterns and spades. The sands were scattered with long bones and skulls, over which the dry sand was gently blowing, covering and again disclosing their whiteness made silvery in the starlight. Had he wandered as far as the church and cemetery of St. Piran, now almost buried in the shifting sand?1 But this was not possible and he knew that the coast and the burden alike were not of the earth as he knew it.

Presently there appeared points of light among the alleys of this cemetery. Then as he came nearer, he found himself entering, between breakwater and jetty, the little harbur he loved so well, with its slippery, seaweed-covered beach beneath his feet, so that, with his great burden, which now shifted about, even assailing his bare head, he floundered as he went. Never had he known the sea so far out before! Yet, surely, surely, there was the quay and the boats on the beach, the black nets spread abroad, and the little slated or thatched cottages rising up the steep street or sideways rock upon rock, or continuing along that gracious curve of the quay, turning their backs, with their balconies, flower-pots and cradles, upon the capricious ocean! He could see the whole dear village; though now the cottages were all tombs, and the largest was the great church of St. Mullin towering above and signifying nothing. Yet the people were not his people; they were all of them, he knew it, digging for treasure and finding their graves. Yet many of the tombs, he saw, had windows and light within them, so that he could almost see into them, in spite of his stooping.

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But surely it must be a child he was carrying? it the child and not himself who saw into these tombs ? and, because of the rush-lights within, saw their inner

This church was in so much danger of being entirely lost in the sand, that it was taken down and rebuilt at Perranzabuloe a few years later than 1793.

doors all opening into a yet wider Beyond, where greater treasure lay hid?

He rested against the limpet and seaweed laden timbers of the jetty. In great weariness he sat down. on a rock beside a little rowboat and the mermaid's rock hid him from the star's bright eye. He lifted his arms, as if to ease his burden. Little hands clutched his own, and a child slipped down before him-a little boy, who ran and frisked and ran again up and away towards the cottages. His hair sparkled in the light of the star, and, as he disappeared upwards among the cottages, every rushlight within them shone out more brightly. Mr. Trevenna rose and straightened his back and felt that his stature was really no more than would fit his own grave. He broke into a chanted verse:

'Thou cam'st a burden to my soul,

Thou goest my shining Lord,

Leaving my frail heart glad and whole

And with forgiveness stored."

Then he went up the beach, staff in hand, quite easily although with more clatter of the stones than any he had heard since he came through the North Door. Thence he went up the village street into the Wisht Coombe, and so home.

Martha was looking anxiously out into the night for him.

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CHAPTER XIV

THE MAJOR'S REPENTANCE

HE following letter from Lady Evangeline is undated. But it apparently precedes those already quoted and those immediately subsequent that deal with certain tragical occurrences. It is worth recording as a delightful instance of the lady's lighter vein and displays her independence of character.

"DEAR AND REVEREND SIR,

"I am, indeed, invigorated by your upholding of natural impulse as against Convention's claims; and I observe how often such instincts are really sublime in their origin, even when they appear enthusiastick! A propos of which I will a sorry tale unfold.

Upon one stifling midsummer night at Madame Lawrie's seminary, and when I was but thirteen years old and the young ladies should have been sleeping, the moon was full and staring at me incontinently through the window-I vow to this day she intoxicates me! I grew athirst for the water-brook that runs through the birches from the hills beyond. Most romantically it flings itself over the rocks into an umbrageous pool, whence it issues to fall in a sweet cascade that, gathering its dissipated forces once more into sobriety, meanders through the seminary's pleasure grounds as innocently as the young ladies' irresponsible discourses. Well, good Sir, my fancy on that summer night to step into the pool or even beneath the moon