"Not by that door!" shouted Mr. Trevenna, in genuine fear for the man," if you have a soul to save! The overseer would have passed through without heed, had not the other seized him by his slung arm and turned him about. The victim uttered a curse of pain and followed them into the chancel. "The arm is broken," he muttered," or I would not have been withstood so easy; no, nor let the brats slip though my fingers." I grieve for the broken arm," said Mr. Trevenna, "but it is by the Lord's will that I have gathered these lambs into His fold. Had you gone forth by the North Door, it had been to your everlasting undoing!" Hoblyn laughed. Argument don't count much more with a lunatic than a mule-not as I ever saw, Parson. I watched your crazy christening in this pig's-crow1 of a church, and I'm sure the parish is deeply obliged. But I'll see to it that the Bishop unfrocks you for it, or my name isn't D. Hoblyn! Dancing, too! It's rank popery! Then he laughed brutally. "But facts are facts to priest or pig, and I'm going to please myself about your witch's North Door; and then I'm coming for the brats!" He turned, and with a curse at the heavy latch, left by the forbidden door. It clanged behind him. Then Mr. Trevenna took the children up to the great painting of St. Christopher, on the north wall facing the porch. It had stood there two hundred years or more, so that everyone entering by the south should win assurance against sudden death, and luck for that day's doings. It was a queer enough example of our early illiterate faith-an ever present alertness of conscience which compelled, if not immaculate living, yet speedy repentings, absolutions, amendments, as often as need was; a faith that looked in wonder upon a 1 Pig-stye. miraculous world of giants and demons, piskies and spriggans, all symbols of the powers, stormy or calm, capricious yet ever faithful, that order the harvests of sea and land and mine; a faith that no less ruled the people's strenuous lives with simple Christian doctrines. St. Christopher there stood in the waves while fishes and one mermaid, complete with tail and mirror, comb and flowing locks, and a pilchard clasped like a doll in her right arm, swam regardless of the Saint's monstrous legs. On his shoulders sat the Child, three fingers raised in blessing. On the rocks, rising on each side to the top of the picture, might be seen a chapel, a holy well and a font, while the Saint's form, in proper garb of monk or hermit, or carrying a lantern, was repeated here and there upon the rocks, near the dwarfish buildings. One little boy had called out in fear when he first espied the gigantic man stooping beneath the holy Child's weight. But Mr. Trevenna took him in his arms, told him how the Saint carried the little Saviour through the stormy waters; and how this holy Child was a playmate who made birds out of clay and sent them flying with real wings and feathers to comfort mother-birds whose own chicks had flown away from the nests. As they all went out through the south door, this little boy and Genny in their protector's arms, they came upon Simon Muggetty turning up the turf for a new grave. Near by, perched on the granite four-holed cross, was a robin watching the business critically and piping his little tune. "He'm one of 'em!" exclaimed the boy, excitedly pointing to the robin. Simon looked up, straightened himself by half an inch and with the rasping groan of a rheumatic back began to explain: Thoft I'd be beforehand this once, Parson. Lukey Kellinack ain't one to be took alive-not him! An' there's that lewtenant to come; 'tain't often as I be mistooken." "Who's the lieutenant, Captain?" asked Mr. Trevenna; but, Ah," was the only answer vouchsafed as the sexton resumed his loquacity. "Howsomever, we'm gettin' chocked up in thicky yard: can't turn in our graves, not without jostlin' nex' door neighbours; an' 'tis many complainings I du put up with-so 'tis." Then he emitted something between groan and chuckle, and grinned at the children watching him: "Thicky lot o' yourn du seem a bit hungry-toothough dessay 'tis more for 'taters than turves. Uncle Hoblyn knows there ain't no more room-not even for a poorhouse brownie!" He groaned again and set to his work. At the midday meal the children were joined by Charity Hornbuckle, Martha's niece, a dark-haired girl of seventeen with wide Cornish brow and sapphire blue eyes. Not even when she was milking or churning was she ever without some young creature-a child, a lamb, a kitten, to listen to her gossip. Something young always had need of her services, and she no less of theirs. "The baabies du keep her so full of fun as she can hold!" said Aunt Martha, as if in disapproval of the child she adored. But to-day Cherry was unusually quiet, for Master Hoblyn had come unexpectedly to take dinner at her father's farm, and she, the eldest of seven motherless boys and girls, was beginning to hate the middle-aged wooer. Her visit was quite opportune. She played games with the children throughout the afternoon, as if in defiance of her own home's Sabbatical strictness. She told stories about kind piskies to their hearts' content. She taught them a game she had made for her own little sisters and their playfellows, calling it Starrygazy-pie, a choice dish in which pilchards are baked с with their heads standing up through the crust. The players must trip along in two concentric, but contrarily revolving circles, the biggest children composing the inner, singing a verse: "Huery, heva! huery heaven ! Crack a bone, clunk a bone, ten or eleven! Huery, heva! twenty and one."1 Then, at the last words, they must all be massed together, the big ones in the centre and with arms tight about one another's waists, all gazing fixedly up to the sky. And Charity whistled the tune. But in spite of her frolics, a little break in the girl's voice more than once stopped her singing: had her Aunt been listening she would have gruntled and told herself that " 'twas so plain as a flagstaff Cherry had somethin' werrattin' her. Maybe 'twas that lad Luke. But the Lord gives to take away!' Aunt Martha, however, was now sleeping away her just dues, or such doings had never been countenanced on a Sunday. 1 The huer is one who stands on a rock or headland watching for the schools of pilchards. Heva! heva!" is the cry by which he notifies the waiting boats. To clunk is to swallow. Scrowled is split open and dried in the open air; pilchards so treated are a great delicacy. Vide Appendix A. Worrying. CHAPTER IV LADY EVANGELINE AND PARSON CHRISTY T HE present chronicler feels it might be sacrilege to produce from the documents in his hand, namely the diaries of Christopher Trevenna and Lady Evangeline Walrond and their correspondence, certain confessions and incidents penned only for one another's perusal, even though more than a century has elapsed since their ink was sanded. And yet some such items are of real importance if the story is to be presented convincingly. Thus, while the precise reason for the breaking of the lovers' plighted troth-for such we may assume it to have been-is not altogether clear, the correspondence makes it highly probable that the lady, in spite of her being but nineteen years old, would have withstood her father, the Earl of Blakistonbury—and authority was more perilous to confront in those days-but for some misunderstanding that had arisen between the young people. They had first met at the Earl's seat, Welton Priory, upon a certain occasion when her uncle, now the Archdeacon of Cornwall, had brought with him for a fortnight's visit his Oxford friend, Christopher Trevenna, four and twenty years of age, and three years younger than himself. Even though barely out of school, the Lady Evangeline had strong literary tastes, and her friendship with the poetess, Anna Seward, some ten years older, so much encouraged her that not only did she keep a diary, certain extracts from which must be quoted later, but herself wrote poetry quite as good as her friend's. |