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 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA.
 
 IN THE 
 
 ROAR OF THE SEA 
 
 ^ Calc of tlje Cocm'sst) Coa^st 
 
 S. BARING-GOULD, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
 [cfbucii if Co. 
 
 i8, BURY STREET, LONDON, W.C. 
 1S92 
 
 \All rights reso'ved]
 
 6S>3 
 v l 
 
 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OVER AND DONE. 
 
 Sitting in the parsonage garden, in a white frock, 
 with a pale green sash about her waist, leaning back 
 against the red-brick wall, her glowing copper hair 
 lit by the evening sun, was Judith Trevisa. 
 
 She was tossing guelder-roses into the air ; some 
 dozens were strewn about her feet on the gravel, but 
 one remained of the many she had plucked and thrown 
 and caught, and thrown and caught again for a sunny 
 afternoon hour. As each greenish-white ball of flowers 
 went up into the air, it diffused a faint but pleasant 
 fragrance. 
 
 " When I have done with you, my beauty, I have 
 done altogether," said Judith. 
 
 " With what ? " 
 
 . VOL. I. 2
 
 2 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Her father spoke. He had come up iinperceived 
 by the girl, burdened with a shovel in one hand and 
 a bucket in the other, looking pale, weary, and worn. 
 
 " Papa, you nearly spoiled my game. Let me 
 finish, and I will speak." 
 
 '' Is it a very serious matter, Judith, and en- 
 grossing ? " 
 
 " Engrossing, but not serious, Je iii'aninse." 
 
 The old rector seated himself on the bench beside 
 hier, and he also leaned back against the red-brick, 
 gold-and-grey-lichen-spotted wall, and looked into the 
 distance before him, waiting till his daughter was 
 ready to speak, not, perhaps, sorry to have a little 
 rest first, for he was over-tired. Had Judith not been 
 absorbed in her ball-play with the guelder-rose bunch, 
 she would have noticed his haggard appearance, the 
 green hue about his mouth, the sunken eyes, the 
 beaded brow. But she was counting the rebounds 
 of her ball, bent on sustaining her play as long as was 
 possible to her. 
 
 She formed a charming picture, fresh and pure, and 
 had the old man not been over-tired, he would have 
 thought so with a throb of parental pride.
 
 OVER AND DONE. 3 
 
 She was a child in size, slender in build, delicate in 
 bone, with face and hands of porcelain transparency 
 and whiteness, with, moreover, that incomparable com- 
 plexion only seen in the British Isles, and then only 
 with red-gold hair. 
 
 Her bronze leather shoes were the hue of some large 
 flies that basked and frisked on the warm wall, only 
 slightly disturbed by the girl's play, to return again and 
 run and preen themselves again, and glitter jewel-like as 
 studs on that sun-baked, lichen-enamelled wall. Her 
 ■eyes, moreover, were lustrous as the backs of these 
 flies, iridescent with the changing lights of the 
 declining sun, and the changed direction of her glance 
 following the dancing ball of guelder-rose. Her long 
 iingers might have been of china, but that when raised 
 so that the sun struck their backs they were turned 
 to a translucent rose. There was no colour in her 
 cheek, only the faintest suffusion of pink on the 
 temples below where the hair was rolled back in waves 
 of luminous molten copper dashing against the brick 
 wall. 
 
 " I have done my work," said the rector. 
 
 " And I my play," responded the girl, letting the
 
 4 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ball drop into her lap and rock there from one knee to 
 the other. " Papa ! this fellow is the conqueror ; 
 I have made him dance thirty-five great leaps, and he 
 has not yet fallen — \vilfull3\ I let him go down and 
 get breath just now. There lie all my dancers dead 
 about me. They failed very speedily." 
 
 " You cannot be for ever playing, Ju." 
 
 " That is why I play now, papa. When playtime 
 is over I shall be in earnest indeed." 
 
 " Indeed ? " the old man sighed. 
 
 Judith looked round, and was shocked to see how ill 
 her father appeared to be. 
 
 " Are you very tired, darling papa ? " 
 
 " Yes — over-tired." 
 
 " Have you been at your usual task ? " 
 
 " Yes, Ju — an unprofitable task." 
 
 " Oh, papa ! " 
 
 " Yes, unprofitable. The next wind from the sea 
 that blows — one will blow in an hour — and all my 
 work is undone." 
 
 " But, m}- dear papa ! " Judith stooped and looked 
 into the bucket. " Why ! — what has made you bring a 
 load of sand up here ? We want none in the garden.
 
 OVER AND DONE. 5 
 
 And such a distance too! — from the church. No 
 wonder you are tired." 
 
 " Have I brought it ? " he asked, without looking at 
 
 the bucket. 
 
 " You have, indeed. That, if you please, is un- 
 profitable work, not the digging of the church out of 
 the sand-heaps that swallow it." 
 
 *' My dear, I did not know that I had not emptied 
 the pail outside the churchyard gate. I am very tired ; 
 perhaps that explains it." 
 
 " No doubt about it, papa. It was work quite as 
 unprofitable, but much more exhausting, than my ball- 
 play. Now, papa, whilst you have been digging your 
 church out of the sand, which will blow over it again 
 to-night, you say, I have been pitching and tossing 
 guelder-roses. We have been both wasting time, one 
 as much as the other." 
 
 " One as much as the other," repeated the old man. 
 ** Yes, dear, one as much as the other, and I have 
 been doing it all my time here — morally, spiritually, 
 as well as materially, digging the church out of the 
 smothering sands, and all in vain — all profitless work. 
 You are right, Ju."
 
 6 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Papa," said Judith hastily, seeing his discourage- 
 ment and knowing his tendency to depression, " papa, 
 do you hear the sea how it roars ? I have stood on the 
 bench, more than once, to look out seaward, and find 
 a reason for it ; but there is none — all blue, blue as a 
 larkspur ; and not a cloud in the sky — all blue, blue 
 there too. No wind either, and that is why I have 
 done well with my ball-pla}-. Do you hear the roar of 
 the sea, papa ? " she repeated. 
 
 " Yes, Ju. There will be a storm shortly. The sea 
 is thrown into great swells or rollers, a sure token that 
 something is coming. Before night a gale will be 
 on us." 
 
 Then ensued silence. Judith with one finger trifled 
 with the guelder-rose bunch in her lap musingly, not 
 desirous to resume her play with it. Something in her 
 father's manner was unusual, and made her uneasy. 
 
 " My dear ! " he began, after a pause, " one must 
 look out to sea — into the vast mysterious sea of the 
 future — and prepare for what is coming from it. Just 
 now the air is still, and we sit in this sweet, sunny 
 garden, and lean our backs against the warm wall, and 
 smell the fragrance of the flowers ; but we hear the
 
 OVER AND DONE. 7 
 
 beating of the sea, and know that a might}' tempest 
 with clouds and darkness is coming. So in other 
 matters we must look out and be ready — count the 
 time till it comes. My dear — when I am gone " 
 
 " Papa ! " 
 
 " We are looking out to sea and listening. That 
 must come at some time — it may come sooner than 
 you anticipate." He paused, heaved a sigh, and said^ 
 " Oh ! Jamie ! What are we to do about Jamie ? " 
 
 " Papa, I will always take care of Jamie." 
 
 " But who will take care of you ? " 
 
 "Of me? Oh, papa, surely I can take care of 
 myself!" 
 
 He shook his head doubtfull}'. 
 
 " Papa, you know how strong I am in will — how 
 firm I can be with Jamie." 
 
 " But all mankind are not Jamies. It is not for 5^ou 
 I fear, as much as for you and him together. He is a 
 trouble and a difficulty." 
 
 "Jamie is not so silly and troublesome as you think. 
 All he needs is application. He cannot screw his mind 
 down to his books — to any serious occupation. But 
 that will come. I have heard say that the stupidest
 
 S IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 children make the sharpest men. Little by little it 
 will come, but it will come certainly. I will set myself 
 as my task to make Jamie apply his mind and become 
 a useful man, and I shall succeed, papa." She caught 
 her father's hand between hers, and slapped it joyously, 
 confidently. " How cold your hand is, papa ! and 
 yet you look warm." 
 
 " You were always Jamie's champion," said her 
 father, not noticing her remark relative to himself. 
 
 " He is my twin brother, so of course I am his 
 champion. Who else would be that, were not I ? " 
 
 *' No — no one else. He is mischievous and trouble- 
 some — poor, poor fellow. You will always be to Jamie 
 what you are now, Ju — his protector or champion ? 
 He is weak and foolish, and if he were to fall into bad 
 hands — I shudder to think what might become of him." 
 
 " Relv on me, dearest father." 
 
 Then he lifted the hand of his daughter, and looked 
 at it with a faint smile. " It is very small, it is very 
 weak, to fight for self alone, let alone yourself en- 
 cumbered with Jamie." 
 
 " I will do it, papa, do not fear." 
 
 '' Judith, I must talk gravely with you, for the future
 
 OVER AND DONE. 9 
 
 is very dark to me ; and I am unable with hand or 
 brain to provide anything against the evil day. Numb- 
 ness is on me, and I have been hampered on every side. 
 For one thing, the living has been so poor, and my 
 parishioners so difficult to deal with, that I have been 
 able to lay by but a trifle. I believe I have not a 
 relative in the world — none, at all events, near enough 
 and known to me that I dare ask him to care for 
 you " 
 
 "Papa, there is Aunt Dionysia." 
 
 " Aunt Dionysia," he repeated, with a hesitating 
 voice. " Yes ; but Aunt Dionysia is — is not herself 
 capable of taking charge of you. She has nothing 
 but what she earns, and then — Aunt Dionysia is — is 
 — well — Aunt Dionysia. I don't think you could be 
 happy with her, even if, in the event of my departure, 
 she were able to take care of you. Then — and that 
 •chiefly — she has chosen, against my express wishes — 
 I may say, in defiance of me — to go as housekeeper 
 into the service of the man, of all others, who has 
 been a thorn in my side, a hinderer of God's work, 
 a but I will say no more." 
 
 "What! Cruel Coppinger ? "
 
 lo IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 '' Yes, Cruel Coppinger. I might have been the 
 means of doing a little good in this place, God knows ! 
 I only thiuk I might ; but I have been thwarted, defied, 
 insulted by that man. As I have striven to dig my 
 buried church out of the overwhelming sands, so have 
 I striven to lift the souls of my poor parishioners out 
 of the dead engulfing sands of savagery, brutalit}',. 
 very heathenism of their mode of life, and I have been 
 frustrated. The winds have blown the sands back 
 with ever}^ gale over my work with spade, and that 
 stormblast Coppinger has devastated every trace of good 
 that I have done, or tried to do, in spiritual matters. 
 The Lord reward him according to his works." 
 
 Judith felt her father's hand tremble in hers. 
 
 " Never mind Coppinger now," she said, soothingly. 
 
 " I must mind him," said the old man, with severe 
 vehemence. " And — that my own sister should go, 
 go — out of defiance, into his house and serve him I 
 That was too much. I might well say, I have none to 
 whom to look as your protector," He paused awhile 
 and wiped his brow. His pale lips were quivering. 
 "I do not mean to say," said he, " that I acted with 
 judgment, when first I came to S. Enodoc, when L
 
 OVER AND DONE. u 
 
 spoke against smuggling. I did not understand it then. 
 I thought with the thoughts of an inlander. Here — 
 the sands sweep over the fields, and agriculture is in a 
 measure impossible. The bays and creeks seem to 
 invite — well — I leave it an open question. But with 
 regard to wrecking — " His voice, which had quavered 
 in feebleness, according with the feebleness of his 
 judgment relative to smuggling, now gained sonorous- 
 ness. " Wrecking, deliberate wrecking, is quite another 
 matter. I do not say that our people are not justified 
 in gathering the harvest the sea casts up. There 
 always must be, there will be wrecks on this terrible 
 coast : but there has been — I know there has been, 
 though I have not been able to prove it — deliberate 
 provocation of wrecks, — and that is the sin of Cain. 
 Had I been able to prove " 
 
 " Never mind that now, dear papa. Neither I nor 
 Jamie are, or will be, wreckers. Talk of something; 
 else. You over-excite yourself." 
 
 Judith was accustomed to hear her father talk in an 
 open manner to her. She had been his sole companion 
 for several years, since his wife's death, and she had 
 become the confidant of his inmost thoughts, his
 
 12 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 vacillations, his discouragements, not of his hopes — for 
 he had none, nor of his schemes — for he formed none. 
 
 " I do not think I have been of any use in this 
 world," said the old parson, relapsing into his tone of 
 discouragement, the temporary flame of anger having 
 died away. " My sowing has produced no harvest. 
 I have brought light, help, strength to none. I have 
 dug all day in the vineyard, and not a vine is the better 
 for it ; all cankered and fruitless." 
 
 " Papa — and me ? Have you done nothing for 
 me?" 
 
 "You ! " 
 
 He had not thought of his child. 
 
 " Papa ! Do you think that I have gained naught 
 from you ? No strength, no resolution from seeing you 
 toil on in your thankless work, without apparent result? 
 If I have any energy and principle to carry me through 
 — I owe it to you." 
 
 He was moved, and raised his trembling hand and 
 laid it on her golden head. 
 
 He said no more, and was very still. 
 
 Presently she spoke. His hand weighed heavily on 
 her head.
 
 OVER AND DONE. ij 
 
 " Papa, you are listening to the roar of the sea ? " 
 
 He made no reply. 
 
 " Papa, I felt a cold breath ; and see, the sun has a 
 film over it. Surel}^ the sea is roaring louder ! " 
 
 His hand slipped from her head and struck her 
 shoulder — roughly, she thought. She turned, startled, 
 and looked at him. His eyes were open, he was lean- 
 ing back, almost fallen against the wall, and was 
 deadly pale. 
 
 " Papa, are you listening to the roar ? " 
 
 Then a thought struck her like a bullet in the heart. 
 
 " Papa ! Papa ! My papa ! — speak — speak ! " 
 
 She sprang from the bench — was before him. Her 
 last guelder-rose had rolled, had bounded from her lap, 
 and had fallen on the sand the old man had listlessly 
 brought up from the church. His work, her play, were 
 for ever over.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 
 
 The stillness preceding the storm had yielded. A gale 
 had broken over the coast, raged against the cliffs of 
 Pentyre, and battered the walls of the parsonage, 
 without disturbing the old rector, whom no storm 
 would trouble again, soon to be laid under the sands of 
 his buried churchyard, his very mound to be heaped 
 over in a few years, and obliterated by waves of additional 
 encroaching sand. Judith had not slept all night. She 
 — she, a mere child, had to consider and arrange every- 
 thing consequent on the death of the master of the 
 house. The servants — cook and housemaid — had been 
 of little, if any, assistance to her. When Jane, the 
 housemaid, rushed into the kitchen with the tidings 
 that the old parson was dead, cook, in her agitation,
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 15 
 
 upset the kettle and scalded her foot. The gardener's 
 wife had come in on hearing the news, and had volun- 
 teered help. Judith had given her the closet-key to 
 fetch from the stores something needed; and Jamie, 
 finding access to the closet, had taken possession of a 
 pot of raspberry jam, carried it to bed with him, and 
 spilled it over the sheets, besides making himself ill. 
 The housemaid, Jane, had forgotten in her distraction 
 to shut the best bedroom casement, and the gale during 
 the night had wrenched it from its hinges, flung it 
 into the garden on the roof of the small conservatory, 
 and smashed both. Moreover, the casement being 
 open, the rain had driven into the room unchecked, 
 had swamped the floor, run through and stained the 
 drawing-room ceiling underneath, the drips had fallen 
 on the mahogany table and blistered the veneer. A 
 messenger was sent to Pentyre Glaze for Miss Dionysia 
 Trevisa, and she would probably arrive in an hour or two. 
 Mr. Trevisa, as he had told Judith, was solitary ; 
 singularly so. He was of a good Cornish family, but 
 it was one that had dwindled till it had ceased to have 
 other representative than himself. Once well estated, 
 at Crockadon, in S. Mellion, all the lands of the family
 
 l6 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 had been lost ; once with merchants in the family, all 
 the fortunes of these merchants industriously gathered 
 had been dissipated, and nothing had remained to the 
 Reverend Peter Trevisa but his family name and family 
 coat, a garb or, on a field gules. It really seemed as 
 though the tinctures of the shield had been fixed in the 
 crown of splendour that covered the head of Judith. 
 But she did not derive this wealth of red-gold hair from 
 her Cornish ancestors, but from a Scottish mother, a 
 poor governess whom Mr. Peter Trevisa had married, 
 thereby exciting the wrath of his only sister and 
 relative, Miss Dionysia, who had hitherto kept house 
 for him, and vexed his soul with her high-handed 
 proceedings. It was owing to some insolent words 
 used by her to Mrs. Trevisa, that Peter had quarrelled 
 with his sister at first. Then when his wife died, she 
 had forced herself on him as housekeeper, but again her 
 presence in the house had become irksome to him, and 
 when she treated his children — his delicate and dearly- 
 loved Judith with roughness, and his timid, silly 
 Jamie with harshness, amounting in his view to cruelty 
 — sharp words had passed between them ; sharp is, 
 however, hardly the expression to use for the carefully-
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 17 
 
 worded remonstrances of the mild rector, though appro- 
 priate enough to her rejoinders. Then she had taken 
 herself off, and had become housekeeper to Curll 
 Coppinger — Cruel Coppinger, as he was usually called^ 
 who occupied Pentyre Glaze, and was a fairly well-to- 
 do single man. 
 
 Mr. Trevisa had not been a person of energy, but 
 one of culture and refinement; a dispirited, timid man. 
 Finding no neighbours of the same mental texture, 
 nor sympathetic, he had been driven to make of Judith, 
 though a child, his companion, and he had poured into 
 her ear all his troubles, which largely concerned the 
 future of his children. In his feebleness he took com- 
 fort from her sanguine confidence, though he was well 
 aware that it was bred of ignorance, and he derived a 
 weak satisfaction from the thought that he had pre- 
 pared her morally, at all events, if in no other fashion, 
 for the crisis that must come when he was withdrawn. 
 
 Mr. Peter Trevisa — Peter was a family Christian 
 name — was for twenty-five years rector of S. Enodoc, 
 on the north coast of Cornwall at the mouth of the 
 Camel. The sand dunes had encroached on the church 
 of S. Enodoc, and had enveloped the sacred structure. 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 i8 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 A hole was broken through a window, through which 
 the interior could be reached, where divine service 
 was performed occasionally in the presence of the 
 churchwardens, so as to establish the right of the 
 rector, and through this same hole bridal parties 
 entered to be coupled, with their feet ankle-deep in 
 sand that filled the interior to above the pew-tops. 
 
 But Mr. Trevisa was not the man to endure such a 
 condition of affairs without a protest and an effort to 
 remedy it. He had endeavoured to stimulate the 
 farmers and landowners of the parish to excavate the 
 buried church, but his endeavours had proved futile. 
 There were several reasons for this. In the first place, 
 and certainly foremost, stood this reason : as long as 
 the church was choked with sand and could not be 
 employed for regular divine service, the tithe-payers 
 could make a grievance of it, and excuse themselves 
 from paying their tithe in full, because, as they argued, 
 " Parson don't give us sarvice, so us ain't obliged to 
 pay'n." They knew their man, that he was tender- 
 conscienced, and would not bring the law to bear upon 
 them ; he would see that there was a certain measure 
 of justness in the argument, and would therefore not
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 19 
 
 demand of them a tithe for which he did not give them 
 the quid pro quo. But they had sufficient shrewdness 
 to pay a portion of their tithes, so as not to drive him 
 to extremities and exhaust his patience. It will be seen, 
 therefore, that in the interests of their pockets, the 
 tithe-payers did not want to have their parish church 
 excavated. Excavation meant weekly service regularly 
 performed, and weekly service regularly performed 
 would be followed by exaction of the full amount of 
 rent-charge. Then, again, in the second place, should 
 divine service be resumed in the church of S. Enodoc, 
 the parishioners would feel a certain uneasiness in 
 their consciences if they disregarded the summons of 
 the bell ; it might not be a very lively uneasiness, but 
 just such an irritation as might be caused by a fly 
 crawling over the face. So long as there was no service 
 they could soothe their consciences with the thought 
 that there was no call to make an effort to pull on 
 Sunday breeches and assume a Sunday hat, and trudge 
 to the church. Therefore, secondly, for the ease of 
 their own consciences, it was undesirable that S. 
 Enodoc should be dug out of the sand. 
 
 Then lastly, and thirdly, the engulfment of the
 
 20 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 church gave them a cherished opportunity for being" 
 nasty to the rector, and retaHating upon him for his 
 incaution in condemning smuggling and launching out 
 into anathema against wrecking. As he had made 
 matters disagreeable to them — tried, as they put it, to 
 take the bread out of their mouths, they saw no reason. 
 why they should spend money to please him. 
 
 Mr. Trevisa had made very little provision for his 
 children, principally, if not wholly, because he could 
 not. He had received from the farmers and land- 
 owners a portion of tithe, and had been contented with 
 that rather than raise angry feelings by demanding the 
 whole. Out of that portion he was able to put aside 
 but little. 
 
 Aunt Dionysia arrived, a tall, bony woman, with 
 hair turning grey, light eyes and an aquiline nose, a 
 hard, self-seeking woman, who congratulated herself 
 that she did not give way to feelings. 
 
 " I feel," said she, "as do others, but I don't show 
 my feehngs as beggars expose their bad legs." 
 
 She went into the kitchen. " Hoity-toity ! " she 
 said to the cook, " fine story this — scalding yourself. 
 Mind this ; you cook meals, or no wage for you." To
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS 21 
 
 Jane, "The mischief you have done shall be valued 
 and deducted from any little trifle my brother may 
 have left you in his will. Where is Jamie ? Give me 
 that joint of fishing-rod ; I'll beat him for stealing rasp- 
 berry jam." 
 
 Jamie, however, on catching a glimpse of his aunt 
 had escaped into the garden and concealed himself. 
 The cook, offended, began to clatter the saucepans. 
 
 " Now, then," said Mrs. Trevisa — she bore the 
 brevet-rank — " in a house of mourning, what do you 
 mean by making this noise, it is impertinent to me." 
 
 The housemaid swung out of the kitchen, muttering. 
 
 Airs. Trevisa now betook herself upstairs in quest of 
 her niece, and found her with red eyes. 
 
 " I call it rank felo-de-se,'" said Aunt Dionysia. 
 ■*' Every one knew — he knew, that he had a feeble 
 heart, and ought not to be digging and delving in the 
 old church. Who sent the sand upon it ? Why, Pro- 
 vidence, I presume. Not man. Then it was a-flying 
 in the face of Providence to try to dig it out. Who 
 wanted the church ? He might have waited till the 
 parishioners asked for it. But there — where is Jamie ? 
 I shall teach him a lesson for stealing raspberry jam."
 
 22 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Oh, aunt, not now — not now ! " 
 
 Mrs. Trevisa considered a moment, then laid aside 
 the fishing-rod. 
 
 " Perhaps you are right. I am not up to it after my 
 walk from Pent}'re Glaze. Now, then, what about 
 mourning ? I do not suppose Jamie can be measured 
 by guess-work. You must bring him here. Tell him 
 the whipping is put off till another day. Of course- 
 you have seen to black things for yourself. Not ? 
 Wh}', gracious heavens ! is everything to be thrown or? 
 my shoulders ? Am I to be made a beast of burden 
 of? Now, no mewling and pewking. There is nO' 
 time for that. Whatever your time may be, nunc is- 
 valuable. I can't be here for ever. Of course every 
 responsibility has been put on me. Just like Peter — 
 no consideration. And what can I do with a set of 
 babies ? I have to work hard enough to keep myself.. 
 Peter did not want my services at one time; now I ani 
 put upon. Have you sent for the undertaker ? What 
 about clothing again ? I suppose you know that 30^ 
 must have mourning? Bless my heart ! what a lot of 
 trouble you give me." 
 
 Mrs. Trevisa was in a ver}- bad temper, which e\'eni
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 23 
 
 the knowledge that it was seemly that she should veil 
 it, could not make her restrain. She was, no doubt, 
 to a certain extent fond of her brother — not much, 
 because he had not been of any advantage to her ; and 
 no doubt she was shocked at his death, but chiefly 
 because it entailed on herself responsibilities and 
 trouble that she grudged. She would be obliged to 
 do something for her nephew and niece ; she would 
 have to provide a home for them somewhere. She 
 could not take them with her to Coppinger's house, as 
 she was there as a salaried servant, and not entitled to 
 invite thither her young relatives. Moreover, she did 
 not want to have them near her. She disliked young 
 people ; they gave trouble, they had to be looked after, 
 they entailed expenses. What was she to do with 
 them ? Where was she to put them ? What would 
 they have to live upon ? Would they call on her to 
 part-maintain them ? Miss Dionysia had a small sum 
 put away, and she had no intention of breaking into it 
 for them. It was a nest-egg, and was laid by against 
 an evil day that might come on herself. She had put 
 the money away for herself, in her old age, not for the 
 children of her feeble brother and his lack-penny wife
 
 24 JN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 to consume as moth and rust. As these thoughts and 
 questions passed through her mind, Aunt Dionysia 
 pulled open drawers, examined cupboards, pried into 
 closets, and searched chests and wardrobes. 
 
 " I wonder now what he has put by for them," she 
 said aloud. 
 
 ■" Do you mean my dear papa? " asked Judith, whose 
 troubled heart and shaken spirits were becoming angry 
 and restless under the behaviour of the hard, unfeeling 
 woman. 
 
 " Yes, I do," answered Mrs. Trevisa, facing round, 
 and glaring malevolently at her niece. " It is early 
 days to talk of this, but it must be done sooner or later, 
 and if so, the sooner the better. There is money in the 
 house, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I do not know." 
 
 " I must know. You will want it — bills must be 
 paid. You will eat and drink, I suppose ? You must 
 be clothed. I'll tell you what : I'll put the whole case 
 into the hands of Lawyer Jenkyns, and he shall de- 
 mand arrears of tithe. I know what quixotish conduct 
 Peter " 
 
 "Aunt, I will not allow this." A light flush came 
 into the girl's cheek.
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 25 
 
 *' It is all very well talking," said Aunt Dionysia ; 
 *' but black is not white, and no power on earth can 
 make me say that it is so. Money must be found. 
 Money must be paid for expenses, and it is hard that 
 I should have to find it ; so I think. What money is 
 there in the house for present necessities ? I must 
 know." 
 
 Suddenly a loud voice was heard shouting through 
 the house — 
 
 " Mother Dunes ! old Dunes ! I want you." 
 
 Judith turned cold and white. Who was this that 
 dared to bellow in the house of death, when her dear, 
 dear father lay upstairs with the blinds down, asleep ? 
 It was an insult, an outrage. Her nerves had already 
 been thrilled, and her heart roused into angry revolt by 
 the cold, unfeeling conduct of the woman who was her 
 sole relative in the world. And now, as she was thus 
 quivering, there came this boisterous shout. 
 
 " It is the master ! " said Mrs. Trevisa, in an awe- 
 struck voice, lowered as much as was possible to 
 her. 
 
 To Coppinger alone was she submissive, cringing, 
 obsequious.
 
 26 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " What does he mean by this — this conduct?" asked 
 Judith, trembling with wrath. 
 
 " He wants me." 
 
 Again a shout. " Dunes ! old fool ! the keys ! " 
 
 Then Judith started forward, and went through the 
 door to the head of the staircase. At the foot stood a 
 middle-sized, strongly-built, firmly-knit man, in a dress 
 half belonging to the land and half to the sea, with 
 high boots on his legs, and a slouched hat on his head. 
 His complexion was olive, his hair abundant and black,, 
 covering cheeks and chin and upper lip. His eyes were 
 hard and dark. He had one brown hand on the bani- 
 ster, and a foot on the first step, as though about to 
 ascend when arrested by seeing the girl at the head of 
 the stairs before him. The house was low, and the 
 steps led without a break directly from the hall to the 
 landing which gave communication to the bedrooms. 
 There was a skylight in the roof over the staircase^ 
 through which a brilliant flood of pure white light fell 
 over Judith, whereas every window had been darkened 
 by drawn blinds. The girl had found no sombre dress 
 suitable to wear, and had been forced to assume the 
 same white gown as the day before, but she had dis-
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 27 
 
 carded the green sash and had bound a black ribbon 
 about her waist, and another about her abundant hair. 
 A black lace kerchief was drawn over her shoulders 
 across her breast and tied at her back. She wore long 
 black mittens. 
 
 Judith stood motionless, her bosom rising and falling^ 
 quickly, her lips set, the breath racing through her 
 nostrils, and one hand resting on the banister at the 
 stair-head. 
 
 In a moment her eyes met those of Coppinger, and 
 it was at once as though a thrill of electric force had 
 passed between them. 
 
 He desisted from his attempt to ascend, and said,, 
 without moving his eyes from hers, in a subdued tone, 
 " She has taken the keys," but he said no more. He 
 drew his foot from the step hesitatingly, and loosened 
 his hand from the banister, down which went a thrill 
 from Judith's quivering nerves, and he stepped 
 back. 
 
 At the same moment she descended a step. Stilf 
 looking steadily into the dark, threatening pupils, with- 
 out blinking or lowering her orbs. Emboldened by 
 her boiling indignation, she stood on the step she had'
 
 28 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 reached with both feet firmly planted there, and finding 
 that the banister rattled under her hand she withdrew 
 it, and folded her arms. Coppinger raised his hand to 
 his head and took off his hat. He had a profusion of 
 dark, curly, flowing hair, that fell and encircled his 
 saturnine face. 
 
 Then Judith descended another step, and as she did 
 so he retreated a step backwards. Behind him was 
 the hall door, open ; the light lay wan and white there 
 ■on the gravel, for no sunshine had succeeded the gale. 
 At every step that Judith took down the stair Coppin- 
 ger retreated. Neither spoke; the hall was still, save 
 for the sound of their breath, and his came as fast as 
 hers. When Judith had reached the bottom, she turned 
 — Coppinger stood in the doorway now — and signed to 
 her aunt to come down with the keys. 
 
 "Take them to him — Do not give them here — out- 
 side." 
 
 Mrs. Trevisa, surprised, confounded, descended the 
 stair, went by her, and out through the door. Then 
 Judith stepped after her, shut the door to exclude both 
 Aunt Dionysia and that man Coppinger, who had 
 dared, uninvited, on such a day to invade the house.
 
 A PASSAGE OF ARMS. 29 
 
 She turned now to remount the stairs, but her 
 strength failed her, her knees yielded, and she sank 
 upon a step, and burst into a flood of tears and convul- 
 sive sobs.
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 CAPTAIN CRUEL. 
 
 Captain Coppinger occupied an old farmhouse, roomy, 
 low built, granite quoined and mullioned, called Pentyre 
 Glaze, in a slight dip of the hills near the cliffs above 
 the thundering Atlantic. One ash shivered at the end 
 of the house — that was the only tree to be seen near 
 Pentyre Glaze. And — who was Coppinger? That is 
 more than can be told. He had come — no one knew 
 whence. His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall 
 \vas mysterious. There had been haze over the sea 
 for three days. When it lifted, a strange vessel of 
 foreign rig was seen lying off the coast. Had she got 
 there in the fog, not knowing her course ; or had she 
 come there knowingly, and was making for the mouth 
 of the Camel ? A boat was seen to leave the ship, and
 
 CAPTAIN CRUEL. 31 
 
 in it a man came ashore ; the boat returned to the 
 vessel, that thereupon spread sail and disappeared in 
 the fog that re-descended over the water. The man 
 l^ave his name as Coppinger — his Christian name, he 
 said, was Curll, and he was a Dane ; but though his 
 intonation was not that of the Cornish, it was not 
 foreign. He took up his residence in S. Enodoc at a 
 farm, and suddenly, to the surprise of every one, be- 
 came by purchase the possessor of Pentyre Glaze, then 
 vacant and for sale. Had he known that the estate 
 was obtainable, when he had come suddenl}^ out of the 
 clouds into the place to secure it ? Nobody knew, and 
 Coppinger was silent. 
 
 Thenceforth Pentvre Glaze became a harbour and 
 den of every lawless character along the coast. All 
 kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled 
 the neighbourhood day and night. It was discovered 
 that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and 
 poachers made this house the centre of their operations, 
 and that *' Cruel Coppinger " was their captain. There 
 were at that time — just a century ago — no resident 
 magistrates or gentry in the immediate neighbourhood. 
 The yeomen were bribed, by kegs of spirits left at their
 
 32 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 doors, to acquiesce in a traffic in illicit goods, and in 
 the matter of exchange they took their shares. It was 
 said that on one occasion a preventive man named 
 Ewan Wyvill, who had pursued Coppinger in his boat,, 
 was taken by him, and his head chopped off by the 
 captain with his boat axe, on the gunwale. Such was 
 the story. It was never proved. Wyvill had dis- 
 appeared, and the body was recovered headless on the 
 Doom Bar. That violence had been used was un- 
 doubted, but wholiad committed the crime was not 
 known, though suspicion pointed to Coppinger. Thence- 
 forth, none ever called him Curll ; by one consent he 
 was named Cruel. In the West of England every one 
 is given his Christian name. An old man is Uncle,, 
 and an old woman Aunt, and any one in command is 
 a Captain. - So Coppinger was known as Captain Cruel,, 
 or as Cruel Coppinger. 
 
 Strange vessels were often seen appearing at regular 
 intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from 
 the one window of Pentyre Glaze that looked out to 
 
 sea. 
 
 Amongst these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, 
 soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for
 
 CAPTAIN CRUEL. 33 
 
 long the terror of the Cornish coast. Her name was 
 Tlic Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board, 
 she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel 
 among the rocks, where, from knowledge of the 
 j> bearings, The Black Prince escaped scathless, while 
 the king's vessel perished with all on board. 
 
 Immunity increased Coppinger's daring. There 
 were certain bridle-roads along the fields over which 
 he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that 
 no man should pass over them by night, and accord- 
 ingly from that hour none ever did.^ 
 
 Moreover, if report spoke true — and reports do not arise 
 without cause — Coppinger was not averse from taking 
 advantage, and that unlawful advantage, of a wreck. 
 By ''lawful" and "unlawful" two categories of acts 
 are distinguished, not by the laws of the land, but by 
 common consent of the Cornish conscience. That 
 same Cornish conscience distinguished wrecking into 
 
 ' Many stories of Cruel Coppinger may be found in Hawker's 
 " Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall." I have also told them 
 in my " Vicar of Morwenstow." I have ventured to translate the 
 scene of Coppinger's activity further west, from Wellcombe to S. 
 Enodoc. But, indeed, he is told of in many places on this coast. 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 34 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 two classes, as it distinguished then, and distinguishes 
 still, witchcraft into two classes. The one, white 
 witchcraft, is legitimate and profitable, and to be 
 uplield ; the other, black witchcraft, is reprehensible, 
 unlawful, and to be put down. So with wrecking. 
 The Bristol Channel teemed with shipping, flights of 
 white sails passed in the offing, and these vessels were, 
 when inward bound, laden with sugars and spices from 
 the Indies, or with spirits and wines from France. If 
 ■outward bound, they were deep in the water with a 
 cargo of the riches of England. 
 
 Now, should a gale spring up suddenl}- and catch 
 any of these vessels, and should the gale be — as it 
 usually is, and to the Cornish folk, favourably is — from 
 the north-west, then there was no harbour of refuge 
 along that rock-bound coast, and a ship that could 
 not make for the open was bound inevitably to be 
 pounded to pieces against the precipitous walls of 
 the peninsula. If such were the case, it was perfectly 
 legitimate for every householder in the district to come 
 down on the wreck, and strip it of everything it con- 
 tained. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there was wrecking that was
 
 CAPTAIN CRUEL. 35 
 
 disapproved of, though practised b}' a few, so rumour 
 said, and that consisted in luring a vessel that was 
 in doubt as to her course, by false signals, upon a reef 
 or bar, and then, having made a wreck of her, to 
 pillage her. When on a morning after a night in which 
 there had been no gale, a ship was found on the rocks, 
 and picked as clean as the carcase of a camel in the 
 desert, it was open to suspicion that this ship had not 
 been driven there by wind or current ; and when the 
 survivors, if they reached the shore, told that they had 
 been led to steer in the direction where they had been 
 cast away by certain lights that had wholly deceived 
 them, then it was also open to suspicion that these 
 jghts had been purposely exhibited for the sake of 
 bringing that vessel to destruction ; and when, further, 
 it was proved that a certain set or gang of men had 
 garnered all the profits, or almost all the profits, that 
 accrued from a wreck, before the countryside was aware 
 that a wreck had occurred, then it was certainly no 
 very random conjecture that the wreck had been con- 
 trived in some fashion by those who profited by it. 
 There were atrocious tales of murder of shipwrecked 
 men circulating, but these were probably wholly, or at
 
 36 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 all events in part, untrue. If, when a vessel ran upon 
 the rocks, she was deserted by her crew, if they took 
 to the boats and made for shore, then there remained 
 no impediment to the wreckers taking possession ; it 
 was only in the event of their finding a skipper on 
 board to maintain right over the grounded vessel, or 
 the mariners still on her engaged in getting her off, 
 that any temptation to violence could arise. But it 
 was improbable that a crew would cling to a ship on 
 such a coast when once she was on the breakers. It 
 was a moral certainty that they would desert her, and 
 leave the wreck to be pillaged by the rats from shore, 
 without offer of resistance. The character of the coast- 
 wreckers was known to seamen, or rather a legend full 
 of horror circulated relative to their remorseless savager}^ 
 The fear of wreckers added to the fear of the sea, would 
 combine to drive a crew, to the last man, into the 
 boats. Consequently, though it is possible that in 
 some cases murder of castaway men may have 
 occurred, such cases must have been most exceptional. 
 The wreckers were only too glad to build a golden 
 bridge by which the wrecked might escape. Morally, 
 without a question, those who lured a hapless mer-
 
 CAPTAIN CRUEL. 37 
 
 chantman upon the rocks were guilty of the deaths of 
 those sailors who were upset in their boats in escaping 
 from the vessel, or were dashed against the cliffs in 
 their attempts to land, but there was no direct blood- 
 guiltiness felt in such cases ; and those who had reaped 
 a harvest from the sea counted their gains individually, 
 and made no estimate of the misery accruing thereby 
 to others.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HOP O' MY THUMB. 
 
 *' Listen to me," said Judith. 
 
 " Yes, Jii ! " 
 
 The orphans were together in the room that had 
 been their father's, the room in which for some days he 
 had lain with the blind down, the atmosphere heavy 
 with the perfume of flowers, and that indescribable, 
 unmistakable scent of death. Often, every day, almost 
 every hour, had Judith stolen into the room whilst he 
 lay there, to wonder with infinite reverence and admi- 
 ration at the purity and dignity of the dead face. It 
 was that of the dear, dear father, but sublimed beyond 
 her imagination. All the old vacillation was gone, the 
 expression of distress and discouragement had passed 
 away, and in their place had come a fixity and a calm, 
 such as one sees in the busts of the ancient Roman
 
 HOP <9' MY THUMB. 3^ 
 
 Caesars, but with a superadded etheriality — if such a 
 word can be used — that a piece of pagan statuary never 
 reached. IMarvellous, past finding out, it is that death 
 which takes from man the spiritual element, should 
 give to the mere clay a look of angelic spirituality, yet 
 so it is — so it was with the dead Peter Trevisa ; and 
 Judith, with eyes filling as fast as dried, stood, her 
 hands folded, looking into his face, felt that she had 
 never loved, never admired him half enough when he 
 was alive. Life had been the simmer in which all the 
 scum of trivialities, of infirmities, of sordidness had 
 come to and shown itself on the surface. Now Death 
 had cleared these all away, and in the peaceful face of 
 the dead was seen the real man, the nobility, sanctity, 
 delicacy that formed the texture of his soul, and which 
 had impressed the very clay wrapped about that volatile 
 essence. 
 
 As long as the dear father's body lay in the house, 
 Judith had not realized her utter desolation. But now 
 the funeral was over, and she had returned with her- 
 brother to the parsonage, to draw up the blinds, and 
 let the light once more enter, and search out, and 
 revivify the dead rooms.
 
 40 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 She was very pale, with reddened eyes, and looking 
 more fragile and transparent than ever she did before, 
 worn and exhausted by tearful, wakeful nights, and by 
 days of alternating gusts of sorrow and busy preparation 
 for the funeral, of painful recollections of joyous days 
 that were past, and of doubtful searchings into a future 
 that was full of cloud. 
 
 Her black frock served to enhance her pallor, and to 
 make her look thinner, smaller than when in white or 
 in colour. 
 
 She had taken her place in her father's high-backed 
 leather chair, studded thick with brass nails, the 
 leather dulled and fretted by constant use, but the 
 nail-heads burnished by the same treatment. 
 
 Her brother was in the same chair with her ; both 
 his arms were round her neck, and his head was on 
 her shoulder. She had her right arm about his waist, 
 her left was bowed, the elbow leaning on the chair 
 arm, her hand folded inwards, and her weary head 
 resting on its back. 
 
 The fine weather broken in upon by the gale had 
 returned ; the sun shone in unhindered at the window, 
 and blazed on the children's hair ; the brass nails,
 
 HOP a MY THUMB. 41 
 
 polished by friction, twinkled as little suns, but were 
 naught in lustre to the gorgeous red of the hair of 
 the twins, for the first were but brass, and the other of 
 living gold. 
 
 Two more lonely beings could hardly be discovered 
 on the face of the earth — at all events in the peninsula 
 of Cornwall, — but the sense of this loneliness was 
 summed in the heart of Judith, and was there articu- 
 late ; Jamie was but dimly conscious of discomfort 
 and bereavement. She knew what her father's death 
 entailed on her, or knew in part, and conjectured more. 
 Had she been left absolutely alone in the w^orld, her 
 condition would have been less difficult than it was 
 actually, encumbered with her helpless brother. Swim- 
 ming alone in the tossing sea, she might have struck 
 out with confidence that she could keep her head above 
 water, but it was quite otherwise when clinging to her 
 was a poor half-witted boy, incapable of doing anything 
 to save himself, and all whose movements tended only 
 to embarrass her. Not that she regretted for an 
 instant having to care for Jamie, for she loved him 
 with sisterly and motherly love combined, intensified 
 in force by fusion ; if to her a future seemed incon-
 
 42 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ceivable without Jamie, a future without him would be 
 one without ambition, pleasure, or interest. 
 
 The twin brother was very like her, with the same 
 beautiful and abundant hair, delicate in build, and with 
 the same refined face, but without the flashes of alter- 
 nating mood that lightened and darkened her face. 
 His had a searching, bewildered, distressed expression 
 on it — the only expression it ever bore except when he 
 was out of temper, and then it mirrored on its surface 
 his inward ill-humour. His was an appealing face, 
 a face that told of a spirit infantile, innocent, and 
 ignorant, that would never grow stronger, but which 
 could deteriorate by loss of innocence — the only change 
 of which it was capable. The boy had no inherent 
 naughtiness in him, but was constantly falling into 
 mischief through thoughtlessness, and he was difficult 
 to manage, because incapable of reasoning. 
 
 What every one saw — that he never would be other 
 than what he was — Judith would not admit. She 
 acknowledged his inaptitude at his books, his frivolity,, 
 his restlessness, but believed that these were infirmities 
 to be overcome, and that when overcome, the boy 
 would be as other boys are.
 
 HOP 0' MY THUMB. 43 
 
 'Now these children — they were aged eighteen, but 
 Jamie looked four years younger — sat in their father's 
 chair, clinging to each other, all in all to one another,, 
 for they had no one else to love, and who loved them. 
 
 "Listen to me, Jamie." 
 
 " Yes, Ju, I be " 
 
 " Don't say * I be '—say ' I am.' " 
 
 ''Yes, Ju." 
 
 "Jamie, dear!" she drew her arm tighter about 
 him ; her heart was bounding, and every beat caused 
 her pain. "Jamie, dear, you know that, now dear papa 
 is gone, and you will never see him in this world again^ 
 that " 
 
 " Yes, Ju." 
 
 " That I have to look to you, m}- brother, to stand 
 up for me like a man, to think and do for me as well as 
 for yourself — a brave, stout, industrious fellow." 
 
 "Yes, Ju." 
 
 " I am a girl, and you will soon be a man, and must 
 work for both of us. You must earn the money, and I 
 will spend it frugally as we both require it. Then we 
 shall be happy again, and dear papa in Paradise will 
 be glad and smile on us. You will make an effort, will
 
 44 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 3'ou not, Jamie ? Hitherto you have been able to run 
 about and play and squander your time, but now 
 serious days have come upon us, and you must fix your 
 mind on work and determine — Jamie — mind, screw 
 your heart to a strong determination to put away 
 childish things and be a man, and a strength and a 
 comfort to me." 
 
 He put up his lips to kiss her cheek, but could not 
 reach it, as her head was leaning on her hand away 
 from him. 
 
 " What are you fidgeting at, my dear ? " she asked, 
 without stirring, feeling his body restless under her arm. 
 
 " A nail is coming out," he answered. 
 
 It was so ; whilst she had been speaking to him he 
 was working at one of the brass studs, and had loosened 
 its bite in the chair. 
 
 " Oh, Jamie ! you are making work by thus drawing 
 out a nail. Can you not help me a little, and reduce 
 the amount one has to think of and do ? You have 
 not been attending to what I said, and I was so much in 
 earnest." She spoke in a tone of discouragement, and 
 the tone, more than the words, impressed the suscep- 
 tible heart of the boy. He began to cry.
 
 HOP a MY THUMB. 45 
 
 " You are cross." 
 
 " I am not cross, my pet ; I am never cross with 
 you, I love you too dearly ; but you try my patience 
 sometimes, and just now I am overstrained — and then 
 I did want to make you understand." 
 
 " Now papa's dead I'll do no more lessons, shall I ?"" 
 asked Jamie, coaxingly. 
 
 " You must, indeed, and with me instead of papa." 
 
 " Not ros,a, roses ? " 
 
 " Yes, rosa, roses.'" 
 
 Then he sulked. 
 
 " I don't love you a bit. It is not fair. Papa is 
 dead, so I ought not to have any more lessons. I hate 
 rosa, roscB ! " He kicked the legs of the chair peevishly 
 with his heels. As his sister said nothing, seemed to 
 be inattentive — for she was weary and dispirited — he 
 slapped her cheek by raising his hand over his head. 
 
 " What, Jamie ? strike me, your only friend ? " 
 
 Then he threw his arms round her again, and kissed 
 her. " I'll love you ; only, Ju, say I am not to do rosa^ 
 rosce ! " 
 
 " How long have you been working at the first 
 declension in the Latin Grammar, Jamie ? "
 
 46 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 He tried for an instant to think, gave up the effort, 
 laid his head on her shoulder, and said — • 
 
 " I don't know and don't care. Say I am not to do 
 i^osa, roscB ! " 
 
 " What ! not if papa wished it ? " 
 
 " I hate the Latin Grammar ! " 
 
 For a while both remained silent. Judith felt the 
 tension to which her mind and nerves had been sub- 
 jected, and lapsed momentarily into a condition of 
 something like unconsciousness, in which she was 
 dimly sensible of a certain satisfaction rising out of the 
 pause in thought and effort. The boy lay quiet, with 
 his head on her shoulder, for a while, then withdrew 
 his arms, folded his hands on his lap, and began to 
 make a noise by compressing the air between the 
 palms. 
 
 " There's a finch out there going ' Chink ! chink ! ' 
 and listen, Ju ! I can make ' chink! chink ! ' too." 
 
 Judith recovered herself from her distraction, and 
 
 said — 
 
 " Never mind the finch now. Think of what I say. 
 We shall have to leave this house." 
 
 " Why ? "
 
 HOP O MY THUMB. 47 
 
 '' Of course we must, sooner or later, and the sooner 
 the better. It is no more ours." 
 
 " Yes, it is ours. I have my rabbits here." 
 
 " Now that papa is dead, it is no longer ours."- 
 
 " It's a wicked shame." 
 
 " Not at all, Jamie. This house was given to papa 
 for his life only ; now it will go to a new rector, and 
 Aunt Dunes ^ is going to fetch us away to another 
 house." 
 
 " When ? " 
 
 *' To-day." 
 
 " I won't go," said the boy. " I swear I won't." 
 
 " Hush, hush, Jamie ! Don't use such expressions. 
 I do not know where you have picked them up. We 
 must go." 
 
 " And my rabbits, are they to go too ? " 
 
 " The rabbits ? We'll see about them. Aunt " 
 
 " I hate Aunt Dunce ! " 
 
 " You really must not call her that ; if she hears 
 you she will be very angry. And consider, she has 
 been taking a great deal of trouble about us." 
 
 " I don't care." 
 
 ' Dunes is the sliort for Dionysia.
 
 48 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " My dear, she is dear papa's sister." 
 
 " Why didn't papa get a nicer sister — like you ? '^ 
 
 ** Because he had to take what God gave him." 
 
 The boy pouted, and began to kick his heels against 
 the chair legs once more. 
 
 "Jamie, we must leave this house to-day. Aunt is 
 coming to take us both away." 
 
 " I won't go." 
 
 " But, Jamie, I am going, and the cook is going, and 
 so is Jane." 
 
 ** Are cook and Jane coming with us ? " 
 
 " No, dear." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " We shall not want them. We cannot afford ta 
 keep them any more, to pay their wages ; and then 
 we shall not go into a house of our own. You must 
 come with me, and be a joy and rest to me, dear Jamie."' 
 
 She turned her head over, and leaned it on his head. 
 The sun glowed in their mingled hair — all of one tinge 
 and lustre. It sparkled in the tears on her cheek. 
 
 " Ju ! may I have these buttons ? " 
 
 "What buttons?" 
 
 "Look!"
 
 HOP C MY THUMB. 49 
 
 He shook himself free from his sister, slid his feet 
 to the ground, went to a bureau, and brought to his 
 sister a large open basket that had been standing 
 on the top of the bureau. It had been turned out 
 of a closet by Aunt Dion37sia, and contained an 
 accumulation of those most profitless of collected 
 remnants — odd buttons, coat buttons, brass, smoked 
 mother-of-pearl, shirt buttons, steel clasps — buttons of 
 all kinds, the gathering together made during twenty- 
 five years. Why the basket, after having been turned 
 out of a lumber-closet, had been left in the room of 
 death, or why, if turned out elsewhere, it had been 
 brought there, is more than even the novelist can tell. 
 Suffice it that there it was, and by whom put there 
 could not be said. 
 
 " Oh ! what a store of pretty buttons ! " exclaimed the 
 boy. " Do look, Ju ! these great big ones are just like 
 those on Cheap Jack's red waistcoat. Here is a brass 
 one with a horse on it. Do see ! Oh, Ju ! please get 
 your needle and thread and sew this one on to my 
 black dress." 
 
 Judith sighed. It was in vain for her to impress the 
 realities of the situation on his wandering mind. 
 
 VOL. I. '\
 
 50 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Hark ! " she exclaimed. " There is Aunt Dunes. 
 I hear her voice — how loud she speaks ! She has come 
 to fetch us away." 
 
 " Where is she going to take us to ? " 
 
 " I do not know, Jamie." 
 
 " She will take us into the forest and lose us, like as 
 did Hop-o'-my-Thumb's father." 
 
 " There are no forests here — hardly any trees." 
 
 " She will leave us in the forest, and run away." 
 
 " Nonsense, Jamie ! " 
 
 " I am sure she will. She doesn't like us. She 
 wants to get rid of us. I don't care. May I have the 
 basket of buttons ? " 
 
 " Yes, Jamie." 
 
 '' Then I'll be Hop-o'-my-Thumb."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BUTTONS. 
 
 It was as Judith surmised. Mrs. Dionysia Trevisa 
 had come to remove her nephew and niece from the 
 rectory. She was a woman decided in character, 
 especially in all that concerned her interests. She 
 had made up her mind that the children could not be 
 left unprotected in the parsonage, and she could not 
 be with them. Therefore they must go. The servants 
 must leave ; they would be paid their month's wage, 
 but by dismissing them their keep would be econo- 
 mised. There was a factotum living in a cottage near, 
 who did the gardening, the cinder-sifting, and boot- 
 cleaning for the rectory inmates, he would look after 
 the empty house, and wait on in hopes of being engaged 
 to garden, sift cinders, and clean boots for the new rector. 
 
 UKiVERSITY Of ILLINO!
 
 52 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 As it was settled that the children must leave the 
 house, the next thing to consider was where they were 
 to be placed. The aunt could not take them to Pentyre 
 Glaze ; that was not to be thought of. They must be 
 disposed of in some other way. 
 
 Mrs. Trevisa had determined on a sale of her brother's 
 effects : his furniture, bedding, curtains, carpets, books, 
 plate, and old sermons. She was anxious to realize as 
 soon as possible, so as to know for certain what she 
 could calculate upon as being left for the support of 
 Judith and the brother. To herself the rector had left 
 only a ring and five guineas. She had not expected 
 more. His decease was not likely to be a benefit, but, 
 on the contrary, an embarrassment to her. He had left 
 about a thousand pounds, but then Mrs. Trevisa did 
 not 3^et know how large a bite out of this thousand 
 pounds would be taken by the dilapidations on rector}^, 
 glebe, and chancel. The chancel of the church was in 
 that condition that it afforded a wide margin for the 
 adjudication of dilapidations. They might be set down 
 at ten shillings or a thousand pounds, and no one could 
 say which was the fairest sum, as the chancel was deep 
 in sand and invisible. The imagination of the valuer
 
 THE BUTTONS. 53 
 
 might declare it to be sound or to be rotten, and till 
 dug out no one could impeach his judgment. 
 
 In those days, when an incumbent died, the widow 
 and orphans of the deceased appointed a valuer, and 
 the in-coming rector nominated his valuer, and these 
 two cormorants looked each other in the eyes — said to 
 each other, " Brother, what pickings ? " And as less 
 resistance to being lacerated and cleaned to the bone 
 was to be anticipated from a broken-hearted widow and 
 helpless children than from a robust, red-faced rector, 
 the cormorants contrived to rob the widow and the 
 fatherless. Then that cormorant who had been paid 
 to look after the interest of the widow and children 
 and had not done it said to the other cormorant, 
 "Brother, I've done you a turn this time; do me the 
 like when the chance falls to you." Now, although 
 nominally the money picked off the sufferers was to go 
 to the account of the in-comer, it was not allowed to 
 pass till the cormorants had taken toll of it. More- 
 over, these cormorants were architects, builders, soli- 
 citors, or contractors of some sort, and looked to get 
 something further out of the in-coming man they 
 favoured, whereas they knew they could get nothing
 
 54 /A' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 at all out of the departed man who was buried. Now 
 we have pretended to change all this ; let us persuade 
 ourselves we have made the conduct of these matters 
 more honest and just. 
 
 Aunt Dionysia did not know by experience what 
 valuers for dilapidations were, but she had always 
 heard that valuation for dilapidations materially 
 diminished the property of a deceased incumbent. 
 She was consequently uneasy, and anxious to know 
 the worst, and make the best of the circumstances 
 that she could. She saw clearly enough that the 
 sum that would remain when debts and valuation were 
 paid would be insufficient to support the orphans, 
 and she saw also with painful clearness that there 
 would be a necessity for her to supplement their 
 reduced income from her own earnings. This con- 
 viction did not sweeten her temper and increase the 
 cordiality with which she treated her nephew and niece. 
 
 *' Now, hoity-toity ! " said Aunt Dionysia; " I'm not 
 one of your mewlers and pewkers. I have my work 
 to do, and can't afford to waste time in the luxury of 
 tears. You children shall come with me. I will see 
 you settled in, and then Balhachet shall wheel over
 
 THE BUTTONS. 55 
 
 your boxes and whatever we want for the night. I 
 have been away from my duties longer than I ought, 
 and the maids are running wild, are after every one 
 who comes near the place, like horse-flies round the 
 cattle on a sultry day. I will see you to your quarters, 
 and then you must shift for yourselves. Balhachet can 
 come and go between the rectory and Zachie Menaida 
 as much as you want." 
 
 "Are we going to Mr. Menaida's, aunt?" asked 
 Judith. 
 
 " Did not I say Zachie Menaida ? If I said Zachie 
 Menaida I suppose I meant what I said, or are you 
 hard of hearing ? Come — time to me is precious. 
 Bustle — bustle — don't keep me waiting whilst you 
 gape." 
 
 After a while Mrs. Trevisa succeeded in getting her 
 nephew and niece to start. Judith, indeed, was ready 
 at the first suggestion to go with her aunt, glad to 
 get over the pang of leaving the house as quickly as 
 might be. It was to be the rupture of one thread of the 
 tie that bound her to the past, but an important thread. 
 She was to leave the house as a home, though she 
 would return to it again and again to carry away from
 
 56 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 it such of her possessions as she required and could 
 find a place for at Zachary Menaida's. But with 
 Jamie it was other. He had run away, and had to 
 be sought, and when found coaxed and cajoled into 
 following his aunt and sister. 
 
 Judith had found him, for she knew his nooks and dens. 
 He was seated in a laurel-bush playing with the buttons. 
 
 " Look, Ju ! there is some broken mirror among the 
 buttons. Stand still, and I will make the sun jump 
 into your eyes. Open your mouth, and I will send 
 him down your throat. Won't it be fun ; I'll tease 
 old Dunes with it." 
 
 "Then come along with me." 
 
 He obeyed. 
 
 The distance to Zachary Menaida's cottage was 
 about a mile and a quarter, partly through parish 
 roads, partly through lanes, the way in parts walled 
 and hedged up against the winds, in others completely 
 exposed to every breath of air, where it traversed a 
 down. 
 
 Judith walked forward with her aunt, and Jamie 
 lagged. Occasionally his sister turned her head to 
 reassure herself that he had not given them the slip ;
 
 THE BUTTONS. 57 
 
 Otherwise she attended as closely as she was able to 
 the instructions and exhortations of her aunt. She 
 and her brother were to be lodged temporarily at 
 Uncle Zachie's, that is to say, with Mr. Menaida, an 
 elderly, somewhat eccentric man, who occupied a 
 double cottage at the little hamlet of Polzeath. No 
 final arrangement as to the destination of the orphans 
 could be made till Aunt Dunes knew the result of the 
 sale, and how much remained to the children after the 
 father's trifling debts had been paid, and the consider- 
 able slice had been cut out of it by the valuers for 
 dilapidations. Mrs. Trevisa talked fast in her harsh 
 tones, and in a loud voice, without undulation or 
 softness in it, and expected her niece to hear and give 
 account for everything she told her, goading her to 
 attention with a sharp reminder when she deemed that 
 her mind was relaxed, and whipping her thoughts to- 
 gether when she found them wandering. But, indeed, 
 it was not possible to forget for one moment the 
 presence and personality of Dionysia, though the sub- 
 ject of her discourse might be unnoticed. 
 
 Every fibre of Judith's heart was strung and strained 
 to the uttermost, to acutest feeling, and a sympathetic
 
 58 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 hand drawn across them would have produced a soft, 
 thrilling, musical wail. Her bosom was so full to over- 
 flow that a single word of kindness, a look even that 
 told of love, would have sufficed to make the child 
 cast herself in a convulsion of grief into her aunt*s arms, 
 bury her face in her bosom, and weep out her pent-up 
 tears. Then, after perhaps half an hour, she would 
 have looked up through the rain into her aunt's face, 
 and have smiled, and have loved that aunt passionately, 
 self-sacrificingly, to her dying day. She was disposed 
 to love her — for was not Dionysia the only relative she 
 had ; and was she not the very sister of that father who 
 had been to her so much ? But Mrs. Trevisa was not 
 the woman to touch the taught chords with a light hand, 
 or to speak or look in love. She was hard, angular, 
 unsympathetic ; and her manner, the intonations of her 
 voice, her mode of address, the very movements of her 
 body, acted on the strained nerves as a rasping file, 
 that would fret till it had torn them through. 
 
 Suddenl}', round a corner where the narrow road 
 turned, two hundred yards ahead, dashed a rider on a 
 black steed, and Judith immediately recognized Cop- 
 pinger, on his famous mare. Black Bess : a mare much
 
 THE BUTTONS. 59 
 
 talked of, named after the horse ridden by Dick Turpin. 
 The recognition was mutual. He knew her instantly ; 
 with a jerk of the rein and a set of the brows he showed 
 that he was not indifferent. 
 
 Coppinger wore his slouched hat, tied under his chin 
 and beard, a necessary precaution in that gale-swept 
 country ; on his feet to his knees were high boots. He 
 wore a blue knitted jersey, and a red kerchief about his 
 throat. 
 
 Captain Cruel slightly slackened his pace, as the lane 
 was narrow; and as he rode past, his dark brow was 
 knit, and his eyes flashed angrily at Judith. He deigned 
 neither a glance nor a word to his housekeeper, who 
 curtseyed and assumed a fawning expression. 
 
 When he had passed the two women he dug his spurs 
 into Black Bess and muttered some words they did not 
 hear. 
 
 Judith, who had stood aside, now came forward into 
 the midst of the roadway and rejoined her aunt, who 
 began to say something, when her words and Judith's 
 attention were arrested by shouts, oaths, and cries in 
 their rear. 
 
 Judith and her aunt turned to discover the occasion
 
 6o IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 of this disturbance, and saw that Coppinger was off his 
 horse, on his feet, dragging the brute by the rein, and 
 was whirHng his crop, or hunting-whip, as he pursued 
 Jamie laying from him with cries of terror. But that 
 he held the horse and could not keep up with the boy, 
 Jamie would have suffered severely, for Coppinger was 
 in a livid fury. 
 
 Jamie flew to his sister. 
 
 " Save me, Ju ! he wants to kill me." 
 
 " What have you done ? " 
 
 " It is only the buttons." 
 
 *' Buttons, dear ? " 
 
 But the boy was too frightened to explain. 
 
 Then Judith drew her brother behind her, took from 
 him the basket he w^as carrying, and stepped to encounter 
 the angry man, who came on, now strugghng with his 
 horse, cursing Bess because she drew back, then plung- 
 ing forward with his whip above his head brandished 
 menacingly, and by this conduct further alarming Black 
 Bess. 
 
 Judith met Coppinger, and he was forced to stay his 
 forward course. 
 
 *' What has he done ? " asked the girl. " Why do 
 you threaten ? "
 
 THE BUTTONS. 6i 
 
 " The cursed idiot has strewn bits of glass and buttons 
 along the road," answered the captain, angrily. " Stand 
 aside that I may lash him, and teach him to frighten 
 horses and endanger men's lives." 
 
 " I am sorry for what Jamie has done. I will pick 
 up the things he has thrown down." 
 
 Cruel Coppinger's eyes glistened with wrath. He 
 gathered the lash of his whip into his palm along with 
 the handle, and gripped them passionatel}-. 
 
 " Curse the fool ! My Bess was frightened, dashed 
 up the bank, and all but rolled over. Do you know 
 he might have killed me ? " 
 
 " You must excuse him ; he is a very child." 
 
 " I will not excuse him. I will cut the flesh off his 
 back if I catch him." 
 
 He put the end of the crop handle into his mouth, 
 and, putting his right hand behind him, gathered the 
 reins up shorter and wound them more securely about 
 his left hand. 
 
 Judith walked backward, facing him, and he turned 
 with his horse and went after her. She stooped and 
 gathered up a splinter of glass. The sun striking through 
 the gaps in the hedge had flashed on these scraps of
 
 €2 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 broken mirror and of white bone, or burnished brass 
 buttons, and the horse had been frightened at them. 
 As Judith stooped and took up now a buckle, then a 
 button, and then some other shining trifle, she hardly 
 for an instant withdrew her eyes from Coppinger ; they 
 had in them the same dauntless defiance as when she 
 encountered him on the stairs of the rectory. But 
 now it was she who retreated, step by step, and he who 
 advanced, and yet he could not flatter himself that he 
 was repelling her. She maintained her strength and 
 mastery unbroken as she retreated. 
 
 " Why do you look at me so ? Why do you walk 
 backwards ? " 
 
 " Because I mistrust you. I do not know what you 
 might do were I not to confront you." 
 
 "What I might do? What do you think I would 
 do ? " 
 
 " I cannot tell. I mistrust you." 
 
 "Do you think me capable of lashing at you with 
 my crop ? " 
 
 " I think you capable of anything." 
 
 " Flattering that ! " he shouted, angrily. 
 
 " You would have lashed at Jamie."
 
 THE BUTTONS. 63 
 
 *' And why not ? He might have killed me." 
 
 " He might have killed 3'ou, but you should not 
 have touched him — not have thought of touching 
 him." 
 
 " Indeed ! Why not ? " 
 
 " Why not ? " She raised herself upright and looked 
 him straight into his eyes, in which fire flickered, flared, 
 then decayed, then flared again. 
 
 " You are no Dane, or you would not have asked 
 
 * Why not ? ' twice. Nay, you would not have asked it 
 once." 
 
 " Not a Dane ? " His beard and moustache were 
 quivering, and he snorted with anger. 
 
 " A Dane, I have read in history, is too noble and 
 brave to threaten women, and to strike children." 
 
 He uttered an oath, and ground his teeth. 
 
 " No ; a Dane would never have thought of asking 
 
 * Why not ? — why not lash a poor little silly 
 boy ? ' " 
 
 " You insult me ! You dare to do it ? " 
 Her blood was surging in her heart. As she looked 
 into this man's dark and evil face she thought of all 
 the distress he had caused her father, and a wave of
 
 64 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 loathing swept over her, nerved her to defy him to the 
 uttermost, and to proclaim all the counts she had against 
 him. 
 
 " I dare do it," she said, " because you made my own 
 dear papa's life full of bitterness and pain " 
 
 " I ! I never touched him, hardly spoke to him. I 
 don't care to have to do with parsons." 
 
 *' You made his life one of sorrow through your 
 godless, lawless ways, leading his poor flock astray, and 
 bidding them mock at his warnings and despise his 
 teachings. Almost with his last breath he spoke of 
 you, and the wretchedness of heart 3'ou had caused him. 
 And then j-ou dared — yes — 3'OU dared — you dared to 
 burst into our house where he lay dead, with shameful 
 insolence to disturb its peace. And now — " she gasped, 
 " and now, ah ! you lie when you say 3'ou are a Dane, 
 and talk of cutting and lashing the dead father's little 
 boy on his father's burial day. You are but one thing 
 I can name — a coward ! " 
 
 Did he mean it? No ! But blinded, stung to mad- 
 ness by her words, especially that last, he raised his 
 right arm with the crop. 
 
 Did she mean it ? No ! But in the instinct of self-
 
 THE BUTTONS. 65 
 
 preservation, thinking he was about to strike her, she 
 dashed the basket of buttons in his face, and they flew 
 right and left over him, against the head of Black Bess,, 
 a rain of fragments of mirror, brass, steel, mother-of- 
 pearl, and bone. 
 
 The effect was instantaneous. The mare plunged^ 
 reared, threw Coppinger backwards from off his feet, 
 dashed him to the ground, dragged him this way, that 
 way, bounded, still drawing him about by the twisted 
 reins, into the hedge, then back, with his hoofs upon 
 him, near, if not on, his head, his chest — then, released 
 by the snap of the rein, or through its becoming disen- 
 gaged, Bess darted down the lane, was again brought to 
 a standstill by the glittering fragments on the ground, 
 turned, rushed back in the direction whence she had 
 come, and disappeared. 
 
 Judith stood panting, paralyzed with fear and dismay. 
 Was he dead, broken to pieces, pounded by those strong 
 hoofs ? 
 
 He was not dead. He was rolling himself on the 
 ground, struggling clumsily to his knees. 
 
 " Are you satisfied ? " he shouted, glaring at her like 
 a wild beast through his tangled black hair that had 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 €6 IJV THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 fallen over his face. *' I cannot strike you nor your 
 brother now. My arm and the Lord knows what other 
 bones are broken. You have done that — and I owe you 
 something for it."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 UNCLE ZACHIE. 
 
 The astonishment, the consternation of Mrs. Trevisa 
 at what had occurred, which she could not fully 
 comprehend, took from her the power to speak. She 
 •had seen her niece in conversation with Cruel Cop- 
 pinger, and had caught snatches of what had passed 
 between them. All his words had reached her, and 
 •some of Judith's. When, suddenly, she saw the girl 
 'dash the basket of buttons in the face of the Captain, 
 saw him thrown to the ground, drawn about by his 
 frantic horse, and left, as she thought, half dead, her 
 dismay was unbounded. It might have been that 
 tCoppinger threatened Judith with his whip, but 
 nothing could excuse her temerity in resisting him, 
 in resisting him and protecting herself in thr. v/ay she
 
 68 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 did. The consequences of that resistance she could 
 not measure. Coppinger was bruised, bones were 
 broken, and Aunt Dionysia knew the nature of the 
 man too well not to expect his deadly animosity, and 
 to feel sure of implacable revenge against the girl whO' 
 had injured him — a revenge that would envelop all who' 
 belonged to her, and would therefore strike herself. 
 
 The elderly spinster had naturally plenty of strength 
 and hardness that would bear her through most shocks 
 without discomposure, but such an incident as that 
 which had just taken place before her eyes entirely 
 unnerved and dismayed her. 
 
 Coppinger was conveyed home by men called to the 
 spot, and Mrs. Trevisa walked on with her niece and 
 nephew in silence to the house of Mr. Zachary Menaida. 
 Jamie had escaped over the hedge, to put a stone and. 
 earth barrier between himself and his assailant directly 
 Judith interposed between him and Coppinger. Now 
 that the latter was gone, he came, laughing, over the 
 hedge again. To him what had occurred was fun. 
 
 At Menaida's the aunt departed, leaving her nephew 
 and niece with the old man, that she might hurry to 
 Pentyre Glaze and provide what was needed for Cop-
 
 UNCLE Z AC HIE. 69 
 
 pinger. She took no leave of Judith. In the haze of 
 apprehension that enveloped her mind glowed anger 
 against the girl for having increased her difficulties and 
 jeopardized her position with Coppinger. 
 
 Mr. Zachary Menaida was an old man, or rather a 
 man who had passed middle age, with grizzled hair 
 that stood up above his brow, projecting like the beak 
 ■of a ship or the horn of an unicorn. He had a big 
 nose inclined to redness, and kindly, watery eyes, was 
 close shaven, and had lips that, whenever he was in 
 perplexity, or worried with work or thought, he thrust 
 forward and curled. He was a middle-statured man, 
 inclined to stoop. 
 
 Uncle Zachie, as he was commonly called behind his 
 iback, was a gentleman b}' birth. In the Roman 
 'Catholic Church there is a religious order called that of 
 Alinims. In England we have, perhaps, the most 
 widely-diffused of orders, not confined to religion — it is 
 that of Crochets. To this order Mr. Menaida certainly 
 belonged. He was made up of hobbies and prejudices, 
 but they were hobbies and prejudices that might bore, 
 but never hurt others. 
 
 Probably the most difficult achievement one can
 
 70 h\ THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 conceive for a man to execute is to stand in his own 
 light ; yet Mr. Menaida had succeeded in doing this all 
 through his life. In the first place, he had heen bred 
 up for the law, but had never applied himself to the 
 duties of the profession to which he had been articled.. 
 As he had manifested as a boy a love of music, his 
 mother and sister had endeavoured to make him learn 
 to play on an instrument ; but, because so urged, lie 
 had refused to qualify himself to play decently on 
 pianoforte, violin, or flute, till his fingers had stiffened,, 
 whereupon he set to work zealously to practise, when 
 it was no longer possible for him to acquire even toler- 
 able proficiency. 
 
 As he had been set by his father to work on 
 skins of parchment, he turned his mind to skins- 
 of another sort, became an eager naturalist and 
 taxidermist. 
 
 That he had genius, or rather a few scattered sparks 
 of talent in his muddled brain, was certain. Every one 
 who knew him said he was clever, but pitied his in- 
 ability to turn his cleverness to purpose. But one 
 must take into consideration, before accepting the 
 general verdict that he was clever, the intellectual
 
 UA'CLE Z AC HIE. 71 
 
 abilities of those who formed this judgment. When 
 we do this, we doubt much whether their opinion is- 
 worth much. Mr. Menaida was not clever. He had' 
 flashes of wit, no steady light of understanding. Above 
 all, he had no application, a little of which might have 
 made him a useful member of society. 
 
 When his articleship was over, he set up as a 
 solicitor, but what business was offered him he neg- 
 lected or mismanaged, till business ceased to be 
 offered. He would have starved had not a small 
 annuity of fifty pounds been left him to keep the wolf 
 from the door, and that he was able to supplement 
 this small income with money made by the sale of his 
 stuffed specimens of sea-fowl. Taxidermy was the 
 only art in which he was able to do anything profit- 
 able. He loved to observe the birds, to wander on the 
 cliffs, listening to their cries, watching their flight, their 
 positions when at rest, the undulations in their feathers, 
 under the movement of the muscles as they turned 
 their heads or raised their feet ; and when he set 
 himself to stuff the skins he was able to imitate the. 
 postures and appearance of living birds with rare fidelity.. 
 Consequently, his specimens were in request, and orni-
 
 72 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 thologists and country gentlemen whose gamekeepers 
 had shot rare birds desired to have the skins dealt with, 
 and set in cases, by the dexterous fingers of Mr. Zachary 
 Menaida. He might have done more work of the same 
 kind, but that his ingrained inactivity and distaste for 
 work limited his output. In certain cases Mr. Menaida 
 would not do what was desired of him till coaxed and 
 flattered, and then he did it grumblingly and with sighs 
 at being subjected to killing toil. 
 
 Mr. Menaida was a widower; his married life had 
 not been long; he had been left with a son, now grown 
 to manhood, who was no longer at home. He was 
 abroad, in Portugal, in the service of a Bristol mer- 
 chant, an importer of wines. 
 
 As already said. Uncle Zachie did not begin the 
 drudgery of music till it was too late for him to acquire 
 skill on any instrument. His passion for music grew 
 with his inability to give himself pleasure from it. He 
 occupied a double cottage at Polzeath, and a hole 
 knocked through the wall that had separated the lower 
 rooms enabled him to keep his piano in one room and 
 his bird-stuffing apparatus in the other, and to run 
 from one to the other in his favourite desultory way,
 
 UNCLE Z AC HIE. 73 
 
 that never permitted him to stick to one thing at a 
 time. 
 
 Into this house Judith and her brother were intro- 
 duced. Mr. Menaida had been attached to the late 
 rector, the only other gentleman in culture, as in birth, 
 that lived in the place, and when he was told by Miss, 
 •or, as she was usually called, Mrs. Trevisa, that the 
 children must leave the parsonage and be put tempo- 
 rarily with some one suitable, and that no other suitable 
 house was available, he consented without making 
 much objection to receive them into his cottage. He 
 was a kindly man, gentle at heart, and he was touched 
 at the bereavement of the children whom he had known 
 since they were infants. 
 
 After the first salutation, Mr. Menaida led Judith 
 and the boy into his parlour, the room opening out of 
 his workshop. 
 
 " Look here," said he, " what is that ? " He pointed 
 to his piano. 
 
 "A piano, sir," answered Judith. 
 
 " Yes — and mind you, I hate strumming, though I 
 love music. When I am in, engaged at my labours, 
 no strumming. I come in here now and then as
 
 94 A^' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 relaxation, and run over this and that ; then, refreshed^ 
 go back to my work, but, if there is any strumming, I 
 shall be put out. I shall run my knife or needle into 
 my hand, and it will upset me for the day. You 
 understand — no strumming. When I am out, then 
 you may touch the keys, but only when I am out. 
 You understand clearly ? Sa}' the words after me : ' I 
 allow no strumming.' " 
 
 Judith did as required. The same was exacted of 
 Jamie. Then Mr. Menaida said — 
 
 " ^'erv well ; now we will have a dish of tea. I 
 daresay you are tired. Dear me, you look so. Goodness 
 bless me ! indeed you do. What has tired you has 
 been the trial you have gone through. Poor things^ 
 poor things! There, go to your rooms; my maid 
 Jump will show you where they are, and I will see 
 about making tea. It will do you good. You want it. 
 I see it." 
 
 The kind-hearted man ran about. 
 
 " Bless my soul ! where have I put the key of the 
 caddy ? And — really — my fingers are all over arsenical 
 soap. I think I will leave Jump to make the tea. 
 Jump, have you seen where I put the key ? Bless m^'
 
 UNCLE ZACHIE. 75' 
 
 soul ! where did I have it last ? Never mind ; I will 
 break open the caddy." 
 
 " Please, Mr. Menaida, do not do that for us, \st 
 can very well wait till the key is found." 
 
 " Oh ! I don't know when that will be. I shall have 
 forgotten about it if I do not find the key at once, or 
 break open the caddy. But, if you prefer it^ I have 
 some cherry brandy, or I would give you some milk 
 punch." 
 
 " No — no, indeed, Mr. Menaida." 
 
 " But Jamie — I am sure he looks tired. A little 
 cherry brandy to draw the threads in him together. 
 And suffer me, though not a doctor, to recommend it 
 to you. Bless my soul ! my fingers are all over 
 arsenical soap. If I don't have some cherry brandy 
 myself I shall have the arsenic get into m}' S3-stem. 
 I hope you have no cuts or scratches on your hand. 
 I forgot the arsenic when I shook hands with you. 
 Now, look here, Jump, bring in the saffron cake, and 
 I will cut them each a good hunch. It will do you 
 good, on my word it will. I have not spared either 
 figs or saffron, and then — I Avill help }'ou, as I love 
 you. Come and see my birds. That is a cormorant —
 
 76 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 a splendid fellow — looks as if run out of metal, all his 
 plumage, you know, and in the attitude as if swallowing 
 a fish. Do 3'ou see ? — the morsel is going down his 
 throat. And — how much luggage have you? Jump! 
 show the young lady where she can put away her gowns 
 and all that sort of thing. Oh, not come yet? All 
 right — a lady and her dresses are not long parted. 
 They will be here soon. Now, then. What will you 
 have ? — some cold beef — and cider? Upon my soul ! — 
 you must excuse me. I was just wiring that kittiwake. 
 Excuse me — I shall be ready in a moment. In the 
 meantime, there are books — Rollin's ' Ancient His- 
 tory,' a very reliable book. No — upon my word, my 
 mind is distracted. I cannot get that kittiwake right 
 without a glass of port. I have some good port. 
 Oliver guarantees it — from Portugal, you know. He 
 is there — first-rate business, and will make his fortune, 
 which is more than his father ever did." 
 
 Mr. Menaida went to a closet, and produced a bottle. 
 
 " Come here, Jamie. I know what is good for you." 
 
 " No — please, Mr. Menaida, do not. He has not 
 
 been accustomed to anything of the sort. Please 
 
 not, sir."
 
 UNCLE Z AC HIE. -jj 
 
 "Fudge!" said Uncle Zachie, holding up a glass 
 and pouring cherry brandy into it. " What is your 
 age ? — seventeen or eighteen, and I am fifty-two. I 
 have over thirty years more experience of the world 
 than you. Jamie, don't be tied to your sister's 
 apron-string. I know what is best for you. Girls 
 drink water, men something better. Come here,. 
 Jamie!" 
 
 " No, sir — I beseech you." 
 
 "Bless my soul! I know what is good for him. 
 Come to me, Jamie. Look the other way, Judith, if I 
 cannot persuade you." 
 
 Judith sighed, and covered her face with her hands. 
 There was to be no help, no support in Uncle Zachie. 
 On the contrary, he would break down her power over 
 Jamie. 
 
 "Jamie," she said, " if you love me, go upstairs." 
 
 "Presently, Ju. I want that first." And he took it,, 
 ran to his sister, and said — 
 
 " It is good, Ju ! " 
 
 " You have disobeyed me, Jamie — that is bad." 
 
 She stood on the threshold of further trouble, and 
 she knew it.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A VISIT. 
 
 ISIo sleep visited Judith's eyes that night till the first 
 ■streaks of dawn appeared, though she was weary, and 
 her frail body and over-exerted brain needed the refresh- 
 ment of sleep. But sleep she could not, for cares were 
 gathering upon her. 
 
 She had often heard her father, when speaking of 
 Mr. Menaida, lament that he was not a little more self- 
 controlled in his drinking. It was not that the old 
 fellow ever became inebriated, but that he hankered 
 after the bottle, and was wont to take a nip continually 
 to strengthen his nerves, steady his hand, or clear his 
 brain. There was ever ready some excuse satisfactory 
 to his own conscience ; and it was due to these inces- 
 ;sant applications to the bottle that his hand shook, his
 
 A VISIT. 79 
 
 ■eyes became watery, and his nose red. It was a danger 
 Judith must guard against, lest this trick should be 
 picked up by the childish Jamie, always apt to imitate 
 what he should not, and acquire habits easily gained, 
 hardly broken, that were harmful to himself. Uncle 
 Zachie, in his good nature, would lead the boy after 
 him into the same habits that marred his own life. 
 
 This was one thought that worked like a mole all 
 night in Judith's brain ; but she had other troubles as 
 well to keep her awake. She was alarmed at the con- 
 sequences of her conduct in the lane. She wondered 
 whether Coppinger were more seriously hurt than had 
 at first appeared. She asked herself whether she had 
 not acted wrongly when she acted inconsiderately, 
 whether in her precipitation to protect herself she had 
 not misjudged Coppinger, whether, if he had attempted 
 to strike her, it would net have been a lesser evil to 
 receive the blow, than to ward it off in such a manner 
 as to break his bones. Knowing by report the character 
 of the man, she feared that she had incurred his 
 deadly animosity. He could not, that she could see, 
 hurt herself in the execution of his resentment, but he 
 might turn her aunt out of his house. That she had
 
 8o IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 affronted her aunt she was aware ; Mrs. Trevisa's man- 
 ner in parting with her had shown that with sufficient 
 plainness. 
 
 A strange jumble of sounds on the piano startled 
 Judith. Her first thought and fear was that her 
 brother had gone to the instrument, and were amusing 
 himself on the keys. But on listening attentively she 
 was aware that there was sufficient sequence in the 
 notes to make it certain that the performer was a 
 musician, though lacking in facility of execution. She 
 descended the stairs and entered the little sitting-room.. 
 Uncle Zachie was seated on the music-stool, and was 
 endeavouring to play a sonata of Beethoven that was 
 vastly beyond the capacity of his stiff-jointed fingers. 
 Whenever he made a false note he uttered a little 
 grunt and screwed up his eyes, endeavoured to play the 
 bar again, and perhaps accomplish it only to break 
 down in the next. 
 
 Judith did not venture to interrupt him. She took 
 up some knitting, and seated herself near the piano, 
 where he might see her without her disturbing him. 
 He raised his brows, grunted, floundered into false 
 harmony, and exclaimed, " Bless me ! how badly they
 
 A VISIT. 8 1 
 
 do print music now-a-daj^s. Who, without the miracu- 
 lous powers of a prophet, could tell that B should be 
 natural ? " Then, turning his head over his shoulder, 
 addressed Judith, "Good-morning, missie. Are j'ou 
 fond of music ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, very." 
 
 " So you think. Every one says he or she is fond 
 of music, because that person can hammer out a psalm 
 tune or play the ' Rogues' March.' I hate to hear 
 those who call themselves musical strum on a piano. 
 They can't feel ; they only execute." 
 
 " But they can play their notes correctly," said 
 Judith, and then flushed with vexation at having made 
 this pointed and cutting remark. But it did not cause 
 Mr. Menaida to wince. 
 
 " What of that ? I give not a thank-you for mere 
 literal music-reading. Call Jump, set 'Shakespeare* 
 before her, and she will hammer out a scene — correctly 
 as to words ; but where is the sense ? Where the life ? 
 You must play with the spirit and play with the under- 
 standing also, as you must read with the spirit and read 
 with the understanding also. It is the same thing with 
 bird-stuffing. Any fool can ram tow into a skin and 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 82 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 thrust wires into the neck, but what is the result ? 
 You must stuff birds with the spirit and stuff with the 
 understanding also — or it is naught." 
 
 " I suppose it is the same with everything one does — 
 one must do it heartily and intelligently." 
 
 '* Exactly ! Now you should see my boy Oliver. 
 Have you ever met him ? " 
 
 " I think I have ; but, to be truthful, I do not recol- 
 lect him, sir." 
 
 *' I will bring you his likeness — in miniature. It is 
 in the next room." Up jumped Mr. Menaida, and ran 
 through the opening in the wall, and returned in another 
 moment with the portrait, and gave it into Judith's 
 hands. 
 
 "A fine fellow is Oliver! Look at his nose how 
 straight it is. Not like mine — that is a pump-handle. 
 He got his good looks from his mother, not from me. 
 Ah ! " He reseated himself at the piano, and ran — 
 incorrectly — over a scale. " It is all the pleasure I 
 have in life, to think of my boy, and to look at his 
 picture, and read his letters, and drink the port he 
 sends me — first-rate stuff. He writes admirable letters, 
 and never a month passes but I receive one. It would
 
 A J7S/T. 83 
 
 come expensive if he wrote direct, so his letter is en- 
 closed in the business papers sent to the house at 
 Bristol, and they forward to me. You shall read his 
 last — out loud. It will give me a pleasure to hear it 
 read by you." 
 
 " If I read properly, Mr. Menaida — with the spirit 
 and with the understanding." 
 
 " Exactly ! But you could not fail to do that, look- 
 ing at the cheerful face in the miniature, and reading 
 his words — pleasant and bright as himself. Pity you 
 have not seen him ; well, that makes something to live 
 for. He has dark hair and blue eyes — not often met 
 together, and when associated, ver}' refreshing. Wait ! 
 I'll go after the letter ; onl}', bless my soul ! where is 
 it? What coat did I have on when I read it? I'll 
 call Jump. She may remember. Wait ! do you recall 
 this?" 
 
 He stumbled over something on the keys which might 
 have been anything. 
 
 " It is Haydn. I will tell you what I think : Mozart 
 I delight in as a companion ; Beethoven I revere as a 
 master ; but Haydn I love as a friend. You were about 
 to say something ? "
 
 84 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Judith had set an elbow on the piano and put her 
 hand to her head, her fingers through the hair, and was 
 looking into Uncle Zachie's face with an earnestness he 
 could not mistake. She did desire to say something 
 to him ; but if she waited till he gave her an oppor- 
 tunity she might wait a long time. He jumped from 
 one subject to another with alacrity, and with rapid 
 forgetfulness of what he was last speaking about. 
 
 " Oh, sir, I am so ver}-, very grateful to you for 
 having received us into your snug little house " 
 
 " You like it ? Well, I only pay seven pounds for it. 
 Cheap, is it not ? Two cottages — labourers' cottages — 
 thrown together. Well, I might go farther and fare 
 worse." 
 
 "And, Mr. Menaida, I venture to ask you another 
 favour, which, if you will grant me, you will lay me 
 under an eternal obligation." 
 
 " You may command me, my dear." 
 
 " It is only this — not to let Jamie have anything 
 stronger than a glass of cider. I do not mind his 
 having that ; but a boy like him does not need what 
 is, no doubt, wanted by you who are getting old. I am 
 so afraid of the habit growing on him of looking for and
 
 A VISIT. 85 
 
 liking what is too strong for him. He is such a child, 
 so easily led, and so unable to control himself. It may 
 be a fancy, a prejudice of mine" — she passed her 
 nervous hand over her face — " I do hope I am not 
 offending you, dear Mr. ]\Ienaida; but I knou' Jamie so 
 well, and I know how carefully he must be watched and 
 checked. If it be a silly fancy of mine — and perhaps it 
 is only a silly fancy — }'et,"' she put on a pleading tone, 
 *'you will humour me in this, will you not, Mr. 
 Menaida ? " 
 
 " Bless my soul ! 3'ou have only to express a wish, 
 and I will fulfil it. For myself, you must know, I am 
 a little weak ; I feel a chill when the wind turns north 
 or east, and am ahva3's relaxed when it is in the south 
 or west ; that forces me to take something just to save 
 me from serious inconvenience, you understand." 
 
 " Oh quite, sir." 
 
 "And then — confound it ! — I am goaded on to \\ork 
 when disinclined. \\'hy, there's a letter come to me now 
 from Plymouth — a naturalist there, asking for more 
 birds ; and what can I do ? I slave, I am at it all day, 
 half the night ; I have no time to eat or sleep. I was 
 not born to stuff birds. I take it as an amusement, a
 
 86 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 pastime, and it is converted into a toil. I must brace 
 up my exhausted frame ; it is necessary to my health, 
 you understand ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, Mr. Menaida. And you really will humour 
 my childish whim ? " 
 
 " Certainly ; you may rely on me." 
 
 " That is one thing I wanted to say. You see, sir, 
 we have but just come into your house, and already, 
 last night, Jamie was tempted to disobey me, and take 
 what I thought unadvisable, so — I have been turning 
 it over and over in my head — I thought I would like to 
 come to a clear understanding with you, Mr. Menaida. 
 It seems ungracious in me, but you must pity me. I 
 have now all responsibility for Jamie on my head, and 
 I have to do what my conscience tells me I should do ; 
 only, I pray you, do not take offence at what I have 
 said." 
 
 " Fudge ! my dear; you are right, I dare say." 
 
 "And now that I have your promise — I have that, 
 have I not ? " 
 
 " Yes, certainly." 
 
 " Now I want your opinion, if }'0u will kindly give 
 it me. I have no father, no mother, to go to for
 
 A VISIT. 87 
 
 advice ; and so I venture to appeal to you — it is 
 about Captain Coppinger." 
 
 "Captain Coppinger!" repeated Uncle Zachie, 
 screwing up his brows and mouth. " Umph ! He 
 is a bold man who can give help against Captain 
 Coppinger, and a strong man as well as bold. How 
 has he wronged you ? " 
 
 " Oh ! he has not wronged me. It is I who have 
 hurt him." 
 
 "You— you?" Uncle Zachie laughed. "A little 
 creature such as you could not hurt Captain Cruel ! " 
 
 " But, indeed, I have ; I have throwai him down and 
 broken his arm and some of his bones." 
 
 " You ! " Uncle Zachie's face of astonishment and 
 dismay was so comical that Judith, in spite of her 
 anxiety and exhaustion, smiled ; but the smile was 
 without brightness. 
 
 " And pray, how in the name of wonder did you do 
 that ? Upon my word, you will deserve the thanks of 
 the Preventive men. They have no love for him ; 
 they have old scores they would gladly wipe off with a 
 broken arm, or, better still, a cracked skull. And pray, 
 how did you do this ? With the flour-roller ? "
 
 SS IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 *' No, sir ; I will tell you the whole story.' 
 
 Then, in its true sequence, with great clearness, she 
 related the entire narrative of events. She told how 
 her father, even with his last breath, had spoken of 
 Coppinger as the man who had troubled his life 
 b}' marring his work ; how that the Captain had 
 entered the parsonage without ceremon}' when her 
 ^dear father was lying dead upstairs, and how he had 
 called there boisterously for Aunt Dionysia because he 
 wanted something of her. She told the old man how 
 that her own feelings had been wrought, by this affront, 
 into anger against Coppinger. Then she related the 
 incident in the lane, and how that, when he raised his 
 arm against her, she had dashed the buttons into his 
 face, frightened the horse, and so produced an accident 
 that might have cost the Captain his life. 
 
 "Bless my soul!" exclaimed Mr. Menaida, "and 
 what do you want ? Is it an assault ? I will run to 
 my law-books and find out ; I don't know that it can 
 quite be made out a case of misadventure." 
 
 " It is not that, sir." 
 
 " Then what do you want ? " 
 
 " I have been racking my head to think what I
 
 A VISIT. 89 
 
 ought to do under the circumstances. There can be 
 no doubt that I aggravated him. I was very angr}', 
 both because he had been a trouble to my darling papa, 
 and then because he had been so insolent as to enter 
 our house and shout for Aunt Dunes ; but there was 
 something more — he had tried to beat Jamie, and it 
 was my father's day of burial. All that roused a bad 
 spirit in me, and I did say very bad words to him — 
 words a man of metal would not bear from even a child, 
 and I suppose I really did lash him to madness, and 
 he would have struck me — but perhaps not, he might 
 have thought better of it. I provoked him, and then 
 I brought about what happened. I have been con- 
 sidering what I ought to do. If I remain here and 
 take no notice, then he will think me very unfeeling, 
 and that I do not care that I have hurt him in mind 
 and body. It came into my head last night that I 
 would ask aunt to apologize to him for what I had 
 done, or, better still, should aunt not come here to-da}', 
 which is very likely, that I might walk with Jamie to 
 Pentyre and inquire how Captain Coppinger is, and 
 send in word by my aunt that I am sorry — very sorry." 
 " Upon m\- soul, I don't know what to say. I
 
 go lA THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 would not have done this to Coppinger myself for a 
 good deal of money. I think if I had, I would get out 
 of the place as quickly as possible, whilst he was 
 crippled by his broken bones. But then, you are a 
 girl, and he may take it better from you than from me^ 
 Well — yes ; I think it would be advisable to allay his 
 anger if you can. Upon my word, you have put your- 
 self into a difficult position. I'll go and look at my 
 law-books, just for m}' own satisfaction." 
 
 A heavy blow on the door, and without waiting for a 
 response and invitation to enter, it was thrown open^ 
 and there entered Cruel Coppinger, his arm bandaged,, 
 tied in splints, and bound to his body, with his heavy 
 walking-stick brandished by the uninjured hand. He 
 stood for a moment glowering in, searching the room 
 with his keen eyes till they rested on Judith. Then he 
 made an attempt to raise his hand to his head, but 
 ineffectually. 
 
 " Curse it ! " said he, " I cannot do it ; don't tear it off 
 my head with your eyes, girl. Here, you Menaida, come 
 here and take my hat off. Come instantly, or she— she 
 will do — the devil knows what she will not do to me." 
 
 He turned, and with his stick beat the door back, 
 that it slammed behind him..
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PATCHED PEACE. 
 
 *' Look at her ! " cried Coppinger, with his back against 
 the house door, and pointing to Judith with his stick. 
 
 She was standing near the piano, with one hand on 
 it, and was half turned towards him. She was in 
 black, but had a white kerchief about her neck. The 
 absence of all colour in her dress heightened the 
 lustre of her abundant and glowing hair. 
 
 Coppinger remained for a moment pointing, with a 
 half-sneer on his dark face. Mr. Menaida had nervously 
 complied with his demand, and had removed the hat 
 from the smuggler, and his dark hair fell about his 
 face. That face was livid and pale ; he had evidently 
 suffered much, and now everv movement was attended
 
 92 
 
 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 with pain. Not only had some of his bones been 
 broken, but he was bruised and strained. 
 
 " Look at her ! " he shouted again, in his deep com- 
 manding tones, and he fixed his fierce eyes on her and 
 knitted his brows. She remained immoveable, 
 awaiting what he had to say. Though there was 
 a flutter in her bosom, her hand on the piano did 
 not shake. 
 
 " 1 am very sorry, Captain Coppinger," said Judith, 
 in a low, sweet voice, in which there was but a sh'ght 
 tremulousness. " I profess that I believe I acted 
 wrongly yesterday, and I repeat that I am sorry — very 
 sorry, Captain Coppinger." 
 
 He made no reply. He lowered the stick that had 
 pointed at her, and he leaned on it. His hand shook 
 because he was in pain. 
 
 " I acted wrongly yesterday," continued Judith ; 
 " but I acted under provocation that, if it does not 
 justify what I did, palliates the wrong. I can say no 
 more — that is the exact truth." 
 
 " Is that all?" 
 
 " I am sorry for what was wrong in my conduct — 
 frankly sorry that you are hurt."
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. 93 
 
 " You hear her ? " laughed Coppinger, bitterly. " A 
 little chit like that to speak to me thus " — then turning 
 sharply on her, " Are you not afraid ? " 
 
 " No, I am not afraid ; why should I be ? " 
 
 " Why ? Ask any one in S. Enodoc — any one in 
 Cornwall — who has heard m}' name." 
 
 " I beg your pardon. I do not want to ask any 
 one else in S. Enodoc, any one else in Cornwall. I 
 ask you." 
 
 " Me ? You ask me why you should be afraid of 
 me ? " He paused, drew his thick brows together till 
 they formed a band across his forehead. " I tell you 
 that none has ever wronged me by a blade of grass or 
 a flock of wool but has paid for it a thousand fold. 
 And none has ever hurt me as you have done — none 
 has ever dared to attempt it." 
 
 " I have said that I am sorry." 
 
 " You talk like one cold as a mermaid. I do not believe 
 in your.-fearlessness. Why do you lean on the piano. 
 There, touch the wires with the very tips of your 
 fingers, and let me hear if they give a sound — and 
 sound they will if you tremble." 
 
 Judith exposed some of the wires by raising the top
 
 94 /-V THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 of the piano. Then she smiled, and stood with the 
 tips of her delicate fingers just touching the chords. 
 Coppinger listened, so did Uncle Zachie, and not a 
 vibration could they detect. 
 
 Presently she withdrew her hand, and said, " Is not 
 that enough ? When a girl says, ' I am sorry,' I 
 supposed the chapter was done and the book closed." 
 
 " You have strange ideas." 
 
 " I have those in which I was brought up by the 
 test of fathers." 
 
 Coppinger thrust his stick along the floor. 
 
 " Is it due to the ideas in which you have been 
 brought up that you are not afraid — when you have 
 reduced me to a wreck ? " 
 
 " And you ? — are you afraid of the wreck that you 
 have made ? " 
 
 The dark blood sprang into and suffused his whole 
 face. Uncle Zachie drew back against' the wall and 
 made signs to Judith not to provoke their self-invited 
 visitor ; but she N\as looking steadily at the Captain, 
 and did not observe the signals. In Coppinger's 
 presence she felt nerved to stand on the defensive, 
 and more, to attack. A threat in his whole bearing,
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. 95 
 
 in his manner of addressing her, roused every energy 
 she possessed. 
 
 " I tell you," said he harshly, " if any man had used 
 the word you threw at me yesterda}', I would have 
 murdered him ; I would have split his skull with the 
 handle of my crop." 
 
 " You raised your hand to. do it to me," said Judith. 
 
 " No ! " he exclaimed violently. " It is false ; come 
 here, and let me see if you have the courage, the fear- 
 lessness you affect. You women are past-masters of 
 dissembling. Come here; kneel before me and let me 
 raise my stick over you. See ; there is lead in the 
 handle, and with one blow I can split your skull and 
 dash the brains over the floor." 
 
 Judith remained immoveable. 
 
 " I thought it — you are afraid." 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 He let himself, with some pain, slowh- into a chair. 
 
 " You are afraid. You know what to expect. Ah ! 
 I could fell 3-ou and trample on you and break your 
 bones, as I was cast down, trampled on, and broken in 
 my bones yesterday — by you, or through you. Are 
 you afraid ? "
 
 96 AV THE ROAR OF THE SEA, 
 
 She took a step towards him. Then Uncle Zachie 
 waved her back, in great alarm. He caught Judith's 
 attention, and she answered him, " I am not afraid. 
 I gave him a word I should not have given him 
 yesterda}'. I will show him that I retract it full}-." 
 Then she stepped up to Coppinger and sank on her 
 knees before him. He raised his whip, with the 
 loaded handle, brandishing it over her. 
 
 " Now I am here," she said, " I again ask your for- 
 giveness, but I protest an apology is due to me." 
 
 He threw his stick away. " By heaven, it is ! '* 
 Then in an altered tone, " Take it so, that I ask 
 your forgiveness. Get up ; do not kneel to me. I 
 could not have struck you down had I willed, my arm 
 is stiff. Perhaps you knew it." 
 
 He rose with effort to his feet again. Judith drc>v^ 
 back to her former position by the piano, two hectic 
 spots of flame were in her cheek, and her eyes were 
 preternaturally bright. 
 
 Coppinger looked steadily at her for awhile, then he 
 said, "Are you ill? You look as if you were." 
 
 " I have had much to go through of late." 
 
 «' '^p,. 
 
 1 rue.
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. 97 
 
 He remained looking at her, brooding over some- 
 thing in his mind. She perplexed him ; he wondered 
 at her. He could not comprehend the spirit that was 
 in her, that sustained a delicate little frame, and made 
 her defy him. 
 
 His eyes wandered round the room, and he signed to 
 Uncle Zachie to give him his stick again. 
 
 " What is that ? " said he, pointing to the miniature 
 on the stand for music, where Mr. Menaida had put 
 it, over a sheet of the music he had been playing^ 
 or attempting to play. 
 
 " It is my son, Oliver," said Uncle Zachie. 
 
 " Why is it there? Has she been looking at it. Let 
 me see it." 
 
 Mr. Menaida hesitated, but presently handed it 
 lo. the redoubted Captain, with nervous twitches in his 
 face. " I value it highly — my only child." 
 
 Coppinger looked at it, with a curl of his lips ; then 
 handed it back to Mr. Menaida. 
 
 " Why is it here ? " 
 
 " I brought it here to show it her. I am very proud 
 of my son," said Uncle Zachie. 
 
 Coppinger was in an irritable mood, captious about 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 98 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 trifles. Why did he ask questions about this little 
 picture ? Wh}' look suspiciously at Judith as he did 
 so — suspiciously and threateningly ? 
 
 " Do you play on the piano ? " asked Coppinger. 
 " When the evil spirit was on Saul, David struck the 
 harp and sent the spirit away. Let me hear how 
 you can touch the notes. It may do me good. Heaven 
 knows it is not often I have the leisure or the occasion 
 or am in the humour for music. I would hear what 
 you can do." 
 
 Judith looked at Uncle Zachie. 
 
 " I cannot play," she said ; " that is to say, I can 
 play, but not now, and on this piano." 
 
 But Mr. Menaida interfered and urged her to play. 
 He was afraid of Coppinger. 
 
 She seated herself on the music-stool and considered 
 for a moment. The miniature was again on the stand. 
 Coppinger put out his stick and thrust it off, and it 
 would have fallen had not Judith caught it. She gave 
 it to Air. Menaida, who hastily carried it into the ad- 
 joining room, where the sight of it might no longer 
 irritate the Captain. 
 
 "What shall I play? — I mean, strum?" asked Judith,
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. 99 
 
 looking at Uncle Zachie. "Beethoven? No — Haydn. 
 Here are his ' Seasons.' I can play ' Spring.' " 
 
 She had a light but firm touch. Her father had been a 
 man of great musical taste, and he had instructed her. 
 But she had, moreover, the musical faculty in her, and she 
 played with the spirit and with the understanding also. 
 Wondrous is the power of music, passing that of fabled 
 necromancy. It takes a man up out of his most sordid 
 surroundings, and sets him in heavenly places. It 
 touches fibres of the inner nature lost, forgotten, 
 ignored, and makes them thrill with a new life. It 
 seals the eyes to outward sights, and unfurls new 
 vistas full of transcendental beauty ; it breathes over 
 hot wounds and heals them ; it calls to the surface 
 springs of pure delight, and bids them gush forth in 
 an arid desert. 
 
 It was so now, as, under the sympathetic fingers of 
 Judith, Haydn's song of the "Spring" was sung. A 
 May world arose in that little dingy room: the walls 
 fell back and disclosed green woods thick with red 
 robin and bursting bluebells, fields golden with butter- 
 cups, hawthorns clothed in flower, from which sang the 
 blackbird, thrush, the finch, and the ouzel. The low
 
 loo JX THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ceiling rose and overarched as the speed-well blue 
 vault of heaven, the close atmosphere was dispelled by 
 a waft of crisp, pure air ; shepherds piped, Boy Bluet 
 blew his horn, and milkmaids rattled their pails and 
 danced a ballet on the turf; and over all, down into 
 every corner of the soul, streamed the glorious, golden, 
 sun, filling the heart with gladness. 
 
 Uncle Zachie had been standing at the door leading 
 into his workshop, hesitating whether to remain, with 
 a Pish ! and a Pshaw ! or to fly away beyond hearings 
 But he was arrested, then drawn lightl}', irresistibly, 
 step by step, towards the piano, and he noiselessly 
 sank upon a chair, with his tyo.'s, fixed on Judith's 
 fingers as the}- danced over the keys. His features 
 assumed a more refined character as he listened ; the 
 water rose into his eyes, his lips quivered, and when, 
 before reaching the end of the piece, Judith faltered and 
 stopped, he laid his hand on her wrist and said : " My 
 dear — you play, you do not strum. Play when you will — 
 never can it be too long, too much for me. It may 
 steady my hand, it may dispel the chill and the damp 
 better than — but never mind — never mind." 
 
 Why had Judith failed to accomplish the piece?
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. loi 
 
 Whilst engaged on the notes she had felt that the search- 
 ing, beaming eyes of the smuggler were on her, fixed 
 with fierce intensit}'. She could meet them, looking 
 straight at him, without shrinking, and without con- 
 fusion, but to be searched by them whilst off her 
 guard, her attention engaged on her music, was what 
 she could not endure. 
 
 Coppinger made no remark on what he had heard, 
 but his face gave token that the music had not swept 
 across him without stirring and softening his hard 
 nature. 
 
 " How long is she to be here — with you ? " he asked, 
 turning to Uncle Zachie. 
 
 " Captain, I cannot tell. She and her brother had to 
 leave the rectory. They could not remain in that 
 house alone. Mrs, Trevisa asked me to lodge them 
 there, and I consented. I knew their father." 
 
 " She did not ask me. I would have taken them 
 in." 
 
 " Perhaps she was diffident of doing that," said 
 Uncle Zachie. " But really, on my word, it is no 
 inconvenience to me. I have room in this house, and 
 my maid Jump has not enough to do to attend on me."
 
 I02 IX THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "When you are tired of them send them to me." 
 
 " I am not likely to be tired of Judith, now that I 
 have heard her pla}-." 
 
 "Judith — is that her name?" 
 
 " Yes— Judith." 
 
 "Judith! " he repeated, and tlirust his stick along 
 the floor meditatively. " Judith ! " Then, after a 
 pause, with his eyes on the ground, "Why did not 
 your aunt speak to me ? Why does she not love you ? 
 — she does not, I know. Why did she not go to see 
 you when your father was alive ? \M'iy did you not 
 come to the Glaze ? " 
 
 " My dear papa did not wish me to go to your 
 house," said Judith, answering one of his man}" ques- 
 tions, the last, and perhaps the easiest to reply 
 to. 
 
 '' Wh}' not?" he glanced up at her, then down on 
 the floor again. 
 
 " Papa was not very pleased with Aunt Dunes — it 
 was no fault on either side, only a misunderstanding," 
 said Judith. 
 
 " ^^'hy did he not let you come to my house to salute 
 your aunt ? "
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. 103 
 
 Judith hesitated. He again looked up at her search- 
 ingly. 
 
 " If 3-ou really must know the truth, Captain Cop- 
 pinger, papa thought your house was hardly one to 
 which to send two children — it was said to harbour 
 such wild folk." 
 
 " And he did not know how fiercely and successfully 
 you could defend yourself against wild folk," said 
 Coppinger, with a harsh laugh. "It is we wild men that 
 must fear you, for you dash us about and bruise and 
 break us when displeased with our ways. We are not 
 so bad at the Glaze as we are painted, not by a half — 
 here is my hand on it." 
 
 Judith was still seated on the music-stool, her 
 hands resting in her lap. Coppinger came towards 
 her, walking stiffly, and extending his palm. 
 
 She looked do\\n\ in her lap. What did this fierce, 
 strange man, mean ? 
 
 " Will you give me your hand ? " he asked. " Is 
 there peace between us ? " 
 
 She was doubtful what to say. He remained, await- 
 ing her answer. 
 
 " I really do not know what reply to make," she
 
 104 /A' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 said, after awhile. " Of course, so far as I am con- 
 cerned, it is peace. I have myseh" no quarrel with you, 
 and you are good enough to say that you forgive me." 
 
 " Then, why not peace ? " 
 
 Again she let him wait before answering. She was 
 uneasy and unhappy. She wanted neither his good- 
 ^will nor his hostility. 
 
 '■' In all that affects me, I bear you no ill-will," she 
 said, in a low, tremulous voice; "but in that you were a 
 grief to my dear, dear father, discouraging his heart, 
 I cannot be forgetful, and so full of charity as to blot it 
 out as though it had not been." 
 
 " Then let it be a patched peace — a peace with 
 evasions and reservations. Better that than none. 
 Give me your hand." 
 
 " On that understanding," said Judith, and laid her 
 hand in his. His iron fingers closed round it, and he 
 drew her up from the stool on which she sat, drew her 
 forward near the window, and thrust her in front of 
 him. Then he raised her hand, held it by the wrist, 
 and looked at it. 
 
 " It is very small, very weak," he said, musingly. 
 
 Then there rushed over her mind the recollection of
 
 A PATCHED PEACE. 105 
 
 her last conversation with her father. He, too, had 
 taken and looked at her hand, and had made the same 
 remark. 
 
 Coppinger lowered her hand and his, and, looking at 
 her, said — 
 
 " You are very wonderful to me." 
 
 " I— why so ? " 
 
 He did not answer, but let go his hold of her, and 
 turned awa\' to the door. 
 
 Judith saw that he was leaving, and she hastened 
 to bring him his stick, and she opened the door for 
 him. 
 
 " I thank you," he said, turned, pointed his stick at 
 her, and added, " It is peace — though a patched one."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 c. c. 
 
 Days ensued, not of rest to body, but of relaxation to 
 mind. Judith's overstrained nerves had now given 
 them a period of numbness, a sleep of sensibility with 
 occasional turnings and wakenings, in which they re- 
 covered their strength. She and Jamie were settled 
 into their rooms at Mr. Menaida's, and the hours were 
 spent in going to and from the rectory removing their 
 little treasures to the new home — if a temporary place 
 of lodging could be called a home — and in arranging 
 them there. 
 
 There were a good many farewells to be taken, and 
 Judith marvelled sometimes at the insensibility with 
 which she said them — farewells to a thousand nooks 
 and corners of the house and garden, the shrubber}-,
 
 C. C. 107 
 
 and the glebe farm, all endeared by happy recol- 
 lections, now having their brightness dashed with rain. 
 To Judith this was a first revelation of the muta- 
 bility of things on earth. Hitherto, as a child, with 
 a child's eyes and a child's confidence, she had regarded 
 the rectory, the glebe, the contents of the house, the 
 flowers in the garden, as belonging inalienably to her 
 father and brother and herself. They belonged to them 
 together. There was nothing that was her father's 
 that did not belong to Jamie and to her, nothing of her 
 brother's or her own that was not likewise the property 
 of papa. There was no mine or thine in that little 
 family of love — save only a few birthday presents given 
 from one to the other, and these only special property 
 by a pla^-ful concession. But now the dear father was- 
 gone, and every right seemed to dissolve. From the 
 moment that he leaned back against the brick, lichen- 
 stained wall, and sighed — and was dead, house and 
 land had been snatched from them. And though the 
 contents of the rectory, the books, and the furniture^ 
 and the china belonged to them, it nnqs but for a little 
 while; these things must be parted with also, turned 
 into silver.
 
 loS IX THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Not because the money was needed, but because 
 Judith had no settled home, and no prospect of one. 
 Therefore she must not encumber herself with many 
 belongings. For a little while she would lodge with 
 Mr. Menaida, but she could not live there for ever; she 
 must remove elsewhere, and she must consider, in the 
 first place, that there was not room in Uncle Zachie's 
 cottage for accumulations of furniture, and that, in 
 the next place, she would probably have to part with 
 them on her next remove, even if she did retain them 
 for a while. 
 
 If these things were to be parted with, it would 
 be advisable to part with them at once. But to this 
 determination Judith could not bring herself at first. 
 Though she had put aside, to be kept, things too sacred 
 to her, too much part of her past life, to be allowed 
 to go mto the sale, after a few days she relinquished 
 even these. Those six delightful old coloured prints, in 
 frames, of a fox-hunt — how Jamie had laughed at them, 
 and followed the incidents in them, and never wearied 
 of them — must they go — perhaps for a song? It must 
 he so. That work-table of her mother's, of dark rose- 
 wood, with a crimson bag beneath it to contain wools
 
 C. C. 109 
 
 and silks, one of the few remembrances she had of 
 that mother whom she but dimly recalled — must that 
 go ? — what, and all those skeins in it of coloured floss 
 silk, and the piece of embroidery half finished ? the 
 work of her mother, broken off by death — that also ? 
 It must be so. And that rusty leather chair in which 
 papa had sat, with one golden-headed child on each 
 knee cuddled into his breast, with the flaps of his coat 
 drawn over their heads, which listened to the tick-tick 
 of his great watch, and to the tale of Little Snowflake, 
 or Gracieuse and Percinet ? — must that go also ? It 
 must be so. 
 
 Everv dav showed to Judith some fresh link that 
 had to be broken. She could not bear to think that 
 the mother's work-table should be contended for at a 
 vulgar auction, and struck down to a blousy farmer's 
 wife ; that her father's chair should go to some village 
 inn to be occupied by sots. She would rather have seen 
 them destroyed ; but to destroy them would not be right. 
 
 After a while she longed for the sale ; she desired to 
 have it over, that an entirely new page of life might be 
 opened, and her thoughts might not be carried back to 
 the past by everything she saw.
 
 no /X THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Of Coppinger nothing further was seen. Nor did 
 Aunt Dionysia appear at the rectory to superintend 
 the assortment of the furniture, nor at Mr. Menaida's 
 to inquire into the welfare of her nephew and niece. 
 To Judith it was a relief not to have her aunt in the 
 parsonage whilst she was there ; that hard voice and 
 unsympathetic manner would have kept her nerves on 
 the quiver. It was best as it was, that she should 
 have time, by herself, with no interference from any one, 
 to select what was to be kept and put away, what 
 Avas to be sold ; — to put away gently, with her own 
 trembling hand, and with eyes full of tears, the old 
 black gown and the Oxford hood that papa had worn 
 in church, and to burn his old sermons and bundles of 
 letters, unread and uncommented on by Aunt Dunes. 
 
 In these days Judith did not think much of Cop- 
 pinger. Uncle Zachie informed her that he was worse, 
 he was confined to his bed, he had done himself harm 
 by coming over to Polzeath the day after his acci- 
 dent, and the doctor had ordered him not to stir 
 from Pentyre Glaze for some time — not till his bones 
 were set. Nothing was known of the occasion of 
 Coppinger's injuries, so Uncle Zachie said ; it was
 
 C. C. Ill 
 
 reported in the place that he had been thrown from 
 his horse. Judith entreated the old man not to en- 
 lighten the ignorance of the public ; she was convinced 
 that naught would transpire through Jamie, who could 
 not tell a story intelligibly ; and ]\Iiss Dionysia Trevisa 
 was not likely to publish what she knew. 
 
 Judith had a pleasant little chamber at Mr. Menaida's; 
 it was small, low, plastered against the roof, the rafters 
 showing, and whitewashed like the w-alls and ceiling. 
 The light entered from a dormer in the roof, a low 
 window glazed with diamond quarries set in lead that 
 dickered incessantly in the wdnd. It faced the south, 
 and let the sun flow in. \ scrap of carpet was on 
 the floor, and white curtains to the window. In this 
 chamber Judith ranged such of her goods as she had 
 resolved on retaining, either as indispensable, or as 
 being too dear to her to part with unnecessarily, and 
 which, as being of small size, she might keep without 
 difficulty. 
 
 Her father's old travelling trunk, covered with hide 
 with the hair on, and his initials in brass nails — a 
 trunk he had taken with him to college — was there, 
 thrust against the wall ; it contained her clothes.
 
 112 AV THE ROAR Oh THE SEA. 
 
 Suspended above it was her little bookcase, with the 
 shelves laden with " The Travels of Rolando," Dr. 
 Aitkin's " Evenings at Home," Magnal's "Questions," 
 a French dictionar}-, " Paul and \^irginia," and a few 
 other works such as were the delight of children from 
 ninety to a hundred years ago. 
 
 Books for children were rare in those days, and such 
 as were produced were read and re-read till they were 
 woven into the very fibre of the mind, never more tO' 
 be extricated and cast aside. Now it is otherwise. A 
 child reads a story-book every week, and each new 
 story-book effaces the impression produced by the book 
 that went before. The result of much reading is the 
 same as the result of no reading — the production of a 
 blank. 
 
 How Judith and Jamie had sat together perched up 
 in a sycamore, in what they called their nest, and had 
 revelled in the adventures of Rolando, she reading 
 aloud, he listening a little, then lapsing into obser- 
 vation of the birds that flew and hopped about, or the 
 insects that spun and crept, or dropped on silky lines, 
 or fluttered humming about the nest, then returned to 
 attention to the book again ! Rolando would remain
 
 C. C. 113 
 
 through life the friend and companion of Judith. She 
 could not part with the four-volumed, red-leather-backed 
 book. 
 
 For the first day or two Jamie had accompanied his 
 sister to the rectory, and had somewhat incommoded 
 her by his restlessness and his mischief, but on the 
 third day, and thenceforth, he no further attended her.. 
 He had made fast friends with Uncle Zachie. He was 
 amused with watching the process of bird-stuffing, and 
 the old man made use of the boy by giving him tow to 
 pick to pieces and wires to straighten. 
 
 Mr. Menaida was pleased to have some one by him in 
 his workshop to whom he could talk. It was unim- 
 portant to him whether the listener followed the thread 
 of his conversation or not, so long as he was a listener. 
 Mr. Menaida, in his solitude, had been wont to talk to 
 himself, to grumble to himself at the impatience of his 
 customers, to lament to himself the excess of work that 
 pressed upon him and deprived him of time for relaxa- 
 tion. He was wont to criticise, to himself, his success 
 or want of success in the setting up of a bird. It was 
 far more satisfactory to him to be able to address all 
 these remarks to a second party. 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 114 ^^ THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 He was, moreover, surprised to find how keen and 
 just had been Jamie's observation of birds, their ways, 
 their attitudes. Judith was dehghted to think that 
 Jamie had discovered talent of some sort, and he had, 
 so Uncle Zachie assured her, that imitative ability 
 which is often found to exist alongside with low intel- 
 lectual power, and this enabled him to assist Mr. 
 Menaida in giving a natural posture to his birds. 
 
 It flattered the boy to find that he was appreciated, 
 that he was consulted, and asked to assist in a kind of 
 work that exacted nothing of his mind. 
 
 When Uncle Zachie was tired of his task, which was 
 every ten minutes or quarter of an hour, and that was 
 the extreme limit to which he could continue regular 
 work, he lit his pipe, left his bench, and sat in his 
 armchair. Then Jamie also left his tow picking or 
 Avire punching, and listened, or seemed to listen, to 
 Mr. Menaida's talk. When the old man had finished 
 his pipe, and, with a sigh, went back to his task, 
 Jamie was tired of hearing him talk, and was glad to 
 resume his work. Thus the two desultory creatures 
 suited each other admirably, and became attached 
 friends.
 
 C. C. 115 
 
 "^^ Jamie ! what is the meaning of this?" asked 
 Judith, with a start, and a rush of blood to her 
 heart. 
 
 She had returned in the twilight from the parsonage. 
 There was something in the look of her brother, some- 
 thing in his manner that was unusual. 
 
 " Jamie ! What have you been taking ? who gave 
 .it you?" 
 
 She caught the boy by the arm. Distress and 
 shame were in her face, in the tones of her voice. 
 
 ."Mr. Menaida grunted. 
 
 ■*' I'm sorry, but it can't be helped — really it can't," 
 ■said he, apologetically. " But Captain Coppinger has 
 sent me down a present of a keg of cognac — real 
 cognac, splendid, amber-like — and, you know% it was 
 uncommonly kind. He never did it before. So there 
 was no avoidance ; we had to tap it and taste it, and 
 give a sup to the fellow who brought us the keg, and 
 drink the health of the Captain. One could not be 
 churlish ; and, naturally, I could not abstain from 
 letting Jamie try the spirit. Perfectly pure — quite 
 wholesome — first-rate quality. Upon my word, he had 
 not more than a fly could dip his legs in and feel the
 
 ii6 IX THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 bottom ; but he is unaccustomed to anything stronger 
 than cider, and this is stronger than I supposed." 
 
 '* Mr. Menaida, you promised me " 
 
 " Bless me ! There are contingencies, you know. I 
 never for a moment thought that Captain Coppinger 
 would show me sucli a favour, would have such courtes3\ 
 But, upon my honour, I think it is your doing, my dear I 
 You shook hands and made peace with him, and he 
 has sent this in token of the cessation of hostilities and 
 the ratification of the agreement." 
 
 " Mr. Menaida, I trusted you. I did believe, whent 
 you passed your word to me, that you would hold to it." 
 
 " Now — there, don't take it in that way. Jamie, you 
 rascal, hop off to bed. He'll be right as a trivet to- 
 morrow morning, I stake m}^ reputation on that* 
 There, there, I will help him upstairs." 
 
 Judith suffered Mr. Menaida to do as he proposed. 
 When he had left the room with Jamie, who was re- 
 luctant to go, and struggled to remain, she seated her- 
 self on the sofa, and covering her face with her hands,, 
 burst into tears. Whom could she trust ? No one. 
 
 Had she been alone in the world she would have 
 been more confident of the future, been able to look
 
 C C. 117 
 
 forward with a good courage ; but she had to carry 
 Jamie with her, who must be defended from himself, 
 and from the weak good nature of those he was with. 
 
 When Uncle Zachie came downstairs, he slunk into 
 his work-room, and was very quiet. No lamp or candle 
 was lighted, and it was too dark for him to continue his 
 ■employment on the birds. What was he doing ? 
 Nothing. He was ashamed of himself, and keeping 
 ■out of Judith's way. 
 
 But Judith would not let him escape so easily ; she 
 went to him, as he avoided her, and found him seated 
 in a corner turning his pipe about. He had been afraid 
 of striking a light, lest he should call her attention to 
 his presence. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, come in here into the workshop to 
 me ! This is an honour, an unexpected pleasure. 
 Jamie and I have been drudging like slaves all day, 
 and we're fagged — fagged to the ends of our fingers 
 and toes." 
 
 " Mr. Alenaida, I am sorry to say it, but if such a 
 thing happens again as has taken place this evening, 
 Jamie and I must leave your house. I thank you with 
 an overflowing heart for your goodness to us ; but I
 
 11 8 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 must consider Jamie above everything else, and I must 
 see that he be not exposed to temptation." 
 " Where will you take him ? " 
 " I cannot tell ; but I must shield him." 
 " There, there, not a word ! It shall never happen 
 again. Now let bye-gones be b}e-gones, and play me 
 something of Beethoven, whilst I sit here and listen in 
 the twilight." 
 
 " No, Mr. Menaida, I cannot. I have not the spirit 
 to do it. I can think only of Jamie." 
 " So you punish me ! " 
 
 "Take it so. I am sorry; but I cannot do otherwise."" 
 " Now, look here ! Bless my soul ! I had almost for- 
 gotten it. Here is a note for you, from the Captain, I 
 believe." He went to the chimney-piece and took down 
 a scrap of paper, folded and sealed. 
 
 Judith looked at it, then went to the window, broke 
 the seal, and opened the paper. She read — 
 
 " Why do you not come and see me ? You do not 
 care for what }ou have done. They call me cruel ; but 
 you are that. — C. C."
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 EGO ET REGINA MEA. 
 
 The strange, curt note from Cruel Coppinger served in 
 a measure to divert the current of Judith's thoughts 
 from her trouble about Jamie. It was perhaps as well^ 
 or she would have fretted over that throughout the 
 night, not only because of Jamie, but because she felt 
 that her father had left his solemn injunction on her to 
 protect and guide her twin brother, and she knew that 
 whatsoever harm, physical or moral, came to him, 
 argued a lack of attention to her duty. Her father had 
 not been dead many days, and alread}' Jamie had been 
 led from the path she had undertaken to keep him in^ 
 
 But when she began to worry herself about Jamie, 
 the bold characters, " C. C," with which the letter was
 
 I20 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 signed, rose before her, and glowed in the dark as 
 ■characters of fire. 
 
 She had gone to her bedroom, and had retired for the 
 night, but could not sleep. The moon shone through 
 the lattice into her chamber, and on the stool b}- the 
 window lay the letter, where she had cast it. Her mind 
 turned to it. 
 
 \Vhy did Coppinger call her cruel ? Was she cruel ? 
 Is^ot intentionally so. She had not wilfully injured 
 him. He did not suppose that. He meant that she 
 was heartless and indifferent in letting him suffer with- 
 out making any inquir}- concerning him. 
 
 He had injured himself by coming to Polzeath to see 
 her the day following his accident. Uncle Zachie had 
 assured her of that. 
 
 She went on in her busy mind to ask \\'hy he had 
 come to see her ? Surely there had been no need for 
 him to do so ! His motive — the only motive she could 
 imagine — was a desire to relieve her from anxiety and 
 distress of mind ; a desire to show her that he bore no 
 ill-will towards her for what she had done. That was 
 generous and considerate of him. Had he not come 
 she certainly would have been unhappy and in unrest,
 
 EGO ET REGIXA MEA. 121 
 
 would have imagined all kinds of evil as likely to 
 ensue through his hostility — for one thing, her aunt's 
 dismissal from her post might have been expected. 
 
 But Coppinger, though in pain, and at a risk to his 
 health, had walked to where she was lodging to disabuse 
 her of any such impression. She was grateful to him 
 for so doing. She felt that such a man could not be 
 utterly abandoned by God, entirely void of good qualities, 
 as she had supposed, viewing him only through the re- 
 presentations of his character and the tales circulating 
 relative to his conduct that had reached her. 
 
 A child divides mankind into two classes — the good 
 and the bad, and supposes that there is no debatable 
 land between them, where light and shade are blended 
 into neutral tint ; certainly not that there are blots on 
 the white leaf of the lives of the good, and luminous 
 glimpses in the darkness of the histories of the bad. 
 As they grow older they rectify their judgments, and 
 such a rectification Judith had now to make. 
 
 She was assisted in this by compassion for Coppinger, 
 who was in suffering, and by self-reproach, because she 
 \vas the occasion of this suffering. 
 
 What were the exact words Captain Cruel had em-
 
 122 IN THE KOAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ployed ? She was not certain ; she turned the letter 
 over and over in her mind, and could not recall every 
 expression, and she could not sleep till she was satisfied. 
 Therefore she rose from bed, stole to the window, 
 took up the letter, seated herself on the stool, and 
 conned it in the moonlight. " Why do you not come 
 and see me ? You do not care for what you have done."" 
 That was not true; she was greatly troubled at what 
 she had done. She was sick at heart when she thought 
 of that scene in the lane, when the black mare was 
 leaping and pounding with her hoofs, and Coppinger 
 lay on the ground. One kick of the hoof on his head, 
 and he would have been dead. His blood would have 
 rested on her conscience never to be wiped off. Horrible 
 was the recollection now, in the stillness of the night- 
 It was marvellous that life had not been beaten out of 
 the prostrate man, that, dragged about by the arm, he 
 had not been torn to pieces, that every bone had not 
 been shattered, that his face had not been battered out of 
 recognition. Judith felt the perspiration stand on her 
 brow at the thought. God had been very good to her 
 in sending His angel to save Coppinger from death and 
 her from bloodguiitiness. She slid to her knees at the-
 
 EGO ET REGINA ME A. 123; 
 
 window, and held up her hands, the moonHght illumining: 
 her white upturned face, as she gave thanks to Heaven 
 that no greater evil had ensued from her inconsidered 
 act with the button-basket, than a couple of broken bones. 
 
 Oh ! it was very far indeed from true that she did not 
 care for what she had done. Coppinger must have 
 been blind indeed not to have seen how she felt her 
 conduct. His letter concluded : " They call me cruel ; 
 but you are that." He meant that she was cruel in not 
 coming to the Glaze to inquire after him. He had 
 thought of her trouble of mind, and had gone to 
 Polzeath to relieve her of anxiety, and she had shown 
 no consideration for him — or not in like manner. 
 
 She had been very busy at the rectory. Her mind 
 had been concerned with her own affairs, that was her 
 excuse. Cruel she was not. She took no pleasure in 
 his pain. But she hesitated about going to see him. 
 That was more than was to be expected of a young girl. 
 She would go on the morrow to Coppinger's house, and 
 ask to speak to her aunt ; that she might do, and from 
 Aunt Dionysia she would learn in what condition 
 Captain Cruel was, and might send him her respects 
 and wishes for his speedy recovery.
 
 124 LV THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 As she still knelt in her window, looking up through 
 the diamond panes into the clear, gre3'-blue night sk}^ 
 ■she heard a sound without, and, looking down, saw a 
 convoy of horses pass, laden with bales and kegs, and 
 followed or accompanied by men wearing slouched hats. 
 So little noise did the beasts make in traversing the 
 road, that Judith was convinced their hoofs must be 
 muffled in felt. She had heard that this was done by 
 the smugglers. It was said that all Coppinger's horses 
 had their boots drawn on when engaged in conveying 
 run goods from the place where stored to their desti- 
 nation. 
 
 These were Coppinger's men, this his convo}', doubt- 
 less. Judith thrust the letter from her. He was a bad 
 man, a very bad man ; and if he had met with an 
 accident, it was his due, a judgment on his sins. She 
 rose from her knees, turned away, and went back to 
 her bed. 
 
 Next day, after a morning spent at the rectory, in 
 the hopes that her aunt might arrive, and obviate the 
 need of her going in quest of her, Judith, disappointed 
 in this hope, prepared to walk to Pentyre. Mrs. 
 Dionysia had not acted with kindness towards her.
 
 EGO ET REGIXA MEA. 125 
 
 Judith felt this, without allowing herself to give to the 
 feeling articulate expression. She made what excuses 
 she could for Aunt Dunes : she was hindered by duties- 
 that had crowded upon her, she had been forbidden 
 going by Captain Cruel ; but none of these excuses 
 satisfied Judith. 
 
 Judith must go herself to the Glaze, and she had' 
 reasons of her own for wishing to see her aunt, inde- 
 pendent of the sense of obligation on her, more or less 
 acknowledged, that she must obey the summons of C. C. 
 There were matters connected with the rectory, with 
 the furniture there, the cow, and the china, that Mrs. 
 Trevisa must give her judgment upon. There were 
 bills that had come in, which Mrs. Trevisa must pay, 
 as Judith had been left without any money in her 
 pocket. 
 
 As the girl walked through the lanes she turned over 
 in her mind the stories she had heard of the smuggler 
 Captain, the wild tales of his wrecking ships, of his 
 contests with the Preventive men, and the ghastly 
 tragedy of Wyvill, who had been washed up headless 
 on Doom Bar. In former days she had accepted all 
 these stories as true, had not thought of questioning
 
 126 /A' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 them ; but now that she had looked Coppinger in the 
 face, had spoken with him, experienced his considera- 
 tion, she could not believe that they were to be accepted 
 -without question. That story of W3'vill — that Captain 
 Cruel had hacked off his head on the gunwale with his 
 axe — seemed to her now utterly incredible. But if true ! 
 She shuddered to think that her hand had been held in 
 that stained with so hideous a crime. 
 
 Thus musing, Judith arrived at Pentyre Glaze, and 
 entering the porch, turned from the sea, knocked at the 
 -door. 
 
 A loud voice bade her enter. She knew that the 
 ■voice proceeded from Coppinger, and her heart fluttered 
 with fear and uncertainty. She halted, with her hand 
 on the door, inclined to retreat without entering ; but 
 again the voice summoned her to come in, and gather- 
 ing up her courage she opened the door, and, still 
 holding the latch, took a few steps forward into the 
 hall or kitchen, into which it opened. 
 
 A lire was smouldering in the great open fire-place, 
 and beside it, in a carved oak armchair, sat Cruel 
 Coppinger, with a small table at his side, on which 
 were a bottle and glass, a canister of tobacco and a
 
 EGO ET REGIXA ME A. 127 
 
 pipe. His arm was strapped across his breast as she 
 had seen it a few days before. Entering from the 
 brilhant light of day, Judith could not at first observe 
 his face, but, as her eyes became accustomed to the 
 twilight of the smoke-blackened and gloomy hall, she 
 saw that he looked more worn and pale than he had 
 seemed the day after the accident. Nor could she 
 ■understand the expression on his countenance when 
 he was aw'are who was his visitor. 
 
 " I beg your pardon,'' said Judith ; " I am sorry to 
 have intruded ; but I wished to speak to my aunt." 
 
 " Your aunt ? Old mother Dunes ? Come in. Let 
 go your hold of the door and shut it. Your aunt started 
 a quarter of an hour ago for the rector}^" 
 
 "And I came along the lane from Polzeath." 
 
 " Then no wonder you did not meet her. She 
 \vent by the church path, of course, and over the 
 down." 
 
 " I am sorry to have missed her. Thank you. Captain 
 Coppinger, for telling me." 
 
 "Stay! " he roared, as he observed her draw back 
 into the porch. " You are not going yet ? " 
 
 " I cannot stay for more than a moment in which to
 
 128 AV THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ask how 30U do, and whether you are somewhat better ? 
 I was sorry to hear you had been worse." 
 
 " I have been worse, yes. Come in. You shall not 
 go. I am mewed in as a prisoner, and have none ta 
 speak to, and no one to look at but old Dunes. Come 
 in, and take that stool by the fire, and let me hear you 
 speak, and let me rest my eyes a while on your goldert 
 hair — gold, more golden than that of the Indies." 
 
 " I hope you are better, sir," said Judith, ignoring 
 the compliment. 
 
 " I am better now I have seen vou. I shall be worse 
 if you do not come in." 
 
 She refused to do this by a light shake of the head. 
 
 " I suppose you are afraid. We are wild and lawless- 
 men here, ogres that eat children ! Come, child, I 
 have something to show you." 
 
 "Thank you for your kindness; but I must run to- 
 the parsonage ; I really ;;n/s/ see my aunt." 
 
 " Then I will send her to Polzeath to you when she 
 returns. She will keep ; she's stale enough." 
 
 " I would spare her the trouble." 
 
 " Pshaw ! She shall do what I will. Now see — I 
 am wearied to death with solitude and sickness. Come,.
 
 EGO ET REGINA ME A. 129 
 
 amuse yourself, if you will, with insulting me — calling 
 me what you like; I do not mind, so long as you 
 remain." 
 
 " I have no desire whatever, Captain Coppinger, to 
 insult you and call you names." 
 
 " You insult me by standing there holding the latch — 
 standing on one foot, as if afraid to sully the soles by 
 treading my tainted floor. Is it not an insult that you 
 refuse to come in ? Is it not so much as saying to me, 
 ' You are false, cruel, not to be trusted ; you are not 
 worthy that I should be under the same roof with you, 
 and breathe the same air ' ? " 
 
 " Oh, Captain Coppinger, I do not mean that ! " 
 
 '• Then let go the latch and come in. Stand, if you 
 will not sit, opposite me. How can I see you there, in 
 the doorway ? " 
 
 " There is not much to see when I am visible," said 
 Judith, laughing. 
 
 " Oh no ! not much ! Only a little creature who has 
 more daring than any man in Cornwall — who will stand 
 up to, and cast at her feet, Cruel Coppinger, at whose 
 name men tremble." 
 
 Judith let go her hold on the door, and moved timidly 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 130 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 into the hall ; but she let the door remain half open, 
 that the light and air flowed in. 
 
 " And now," said Captain Coppinger, " here is a key 
 on this table by me. Do you see a small door by the 
 clock case. Unlock that door with the key." 
 
 " You want something from thence ? " 
 
 " I want you to unlock the door. There are beautiful 
 and costly things within that you shall see." 
 
 "Thank you ; but I would rather look at them some 
 other day, when my aunt is here, and I have more 
 time." 
 
 " Will you refuse me even the pleasure of letting you 
 see what is there ? " 
 
 " If you particularly desire it, Captain Coppinger, I 
 will peep in — but only peep." 
 
 She took the key from his table, and crossed the hall 
 to the door. The lock was large and clumsy, but she 
 turned the key by putting both hands to it. Then, 
 swinging open the door, she looked inside. The door 
 opened into an apartment crowded with a collection of 
 sundry articles of value: bales of silk from Italy, Genoa 
 laces, Spanish silver-inlaid weapons, Chinese porcelain, 
 bronzes from Japan, gold and silver ornaments, bracelets,
 
 EGO ET REGINA MEA. 131 
 
 iDrooches, watches, inlaid mother-of-pearl cabinets — an 
 amazing congeries of valuables heaped together. 
 
 " Well, now ! " shouted Cruel Coppinger. " What 
 say you to the gay things there ? Choose — take what 
 you will. I care not for them one rush. What do you 
 most admire, most covet ? Put out both hands and 
 take — take all you would have, fill your lap, carry off 
 all you can. It is yours." 
 
 Judith drew hastily back and re-locked the door. 
 
 " What have you taken ? " 
 
 ^'Nothing." 
 
 ■"Nothing? Take what you will ; I give it freely." 
 
 " I cannot take anything, though I thank you, 
 Captain Coppinger, for your kind and generous 
 •offer." 
 
 " You will accept nothing ? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " That is like you. You do it to anger me. As you 
 throw hard words at me — coward, wrecker, robber — 
 and as you dash broken glass, buttons, buckles, in my 
 face, so do you throw back my offers." 
 
 "It is not through ingratitude " 
 
 " I care not through what it is ! You seek to anger,
 
 132 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 and not to please me. Why will you take nothing ? 
 There are beautiful things there to charm a woman." 
 
 " I am not a woman ; I am a little girl." 
 
 " Why do you refuse me ? " 
 
 " For one thing, because I want none of the things 
 there, beautiful and costly though they be." 
 
 " And for the other thing ? " 
 
 " For the other thing — excuse my plain speaking — 
 I do not think they have been honestly got." 
 
 ** By heavens ! " shouted Coppinger. " There you 
 attack and stab at me again. I like your plainness of 
 speech. You do not spare me. I would not have you 
 false and double like old Dunes." 
 
 " Oh, Captain Coppinger ! I give you thanks from 
 the depths of my heart. It is kindly intended, and 
 it is so good and noble of you, I feel that; for I have 
 hurt you and reduced you to the state in which you now 
 are, and yet you offer me the best things in your house 
 — things of priceless value. I acknowledge your good- 
 ness ; but just because I know I do not deserve this 
 goodness I must decline what you offer." 
 
 *' Then come here and give me the key." 
 
 She stepped lightl}' over the floor to him and handed 
 
 i
 
 EGO ET RE GIN A ME A. 133 
 
 him the great iron key to his store chamber. As she 
 did so he caught her hand, bowed his dark head, and 
 kissed her fingers. 
 
 " Captain Coppinger ! " She started back, trembhng, 
 and snatched her hand from him. 
 
 " What ! have I offended you again ? Why not ? A 
 subject kisses the hand of his queen ; and I am a 
 subject, and you — you my queen."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 JESSAMINE. 
 
 " How are you, old man ? " 
 
 " Middlin', thanky' ; and how be you, gov'nor ? " 
 
 " Middlin' also; and your missus ? " 
 
 *' Only sadly. I fear she's goin' slow but sure the 
 way of all flesh." 
 
 " Bless us ! 'Tis a trouble and expense them sort o' 
 things. Now to work, shall we ? What do you figure 
 up?" 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 ** Oh well, I'm not here on reg'lar business. Huntin' 
 on my own score to-day." 
 
 " Oh, aye ! Nice port this." 
 
 '* Best the old fellow had in his cellar. I told the 
 executrix I should like to taste of it, and advise thereon,"' 
 
 The valuers for dilapidations, vulgarly termed delapi-
 
 JESSAMINE. 135 
 
 dators, were met in the dining-room of the deserted 
 parsonage. Mr. Scantlebray was on one side, Mr. 
 Cargreen on the other. Mr. Scantlebray was on that 
 of the " orphings," as he termed his clients, and Mr. 
 Cargreen on that of the Rev. Mr. Mules, the recently- 
 nominated rector to S. Enodoc. 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray was a tall, lean man, with light grey 
 eyes, a red face, and legs and arms that he shook every 
 now and then as though they were encumbrances to his 
 trunk, and he was going to shake them off, as a poodle 
 issuing from a bath shakes the water out of his locks. 
 Mr. Cargreen was a bullet-headed man, with a white 
 neckcloth, grey whiskers, a solemn face, and a sort of 
 perpetual " Let-us-pray " expression on his lips and in 
 his eyes — a composing of his interior faculties and ab- 
 straction from worldly concerns. 
 
 " I am here," said Mr. Scantlebra}-, " as adviser and 
 friend — }ou understand, old man — of the orphings and 
 their haunt." 
 
 " And I," said Mr. Cargreen, " am ditto to the in- 
 coming rector." 
 
 " And what do you get out cf this visit ? " asked Mr, 
 Scantlebray, who was a frank man.
 
 J 36 LY THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "Only three guineas as a fee," said Mr. Cargreen. 
 ^' And you?" 
 
 " Ditto, old man — three guineas. You understand, 
 I am not here as valuer to-day." 
 
 " Nor I — only as adviser." 
 
 " Exactly ! Taste this port. 'Taint bad — out of the 
 cellar of the old chap. Told auntie I must have it, 
 to taste and give opinion on." 
 
 " And what are you going to do to-day ? " 
 
 " I'm going to have one or two little things pulled 
 down, and other little things put to rights." 
 
 " Humph ! I'm here to see nothing is pulled down." 
 
 " We won't quarrel. There's the conservatory, and 
 the linney in Willa Park." 
 
 *' I don't know," said Cargreen, shaking his head. 
 
 ** Now, look here, old man," said Mr. Scantlebray. 
 "You let me tear the linney down, and I'll let the 
 conservatory stand." 
 
 " The conservatorv " 
 
 " I know ; the casement of the best bedroom went 
 through the roof of it. I'll mend the roof and repaint 
 it. You can try the timber, and find it rotten, and lay 
 on dilapidations enough to cover a new conservatory.
 
 JESSAMINE. 137 
 
 Pass the linney; I want to make pickings out of 
 that." 
 
 It may perhaps be well to let the reader understand 
 the exact situation of the two men engaged in sipping 
 port. Directly it was known that a rector had been 
 nominated to S. Enodoc, Mr. Cargreen, a Bodmin 
 valuer, agent, and auctioneer, had written to the happy 
 nominee, Mr. Mules, of Birmingham, inclosing his card 
 in the letter, to state that he was a member of an old- 
 established firm, enjoying the confidence, not to say the 
 esteem, of the principal county families in the north of 
 Cornwall, that he w^as a sincere Churchman, that, de- 
 ploring as a true son of the Church, the prevalence of 
 Dissent, he felt it his duty to call the attention of the 
 reverend gentleman to certain facts that concerned 
 liim, but especially the church, and facts that he 
 himself, as a devoted son of the Church on conviction, 
 after mature study of its tenets, felt called upon, in the 
 interests of that Church he so had at heart, to notice. 
 He had heard, said Mr. Cargreen, that the outgoing 
 parties from S. Enodoc were removing, or causing to 
 be removed, or were proposing to remove, certain 
 fixtures in the parsonage, and certain outbuildings,
 
 138 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 barns, tenements, sheds, and linneys on the glebe and 
 parsonage premises, to the detriment of its value, inas- 
 much as that such removal would be prejudicial to the 
 letting of the land, and render it impossible for the in- 
 coming rector to farm it himself without re-erecting the 
 very buildings now in course of destruction, or which 
 were purposed to be destroyed : to wit, certain out- 
 buildings, barns, cattle-sheds, and linneys, together 
 with other tenements that need not be specified. Mr, 
 Cargreen added that, roughly speaking, the dilapidations 
 of these buildings, if allowed to stand, might be assessed 
 at iJ^300 ; but that, if pulled down, it would cost the 
 new rector about £700 to re-erect them, and their re- 
 erection would be an imperative necessity. Mr. Cargreen 
 had himself, personally, no interest in the matter ; but, 
 as a true son of the Church, &c., &c. 
 
 By return of post Mr. Cargreen received an urgent re- 
 quest from the Rev. Mr. Mules to act as his agent, and 
 to act with precipitation in the protection of his interests. 
 
 In the meantime Mr, Scantlebray had not been 
 neglectful of other people's interest. He had written 
 to Miss Dionysia Trevisa to inform her that, though he 
 did not enjoy a present acquaintance, it was the solace
 
 JESSAMINE. 139 
 
 and joy of his heart to remember that some years ago, 
 before that infelicitous marriage of Mr. Trevisa, which 
 had led to Miss Dionysia's leaving the rectory, it had 
 been his happiness to meet her at the house of a mutual' 
 acquaintance, Mrs. Scaddon, where he had respectfull}', 
 and, at this distance of time, he ventured to add, humbly 
 and hopelessly admired her ; that, as he was riding 
 past the rectory, he had chanced to observe the con- 
 dition of dilapidation certain tenements, pig-styes,, 
 cattle-sheds, and other outbuildings were in, and that, 
 though it in no way concerned him, yet, for auld lang 
 syne's sake, and a desire to assist one whom he had 
 always venerated and, at this distance of time might 
 add, had admired, he ventured to offer a suggestion : to 
 wit, That a number of unnecessary outbuildings should 
 be torn down and utterly effaced before a new rector 
 was nominated, and had appointed a valuer; also that 
 certain obvious repairs should be undertaken and done 
 at once, so as to give to the parsonage the appearance 
 of being in excellent order, and cut away all excuse for 
 piling up dilapidations. Mr. Scantlebray ventured 
 humbly to state that he had had a good deal of experience 
 with those gentlemen who acted as valuers for dilapi-
 
 I40 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ■dations, and with pain he was obliged to add that a 
 more unscrupulous set of men it had never been his 
 .bad fortune to come into contact with. He ventured 
 to assert that, were he to tell all that he knew, or only 
 half of what he knew, as to their proceedings in valuing 
 for dilapidations, he would make both of Miss Trevisa's 
 -ears tingle. 
 
 At once Miss Dionysia entreated Mr. Scantlebray to 
 ■superintend and carry out with expedition such repairs 
 .and such demolitions as he deemed expedient, so as to . 
 forestall the other party. 
 
 " Chicken ! " said Mr. Cargreen. " That's what I've 
 brought for my lunch." 
 
 "And 'am is what I've got," said ]\Ir. Scantlebray. 
 ■"They'll go lovely together." Then, in a loud tone — 
 ^'Come in! " 
 
 The door opened, and a carpenter entered with a 
 piece of deal board in his hand. 
 
 " You won't mind looking out of the winder, Mr. 
 •Cargreen ? " said Mr. Scantlebray. " Some business 
 that's partick'ler my own. You'll find the jessamine — 
 Ihe white jessamine — smells beautiful." 
 
 Mr. Cargreen rose, and went to the dining-room win-
 
 JESSAMINE. 141 
 
 dow that was embowered in white jessamine, then \n 
 full flower and fragrance. 
 " What is it, Davy ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, I ain't got no dry old board for the floor 
 where it be rotten, nor for the panelling of the doors, 
 where broken through." 
 " No board at all ? " 
 
 " No, sir — all is green. Only cut last winter." 
 " Won't it take paint ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, not well. I've dried this piece by the 
 kitchen fire, and I find it'll take the paint for a time." 
 
 " Run, dry all the panels at the kitchen fire, and 
 then paint 'em." 
 
 " Thanky', sir ; but how about the boarding of the 
 floor ? The boards '11 warp and start." 
 
 " Look here, Davy, that gentleman who's at the 
 winder a-smelling to the jessamine is the surveyor and 
 valuer to t'other party. I fancy you'd best go round 
 outside and have a word with him, and coax him tO' 
 pass the boards." 
 
 " Come in ! " in a loud voice. Then there entered a 
 man in a cloth coat, with ver}" bushy whiskers. " How 
 d'y' do, Spargo ? What do you want ? "
 
 142 LV THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Scantlebray, I understand the Hnney 
 and cowshed is to be pulled down." 
 
 " So it is, Spargo." 
 
 " Well, sir ! " Mr. Spargo drew his sleeve across his 
 mouth. " There's a lot of very fine oak timber in it — 
 beams, and such like — that I don't mind buying. As 
 a timber merchant, I could find a use for it." 
 
 " Say ten pound." 
 
 " Ten pun' ! That's a long figure ! " 
 
 ■" Not a pound too much ; but come — we'll say eight." 
 
 ^' I reckon I'd thought five." 
 
 ■" Five ! — pshaw ! It's dirt cheap toj'ow at eight." 
 
 " Why to me, sir ? " 
 
 " Why, because the new rector will want to rebuild 
 "both cattleshed and linney, and he'll have to go to you 
 for timber." 
 
 " But suppose he don't, and cuts down some on the 
 glebe ? " 
 
 " No, Spargo — not a bit. There at the winder, 
 smelling to the jessamine, is the new rector's adviser 
 and agent. Go round by the front door into the gar- 
 ding, and say a word to him — you understand, and — " 
 jVIr. Scantlebray tapped his palm. " Do now go round
 
 JESSAMINE. 143 
 
 and have a sniff of the jessamine, Mr. Spargo ; and I 
 don't fancy Mr, Cargreen will advise the rector to use 
 home-grown timber. He'll tell him it sleeps away, 
 gets the rot, comes more expensive in the long run." 
 
 The valuer took a wing of chicken and a little ham, 
 and then shouted, with his mouth full — " Come in! " 
 
 The door opened, and admitted a farmer. 
 
 ^' How 'do, Mr. Joshua ? middlin' ? " 
 
 ^' Middlin', sir, thanky'." 
 
 ^' And what have you come about, sir ? " 
 
 "Well — Mr. Scantlebray, sir, I fancy you ha'n't 
 ■offered me quite enough for carting away of all the 
 rummage from them buildings as is coming down. 'Tis 
 a terrible lot of stone, and I'm to take 'em so faraway." 
 
 " Why not ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, it's such a lot of work for the bosses, 
 and the pay so poor." 
 
 " Not a morsel, Joshua — not a morsel." 
 
 "Well, sir, I can't do it at the price." 
 
 " Oh, Joshua ! Joshua ! I thought you'd a better 
 eye to the future. Don't you see that the new rector 
 will have to build up all these outbuildings again, and 
 where else is he to get stone except out of your quarry,
 
 144 /^' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 or some of the old stone you have carted away, ^vhich 
 you will have the labour of carting back ? " 
 
 " Well, sir, I don't know." 
 
 ''But I do, Joshua." 
 
 " The new^ rector might go elsewhere for stone." 
 
 " Not he. Look there, at the winder is Mr. Car- 
 " green, and he's in \vith the new parson, like a brother 
 — knows his ver}' soul. The new^ parson comes from 
 Birmingham. What can he tell about building-stone 
 here ? Mr. Cargreen will tell him }-ours is the only 
 stuff that ain't powder." 
 
 " But, sir, he may not rebuild." 
 
 " He must. Mr. Cargreen will tell him that he can't 
 let the glebe without buildings ; and he can't build 
 without }-our quarry stone : and if he has your quarry 
 stone — why, you will be given the carting also. Are 
 you satisfied ? " 
 
 " Yes — if Mr. Cargreen would be sure " 
 
 '* He's there at the winder, a-smelling to the jessa- 
 mine. You go round and have a talk to him, and make 
 him understand — you know. He's a little hard o' 
 hearing ; but the drum o' his ear is here," said Scantle- 
 bray, tapping his palm.
 
 JESSAMINE. 145 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray was now left to himself to discuss 
 the chicken wing — the liver wing he had taken — and 
 sip the port ; a conversation was going on in an under- 
 tone at the window ; but that concerned Mr. Car- 
 green and not himself, so he paid no attention to 
 it. 
 
 After a while, however, when this hum ceased, he 
 turned his head, and called out — 
 
 " Old man ! how about your lunch ? " 
 
 " I'm coming." 
 
 " And you found the jessamine very sweet ? " 
 
 " Beautiful ! beautiful ! " 
 
 " Taste this port. It is not what it should be : some 
 the old fellow laid in when he could afford it — before he 
 married. It is passed, and going back ; should have 
 been drunk five years ago." 
 
 Mr. Cargreen came to the table, and seated himself. 
 Then Mr. Scantlebray flapped his arms, shook out his 
 legs, and settled himself to the enjoyment of the lunch, 
 in the society of Mr. Cargreen. 
 
 " The merry-thought ! Pull with me, old man ? " 
 
 "Certainly! " 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray and Mr, Cargreen were engaged on 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 146 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 the meny-thought, each endeavouring to steal an ad- 
 vantage on the other, by working the lingers up the 
 bone unduly — when the window was darkened. 
 
 Without desisting from puUing at the merry-thought 
 each turned his head, and Scantlebray at once let go 
 his end of the bone. At the window stood Captain 
 Coppinger looking in at the couple, with his elbow 
 resting on the window-sill. 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray flattered himself that he was on 
 good terms with all the world, and he at once with 
 hilarity saluted the Captain by raising the fingers 
 greased by the bone to his brow. 
 
 " Didn't reckon on seeing you here, Cap"n." 
 
 ■■' I suppose not." 
 
 " Come and pick a bone with us ? " 
 
 Coppinger laughed a short snort through his nostrils. 
 
 " I have a bone to pick with 3-ou already." 
 
 " Never ! no, never ! " 
 
 '* You have forced yourself on Miss Trevisa to act as 
 her agent and valuer in the matter of dilapida- 
 tions." 
 
 " Not forced. Captain. She asked me to give her 
 friendly counsel. We are old acquaintances."
 
 JESSAMINE. 147 
 
 " I will not waste words. Give me her letter. She 
 no longer requires your advice and counsel. I am going 
 to act for her." 
 
 " You, Cap'n ! Lor' bless me ! You don't mean to 
 say so ! " 
 
 " Yes. I will protect her against being pillaged. 
 She is my housekeeper." 
 
 "But see! she is only executrix. She gets nothing 
 out of the property." 
 
 " No — but her niece and nephew do. Take it that 
 I act for them. Give me up her letter." 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray hesitated. 
 
 " But, Cap'n, I've been to vast expense. I've entered 
 into agreements " 
 
 " With whom ? " 
 
 " With carpenter and mason about the repairs." 
 
 ^' Give me the agreements." 
 
 " Not agreements exactly. They sent me in their 
 estimates, and I accepted them, and set them to 
 work." 
 
 " Give me the estimates." 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray flapped all his limbs, and shook his 
 head.
 
 148 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " You don't suppose I carry these sort of things 
 about with me ? " 
 
 " I have no doubt whatever they are in your pocket."' 
 Scantlebray fidgeted. 
 
 " Cap'n, try this port — a Httle going back, but not 
 to be sneezed at." 
 
 Coppinger leaned forward through the window. 
 
 " Who is that man with 3'ou ? " 
 
 " Mr. Cargreen." 
 
 "What is he here for?" 
 
 " I am agent for the Reverend Mules, the newly- 
 appointed rector," said Mr. Cargreen, with some 
 dignity. 
 
 " Then I request you both to step to the window tO' 
 me." 
 
 The two men looked at each other. Scantlebray 
 jumped up, and Cargreen followed. They stood in 
 the window-bay at a respectful distance from Cruel 
 Coppinger. 
 
 "I suppose you know who I am?" said the latter, 
 fixing his eyes on Cargreen. 
 
 " I believe I can form a guess." 
 
 "And your duty to your client is to make out as
 
 JESSAMINE. 149 
 
 bad a case as you can against the two children. They 
 have had just one thousand pounds left them. You 
 are going to get as much of that away from them as 
 you are permitted." 
 
 " My good sir — allow me to explain " 
 
 " There is no need," said Coppinger. " Suffice it 
 that you are one side. I — Cruel Coppinger — on the 
 other. Do you understand what that means ? " 
 
 Mr. Cargreen became alarmed, his face became very 
 blank. 
 
 " I am not a man to waste words. I am not a man 
 that many in Cornwall would care to have as an 
 adversary. Do you ever travel at night, Mr. Car- 
 green i 
 
 "Yes, sir, sometimes." 
 
 " Through the lanes and along the lonely roads ? " . 
 
 " Perhaps, sir — now and then." 
 
 '* So do I," said Coppinger. He drew a pistol from 
 his pocket, and played with it. The two "dilapidators " 
 shrank back. " So do I," said Coppinger ; " but I 
 never go unarmed. I would advise you to do the same 
 — if }ou are my adversary." 
 
 " I hope. Captain, that — that "
 
 ISO IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " If those children suffer through you more than 
 what I allow" — Coppinger drew up his one shoulder 
 that he could move — " I should advise you to consider 
 what Mrs. Cargreen will have to live on when a 
 widow." Then he turned to Scantlebray, who was 
 sneaking behind the window-curtain. 
 
 " Miss Trevisa's letter, authorizing you to act for 
 her ? " 
 
 Scantlebray, with shaking hand, groped for his 
 pocket-book. 
 
 " And the two agreements or estimates you signed."' 
 
 Scantlebray gave him the letter. 
 
 "The agreements also." 
 
 Nervously, the surveyor groped again, and reluctantly- 
 produced them. Captain Coppinger opened them with 
 his available hand. 
 
 " What is this ? Five pounds in pencil added to 
 each, and then summed up in the total ? What is the 
 meaning of that, pray ? " 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray again endeavoured to disappear 
 behind the curtain. 
 
 " Come forward ! " shouted Captain Cruel, striking 
 the window-sill with the pistol.
 
 JESSAMINE. 151 
 
 Scantlebra\- jumped out of his retreat at once. 
 
 " What is the meaning of these two five pounds ? '* 
 
 " Well, sir — Captain — it is usual ; every one does 
 it. It is my — what d'y' call it ? — consideration for 
 accepting the estimates." 
 
 " And added to each, and then charged to the orphans, 
 who pa}'you toact in their interest — so theypay wittingly, 
 directly, and unwittingly, indirectly. Well for you and 
 for Mrs. Scantlebray that I release you of your obliga- 
 tion to act for Mother Dunes — I mean Miss Trevisa." 
 
 " Sir," said Cargreen, " under the circumstances, 
 under intimidation, I decline to sully my fingers with 
 the business. I shall withdraw." 
 
 " No, you shall not," said Cruel Coppinger, reso- 
 lutely. " You shall act, and act as I approve ; and in 
 the end it shall not be to your disadvantage." 
 
 Then, without a word of farewell, he stood up, 
 slipped the pistol back into his pocket, and strode 
 away. 
 
 Mr. Cargreen had become white, or rather, the colour 
 of dough. x\fter a moment he recovered himself some- 
 what, and, turning to Scantlebray, with a sarcastic air, 
 said —
 
 ty2 IN THE ROAR OF THE i>EA. 
 
 *' I hope j'o/^ enjoy the jessamine. They don't smell 
 particularly sweet to me." 
 
 " Orful ! " groaned Scantlebray. He shook himself 
 — almost shaking off all his limbs in the convulsion — 
 *' Old man — them jessamines is orful ! "
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE CAVE. 
 
 Some weeks slipped by without bringing to Judith any 
 accession of anxiety. She did not go again to Pentyre 
 Glaze, but her aunt came once or twice in the week 
 to Polzeath to see her. Moreover, Miss Dionysia's 
 manner towards her was somewhat less contrary and 
 vexatious, and she seemed to put on a conciliatory 
 manner, as far as was possible for one so angular and 
 crabbed. Gracious she could not be; nature had made 
 it as impossible for her to be gracious in manner as to 
 be lovely in face and graceful in movement. 
 
 Moreover, Judith observed that her aunt looked at 
 her with an expression of perplexity, as though seeking 
 in her to find an answer to a riddle that vexed her 
 brain. And so it was. Aunt Dunes could not under-
 
 154 /A' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 stand the conduct of Coppinger towards Judith and 
 her brother. Nor could she understand how a child 
 like her niece could have faced and defied a man of 
 whom she herself stood in abject fear. Judith had 
 behaved to the smuggler in a way that no man in 
 the whole country-side would have ventured to behave. 
 She had thrown him at her feet, half killed him,, 
 and yet Cruel Coppinger did not resent what had 
 been done ; on the contrary, he went out of his way 
 to interfere in the interest of the orphans. He was 
 not the man to concern himself in other people's- 
 affairs ; wh}- should he take trouble on behalf of Judith 
 and her brother? That he did it out of consideration 
 for herself, Miss Trevisa had not the assurance to 
 believe. 
 
 Aunt Dunes put a few searching questions to Judith^ 
 but drew from her nothing that explained the mystery.. 
 The girl frankly told her of her visit to the Glaze 
 and interview with the crippled smuggler, of his offer 
 to her of some of his spoil, and of her refusal to receive 
 a present from him. Miss Trevisa approved of her 
 niece's conduct in this respect. It would not have 
 befitted her to accept anything. Judith, however, did
 
 THE CAVE. 15? 
 
 not communicate to her aunt the closing scene in that 
 interview. She did not tell her that Coppinger had 
 kissed her hand, nor his excuse for having done so,, 
 that he was rendering homage to a queen. 
 
 For one thing, Judith did not attach any importance 
 to this incident. She had always heard that Coppinger 
 was a wild and insolent man, wild and insolent in his 
 dealings with his fellow-men, therefore doubtless still 
 more so in his treatment of defenceless women. He had 
 behaved to her in the rude manner in which he would 
 behave to any peasant girl or sailor's daughter who 
 caught his fancy, and she resented his act as an in- 
 dignity, and his excuse for it as a prevarication. And,, 
 precisely, because he had offended her maidenly dignity,, 
 she blushed to mention it, even to her aunt, resolving 
 in her own mind not to subject herself to the like 
 again. 
 
 Miss Trevisa, on several occasions, invited Judith to 
 come and see her at Pentyre Glaze, but the girl always 
 declined the invitation. 
 
 Judith's estimate of Cruel Coppinger was modified. 
 He could not be the utter reprobate she had always 
 held him to be. She fully acknowledged that there
 
 156 AV THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 was an element of good in the man, otherwise he 
 would not have forgiven the injury done him, nor 
 would he have interfered to protect her and Jamie 
 from the fraud and extortion of the " dilapidators." 
 She trusted that the stories she had heard of Cop- 
 pinger's wild and savage acts were false, or over- 
 coloured. Her dear father had been mislead by reports, 
 as she had been, and it was possible that Coppinger 
 had not really been the impediment in her father's way 
 that the late rector had supposed. 
 
 Jamie was happy. He was even, in a fashion, 
 •making himself useful. He helped Air. Menaida in 
 his bird-stuffing on rainy days ; he did more, he ran 
 about the cliffs, learned the haunts of the wild-fowl, 
 ascertained where they nested, made friends with Pre- 
 ventive men, and some of those fellows living on shore, 
 without any very fixed business, who rambled over the 
 .country with their guns, and from these he was able 
 to obtain birds that he believed Air. Menaida wanted. 
 Judith was glad that the boy should be content, and 
 •enjoy the fresh air and some freedom. She would 
 have been less pleased had she seen the companions 
 Jamie made. But the men had rough good humour.
 
 THE CAVE. 157 
 
 and were willing to oblige the half-witted bo}', and they 
 encouraged him to go with them shooting, or to sit 
 with them in their huts. 
 
 Jamie manifested so strong a distaste for books, and 
 lesson time being one of resistance, pouting, tears, and 
 failures, that Judith thought it not amiss to put off the 
 resumption of these irksome tasks for a little while, 
 and to let the boy have his run of holidays. She 
 fancied that the loss of his father and of his old home 
 preyed on him more than was actually the case, and 
 believed that by giving him freedom till the first pangs 
 were over, he might not suffer in the way that she had 
 done. 
 
 For a fortnight or three weeks Judith's time had 
 been so fully engaged at the parsonage, that she could 
 not have devoted much of it to Jamie, even had she 
 thought it desirable to keep him to his lessons; nor 
 could she be with him much. She did not press him 
 to accompany her to the rectory, there to spend the 
 time that she was engaged sorting her father's letters 
 and memoranda, his account books and collection of 
 extracts made from volumes he had borrowed, as not 
 only would it be tedious to him, but he would distract
 
 i;8 IN THE KOAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 her mind. She must see that he was amused, and 
 must also provide that he was not at mischief. She 
 did take him with her on one or two occasions, and 
 found that he had occupied himself in disarranging 
 much that she had put together for the sale. 
 
 But she would not allow him wholly to get out of 
 the way of looking to her as his companion, and she 
 abandoned an afternoon to him now and then, as her 
 work became less arduous, to walk with him on the 
 cliffs or in the lanes, to listen to his childish prattle, 
 and throw herself into his new pursuits. The link 
 between them must not be allowed to become relaxed, 
 and, so far as in her lay, she did her utmost to main- 
 tain it in its former security. But, with his father's 
 death, and his removal to Mr. ]\Ienaida's cottage, a 
 new world had opened to Jamie ; he was brought into 
 association with men and boys whom he had hardly 
 known by sight previously, and without any wish to 
 disengage himself from his sister's authority, he was 
 led to look to others as comrades, and to listen to and 
 follow their promptings. 
 
 "Come, Jamie," said Judith, one day. "Now I 
 really have some hours free, and I will go a stroll 
 with you on the downs."
 
 THE CAVE 159 
 
 The boy jumped with pleasure, and caught her hand. 
 ^' I may take Tib with me ? " 
 ^' Oh yes, certainly, dear." 
 
 Tib was a puppy that had been given to Jamie by 
 one of his new acquaintances. 
 
 The day was fresh. Clouds driving before the wind, 
 now obscuring the sun, and threatening rain, then 
 clearing and allowing the sun to turn the sea green 
 and gild the land. Owing to the breeze, the sea was 
 ruffled and strewn with breakers shaking their white 
 foam. 
 
 " I am going to show' you something I have found, 
 Ju,"' said the boy. "You will follow, will you not ? " 
 " Lead the way. What is it ? " 
 
 " Come and see. I found it by myself. I shan't 
 tell any one but you." 
 
 He conducted his sister down the cliffs to the beach 
 of a cove. Judith halted a moment to look along the 
 coast with its mighty, sombre cliffs, and the sea glancing 
 with sun or dulled by shadow to Tintagel Head stand- 
 ing up at the extreme point to the north-east, with the 
 white surf lashing and heaving around it. Then she 
 drew her skirts together, and descended by the narrow
 
 i6o IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 path along which, with the Hghtness and confidence of 
 a kid, Jamie was skipping. 
 
 "Jamie ! " she said. " Have you seen ? — there is a 
 ship standing in the offing." 
 
 "Yes; she has been there all the morning." 
 
 Then she went further. 
 
 The cove was small, with precipitous cliffs rising 
 from the sand to the height of two to three hundred 
 feet. The seagulls screamed and flashed to and fro,, 
 and the waves foamed and threw up their waters 
 lashed into froth as white and light as the feathers, 
 on the gulls. In the concave bay the roar of the 
 plunging tide reverberated from ever}- side. Neither 
 the voice of Jamie, when he shouted to his sister from 
 some feet below, nor the barking of his little dog that 
 ran with him, could be distinguished by her. 
 
 The descent was rapid and rugged, yet not so pre- 
 cipitous but that it could be gone over by asses or mules.. 
 Evidence that these creatures had passed that way 
 remained in the impression of their hoofs in the soil,, 
 wherever a soft stratum intervened between the harder 
 shelvesof the rock, and hadcrumbled onthe path intoclay. 
 
 Judith observed that several paths — not all mule-
 
 THE CAVE. i6! 
 
 paths — converged lower down at intervals in the way 
 by which she descended, so that it would be possible, 
 apparently, to reach the sand from various points in the 
 down, as well as by the main track by which she was 
 stepping to the beach. 
 
 "Jamie!" called Judith, as she stood on the last 
 shoulder of rock before reaching the beach over a 
 wave-washed and smoothed surface. " Jamie ! I can 
 see that same ship from here." 
 
 But her brother could not hear her. He was throw- 
 ing stones for the dog to run after, and meet a wave as 
 it rushed in. 
 
 The tide was going out ; it had marked its highest 
 elevation by a bow of foam and strips of dark seaweed 
 and broken shells. Judith stepped along this line, and 
 picked out the largest ribbon of weed she could find. 
 She would hang it in her bedroom to tell her the 
 weather. The piece that had been wont to act as 
 barometer was old, and, besides, it had been lost in the 
 recent shift and confusion. 
 
 Jamie came up to her. 
 
 " Now, Ju, mind and watch me, or you will lose me 
 altogether." 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 i62 I.V THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Then he ran forward, with Tib dancing and yelping 
 round him. Presently he scrambled up a shelf of rock 
 inclined from the sea, and up after him, yelping, 
 scrambled Tib. In a moment both disappeared over 
 the crest. 
 
 Judith went up to the ridge and called to her brother. 
 
 " I cannot climb this, Jamie." 
 
 But in another moment, a hundred yards to her 
 right, round the extremity of the reef, came Tib and 
 his master, the boy dancing and laughing, the dog 
 ducking his head, shaking his ears, and, all but laugh- 
 ing also, evidently enjoying the fun as much as 
 Jamie. 
 
 " This wa}^, Ju ! " shouted the boy, and signed to his 
 sister. She could not hear his voice, but obeyed his 
 gestures. The reef ran athwart the top of the bay, 
 like the dorsal, jagged ridge of a crocodile half buried in 
 the sand. 
 
 Judith drew her skirts higher and closer, as the sand 
 was wet, and there were pools by the rock. Then, 
 holding her ribbon of seaweed by the harsh, knotted 
 root, torn up along with the leaf, and trailing it behind 
 her, she followed her brother, reached the end of the
 
 THE CA VE. 163 
 
 rock, turned and went in the traces of Jamie and Tib 
 in tile sand parallel to her former course. 
 
 Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, on the right hand 
 there opened before her, in the face of the cliff, a cave, 
 the entrance to which was completely masked by the 
 j-idge she had turned. Into this cave went Jamie with 
 his dog. 
 
 " I am not obliged to follow you there! " protested 
 Judith ; but he made such vehement signs to her to 
 follow him that she good-humouredly obeyed. 
 
 The cave ran in a long way, at first at no great 
 incline, then it became low overhead, and immediately 
 after the floor inclined rapidly upw'ard, and the vault 
 took a like direction. Moreover, light appeared in 
 front. Here, to Judith's surprise, she saw a large 
 boat, painted grey, furnished with oars and boat-hook. 
 She was attached by a chain to a staple in the rock. 
 Judith examined her with a little uneasiness. No name 
 was on her. 
 
 The sides of the cave at this point formed shelves, 
 not altogether natural, and that these were made use 
 of was evident, because on them lay staves of broken 
 <casks a four-flanged boat anchor, and some oars. Out
 
 l64 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 of the main trunk cave branched another that was 
 quite dark, and smaller; in this Judith, whose eyes 
 were becoming accustomed to the twilight, thought she 
 saw the bows of a smaller boat, also painted grey. 
 
 "Jamie!" said Judith, now in serious alarm; "we 
 ought not to be here. It is not safe. Do — do come 
 away at once." 
 
 " Why, what is there to harm us? " 
 
 " My dear, do come away." She turned to retrace 
 her steps, but Jamie stopped her. 
 
 " Not that way, Ju ! I have another by which ta 
 get out. Follow me still." 
 
 He led the way up the steep rubble slope, and the 
 light fell fuller from above. The cave was one of those 
 into which when the sea rolls and chokes the entrance, 
 the compressed air is driven out by a second orifice. 
 
 They reached a sort of well or shaft, at the bottom 
 of which they stood, but it did not open vertically but 
 bent over somewhat, so that from below the sky could 
 not be seen, though the light entered. A narrow path 
 was traced in the side, and up this Jamie and the dog 
 scrambled, followed by Judith, who was most anxious 
 to escape from a place which she had no doubt was.
 
 THE CAVE. 165 
 
 one of the shelter caves of the smugglers — perhaps of 
 Cruel Coppinger, whose house was not a mile distant. 
 
 The ascent was steep, the path slippery in places, 
 and therefore dangerous. Jamie made nothing of it, 
 nor did the little dog, but Judith picked her way with 
 •care ; she had a good steady head, and did not feel 
 giddy, but she was not sure that her feet might not 
 «lide in the clay where wet with water that dripped 
 from the sides. As she neared the entrance she saw 
 that hartstongue and maidenhair fern had rooted them- 
 -selves in the sheltered nooks of this tunnel. 
 
 After a climb of a hundred feet she came out on a 
 3edge in the face of the cliff above the bay, to see, 
 with a gasp of dismay, her brother in the hand of 
 Cruel Coppinger, the boy paral3-zed with fear so that 
 he could neither stir nor cry out. 
 
 "What ! " exclaimed the Captain, "you here?" as 
 he saw Judith stand before him. 
 
 The puppy was barking and snapping at his boots. 
 Coppinger let go Jamie, stooped and caught the dog 
 by the neck. " Look at me," said the smuggler 
 sternly, addressing the frightened boy. Then he 
 swung the dog above his head and dashed it down
 
 1 66 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 the cliffs ; it caught, then rolled, and fell out of sight 
 — certainly with the life beaten out of it. 
 
 ** This will be done to you," said he ; " I do not say 
 that I would do it. She " — he waved his hand towards 
 Judith — " stands between us. But if any of the fifteen 
 to twenty men who know this place and come here 
 should chance to meet you as I have met you, he 
 would treat you without compunction as I have treated 
 that dog. And if he were to catch you below^ — you 
 have heard of Wyvill, the Preventive man ? — you 
 would fare as did he. Thank your sister that you are 
 alive now. Go on — that wav — up the cliff." He 
 pointed with a telescope he held. 
 
 Jamie filed up the steep path like the wind. 
 
 "Judith," said Coppinger, "will you stand surety 
 that he does not tell tales ? " 
 
 " I do not believe he will say anything." 
 
 " I do not ask you to be silent. I know you will not 
 speak. But if you mistrust his power to hold his 
 tongue, send him away — send him out of the county — 
 as you love him." 
 
 " He shall never come here again," said Judith, 
 earnestly.
 
 THE CAVE. i6t 
 
 " That is well ; he owes his life to }'0U." 
 
 Judith noticed that Cruel Coppinger's left arm was 
 
 no more in a sling, nor in bands. 
 
 He saw that she observed this, and smiled grimly. 
 
 " I have my freedom with this arm once more — for the 
 
 first time to-day."
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 IN THE DUSK. 
 
 ■*' Kicking along, Mr. Menaida, old man ? " asked Mr. 
 Scantlebra}', in his loud, harsh voice, as he shook him- 
 self inside the door of Uncle Zachie's workshop. " And 
 the little 'uns ? Late in life to become nurse and keep 
 the bottle and pap-bowl going, eh, old man ? How's 
 the orphings ? Eating their own weight of victuals at 
 twopence-ha'penny a head, eh ? My experience of 
 orphings isn't such as would make a man hilarious, 
 and feel that he was filling his pockets." 
 
 " Sit you down, sir ; you'll find a chair. Not that one, 
 there's a dab of arsenical paste got on to that. Sit you 
 down, sir, over against me. Glad to see you and have 
 some one to talk to. Here am I slaving all day, worn 
 to fiddlestrings. There's Squire Rashleigh, of Mena-
 
 /N THE DUSK. 169 
 
 billy, must have a glaucous gull stuffed at once that 
 he has shot ; and there's Sir John St. Auhyn, of 
 Clowance, must have a case of kittiwakes by a certain 
 day ; and an institution in London wants a genuine 
 specimen of a Cornish chough. Do they think I'm a 
 tradesman to be ordered about ? That I've not an 
 income of my own, and that I am dependent on my 
 customers ? I'll do no more. I'll smoke and play the 
 piano. I've no time to exchange a word with any one. 
 Come, sit down. What's the news ? " 
 
 '■' It's a bad world," said Mr. vScantlebray, settling 
 himself into a chair. " That's to say, the world is 
 Avell enough if it warn't for there being too many 
 rascals in it. I consider it's a duty on all right- 
 thinking men to clear them off." 
 
 " Well, the world would be better if we had the 
 making of it," acquiesced Mr. Menaida. " Bless you ! 
 I've no time for anything. I like to do a bit of bird- 
 stuffing just as a sort of relaxation after smoking, but 
 to be forced to work more than one cares — I won't do 
 it ! Besides, it is not wholesome. I shall be poisoned 
 with arsenic. I must have some antidote. So will 
 you, sir — eh ? A drop of real first-rate cognac ? "
 
 I70 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " Thank you, sir — old man — I don't mind dipping a 
 feather and drawing it across my lips." 
 
 Jamie had heen so frightened by the encounter with 
 Cruel Coppinger that he was thoroughly upset. He was a 
 timid, nervous child, and Judith had persuaded him to go 
 to bed. She sat by him, holding his hand, comforting 
 him as best she might, when he sobbed over the loss of 
 his pup, and cheering him when he clung to her in 
 terror at the reminiscence of the threats of the Captain 
 to deal with him as he had with Tib. Judith was 
 under no apprehension of his re-visiting the cave ; he 
 had been too thoroughly frightened ever to venture 
 there again. She said nothing to impress this on him ; 
 all her efforts were directed towards allaying his alarms. 
 
 Just as she hoped that he was dropping off into 
 unconsciousness, he suddenly opened his eyes, and 
 said, "Ju! " 
 
 " Yes, dear." 
 
 " I've lost the chain." 
 
 " What chain, my pretty ? " 
 
 "Tib's chain." 
 
 The pup had been a trouble when Jamie went with 
 the creature through the village or through a farm-
 
 IN THE DUSK. 17 i 
 
 yard. He would run after and nip the throats of 
 chickens. Tib and his master had got into trouble on 
 this account ; accordingly Judith had turned out a 
 light steel chain, somewhat rusty, and a dog collar from 
 among the sundries that encumbered the drawers and 
 closets of the rectory. This she had given to her 
 brother, and whenever the little dog was near civili- 
 zation he was obliged to submit to the chain, 
 
 Judith, to console Jamie for his loss, had told him 
 that in all probability another little dog might be pro- 
 cured to be his companion. Alas ! the collar was on 
 poor Tib, but she represented to him that if another 
 dog were obtained it would be possible to buy or beg" 
 a collar for him, supposing a collar to be needful. This 
 had satisfied Jamie, and he was about to doze off, when 
 suddenly he woke to say that the chain was lost. 
 
 *' Where did you lose the chain, Jamie ? " 
 
 " I threw it down." 
 
 " Why did you do that ? " 
 
 " I thought I shouldn't want it when Tib was 
 
 gone." 
 
 And where did you throw it ? Perhaps it may be. 
 
 found again."
 
 172 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " I won't go and look for it — indeed I won't." He 
 shivered and clung to his sister. 
 
 " Where was it ? Perhaps I can find it." 
 
 " I dropped it at the top — on the down when I came 
 up the steps from — from that man, when he had killed 
 Tib." 
 
 " You did not throw it over the cliff?" 
 
 " No — I threw it down. I did not think I wanted it 
 any more." 
 
 " I dare say it may be found. I will go and see." 
 
 " No — no ! Don't, Ju. You might meet that man." 
 
 Judith smiled. She felt that she was not afraid of 
 that man — he would not hurt her. 
 
 As soon as the boy was asleep, Judith descended the 
 stairs, leaving his door ajar, that she might hear should 
 he wake in a fright, and entering the little sitting-room, 
 took up her needles and wool, and seated herself 
 quietly by the window, where the last glimmer of 
 twilight shone, to continue her work at a jersey she 
 was knitting for Jamie's use in the winter. 
 
 The atmosphere was charged with tobacco smoke, 
 almost as much as that of the adjoining workshop. 
 There was no door between the rooms; none had been
 
 IN THE DUSK. 175 
 
 needed formerly, and Mr. Menaida did not think of 
 supplying one now. It was questionable whether one 
 would have been an advantage, as Jamie ran to and 
 fro, and would be certain either to leave the door open 
 or to slamjt, should one be erected. IMoreover, a door 
 meant payment to a carpenter for timber and labour. 
 There was no carpenter in the village, and Mr. Menaida 
 spent no more money than he was absolutely obliged to 
 spend, and how could he on an annuity of fifty 
 pounds ? 
 
 Judith dropped her woolwork in her lap and fell into 
 meditation. She reviewed what had just taken place : 
 she saw before her again Coppinger, strongly built, 
 with his dark face, and eyes that glared into the soul 
 to its lowest depths, illumining all, not as the sun, but 
 as the lightning, and suffering not a thought, not a 
 feeling to remain obscure. 
 
 A second time had Jamie done what angered him, 
 but on this occasion he had curbed his passion and had 
 contented himself with a threat — nay, not even that — 
 with a caution. He had expressly told Jamie that he 
 himself would not hurt him, but that he ran into 
 danger from others.
 
 5 74 /-^' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 She was again looking at Coppinger as he spoke ; 
 she saw the changes in his face, the alterations of 
 expression in his eyes, in his intonation. She recalled 
 the stern, menacing tone in which he had spoken to 
 Jamie, and then the inflexion of voice as he referred 
 to her. A dim surmise — a surmise she was ashamed 
 to allow could be true — rose in her mind and thrilled 
 her with alarm. Was it possible that he WkeA her — 
 liked — she could, she would give even in thought no 
 other term to describe that feeling which she feared 
 might possibly have sprung up in his breast. That he 
 liked her — after all she had done ? Was that why he 
 had come to the cottage the day after his accident ? 
 AVas that what had prompted the strange note sent to 
 her along with the keg of spirits to Uncle Zachie ? 
 Was that the meaning of the offer of the choice of all 
 his treasures ? — of the vehemence with which he had 
 seized her hand and had kissed it ? Was that the 
 interpretation of those words of excuse in which he 
 had declared her his queen ? If this were so, then 
 .much that had been enigmatical in his conduct was 
 explained — his interference with the valuers for dilapi- 
 dations, the strange manner in which he came across
 
 IN THE DUSK. 175 
 
 lier path almost whenever she went to the rectory. 
 And this was the signification of the glow in his e3'es, 
 the quaver in his voice, when he addressed her. 
 
 Was it so ? — could it be so ? — that he liked her ? — 
 he — Cruel Coppinger — Cruel Coppinger — the terror of 
 the country round — liked her, the weakest creature 
 that could be found ? 
 
 The thought of such a possibility frightened her. 
 That the wild smuggler-captain should hate her she 
 could have borne with better than that he should like 
 her. That she was conscious of a sense of pleased sur- 
 prise, intermixed with fear, was inevitable, for Judith was 
 ■a woman, and there was something calculated to gratify 
 feminine pride in the presumption that the most law- 
 less and headstrong man on the Cornish coast should 
 have meant what he said when he declared himself her 
 subject. 
 
 These thoughts, flushing and paling her cheek, 
 quickening and staying her pulse, so engrossed Judith 
 that, though she heard the voices in the adjoining 
 apartment, she paid no heed to what was said. 
 
 The wind, which had been fresh all day, was blowing 
 stronger. It battered at the window where Judith
 
 176 AV THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 sat, as though a hand struck and brushed over the 
 panes. 
 
 ** Hot or cold ? " asked Uncle Zachie. 
 
 " Thanky', neither. Water can be got everywhere,, 
 but such brandy as this, old man — onl}- here." 
 
 " You are good to say so. It is Coppinger's present 
 to me." 
 
 " Coppinger! — his very good health, and may he lie 
 in clover to-morrow night. He's had one arm bounds 
 I've seen ; perhaps he ma}' have two before the night 
 grows much older." 
 
 Mr. Menaida raised his brows. . 
 
 " I do not understand you." 
 
 " I daresay not," said Scantlebray. " It's the duty 
 of all right-minded men to clear the world of rascals, 
 I will do my duty, please the pigs. Would you mind — - 
 just another drop ? " 
 
 After his glass had been refilled, Mr. Scantlebray 
 leaned back in his chair and said — 
 
 " It's a wicked world, and, between you and me and 
 the sugar dissolving at the bottom of my glass, you 
 won't find more rascality anywhere than in my pro- 
 fession, and one of the biggest rascals in it is Mr.
 
 IN THE DUSK. 177 
 
 Cargreen. He's on the side against the orphings. If 
 }'Ou've the faculty of pity in you, pity them — first, 
 because they've him agin' 'em, and, secondly, because 
 they've lost me as their protector. You know whom 
 they got in place of me ? I wish them joy of him. 
 But they won't have his wing over them long, I can 
 tell you." 
 
 ''You think not?" 
 
 " Sure of it." 
 
 " You think he'll throw it up ? " 
 
 " I rather suspect he won't be at libert}^ to attend 
 to it. He'll want his full attention to his own con- 
 sarns." 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray tipped off his glass. 
 
 "It's going to be a dirty night," said he. "You 
 won't mind my spending an hour or two with you, 
 will you ? " 
 
 " I shall be delighted. Have you any business in the 
 place?" 
 
 " Business — no. A little pleasure, may be." After 
 a pause, he said, " But, old man, I don't mind telling 
 you what it is. You are mum, I know. It is this — 
 the trap will shut to-night. Snap it goes, and the 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 178 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 rats are fast. You haven't been out on the cHffs to- 
 day, have you ? " 
 
 " No — bless me ! — no, I have not." 
 
 " The Black Prince is in the offing." 
 
 " The Black Prince ? " 
 
 "Aye, and she will run her cargo ashore to-night. 
 Now, I'm one who knows a little more than most. 
 I'm one o' 3'our straightfor'ard 'uns, always ready to 
 give a neighbour a lift in my buggy, and a helping hand 
 to the man that is down, and a frank, outspoken fellow 
 am I to ever}^ one I meet — so that, knocking about as 
 I do, I come to know and to hear more than do most, 
 and I happen to have learnt into what cove the Black 
 Prince will run her goods. I've a bone to pick with 
 Captain Cruel, so I've let the Preventive men have the 
 contents of my information-pottle, and they will be 
 ready to-night for Coppinger and the whole party of 
 them. The cutter will slip in between them and the 
 sea, and a party will be prepared to give them the 
 kindliest welcome by land. That is the long and short 
 of it — and, old man, I shall dearly love to be there 
 and see the sport. That is why I wish to be with you 
 for an hour or tw^o. Will you come as well ? "
 
 IN THE DUSK. 179 
 
 " Bless me ! " exclaimed Mr. Menaida, " not I ! You 
 don't suppose Coppinger and his men will allow 
 themselves to be taken easily ? There'll be a 
 fight." 
 
 "And pistols go off," said Scantlebray. "I shall 
 not be surprised or sorry if Captain Cruel be washed 
 up one of these next tides with a bullet through 
 his head. Ebenezer Wyvill is one of the guards, and 
 he has his brother's death to avenge." 
 
 " Do you really believe that Coppinger killed 
 him ? " 
 
 Mr. Scantlebray shrugged his shoulders. " It don't 
 matter much what / think, to-night, but what the 
 impression is that Ebenezer Wyvill carries about witli 
 him. I imagine that if Ebenezer comes across the 
 Captain he won't speak to him by word of mouth, nor 
 trouble himself to feel for a pair of handcuffs. So — fill my 
 glass again, old man, and we'll drink to a cold bed and 
 an indigestible lump — somewhere — in his head or in his 
 gizzard — to Cruel Coppinger, and the wiping off of old 
 scores — always a satisfaction to honest men." Scantle- 
 bray rubbed his hands. " It is a satisfaction to the 
 conscience — to ferret out the rats sometimes."
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 
 
 Judith, lost for awhile in her dreams, had been brought 
 to a sense of what was the subject of conversation in 
 the adjoining room by the mention of Coppinger's name 
 more than once. She heard the desultor}' talk for 
 awhile without giving it much attention, but Scantle- 
 bray's voice was of that harsh and penetrating nature 
 that to exclude it the ears must be treated as Ulj'sses 
 treated the ears of his mariners as he passed the rock 
 of the Syrens. 
 
 Presently she became alive to the danger in which 
 Coppinger stood. Scantlebray spoke plainly, and she 
 understood. There could be no doubt about it. The 
 Black Prince belonged to the Captain, and his dealings 
 with and through that vessel were betrayed. Not only
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. i8r 
 
 was Coppinger, as the head of a gang of smugglers, an 
 object worth capture to the Preventive men, but the 
 belief that he had caused the death of at least one of 
 their number had embittered them against him to such 
 an extent that, when the opportunity presented itself 
 to them of capturing him red-handed engaged in his 
 smuggling transactions, they were certain to deal with 
 him in a way much more summary than the processes 
 of a court of justice. The brother of the man who had 
 been murdered was among the coastguard, and he would 
 not willingly let slip a chance of avenging the death of 
 Jonas Wyvill. Coppinger was not in a condition to 
 defend himself effectively. On that da}', for the first 
 time, had he left off his bandages, and his muscles were 
 stiff and the newly-set bones still weak. 
 
 What was to be done ? Could Judith go to bed and 
 let Coppinger run into the net prepared for his feet — 
 go to his death ? 
 
 No sooner, however, had Judith realized the danger 
 that menaced Coppinger than she resolved on doing her 
 utmost to avert it. She, and she alone, could deliver 
 him from the disgrace, if not the death, that menaced him. 
 
 She stole lightly from the room and got her cloak.
 
 1 82 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 drew the hood over her head, and saUied forth into the 
 night. Heavy clouds rolled over the sky, driven before 
 a strong gale. Now and then they opened and disclosed 
 the twilight sk}-, in which faintly twinkled a few stars, 
 and at such times a dim light fell over the road, but in 
 another moment lumbering masses of vapour were 
 carried forward, blotting out the clear tract of sky, 
 and at the same time blurring all objects on earth with 
 one enveloping shadow. 
 
 Judith's heart beat furiously, and timidity came over 
 her spirit as she left the cottage, for she was unaccus- 
 tomed to be outside the house at such an hour; but the 
 purpose she had before her eyes gave her strength and 
 courage. It seemed to her that Providence had sud- 
 denly constituted her the guardian angel of Coppinger, 
 and she flattered herself that, were she to be the means 
 of delivering him from the threatened danger, she might 
 try to exact of him a promise to discontinue so danger- 
 ous and so questionable a business. If this night she 
 were able to give him warning in time, it would be 
 some return made for his kindness to her, and some 
 reparation made for the injury she had done him. 
 When for an instant there was a rift in the clouds.
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 183 
 
 and she could look up and see the pure stars, it seemed 
 to her that the}' shone down on her like angels' eves, 
 watching, encouraging, and promising her protection. 
 She thought of her father — of how his mind had been 
 set against Coppinger ; now, she felt convinced, he saw 
 that his judgment had been warped, and that he would 
 bless her for doing that which she had set her mind to 
 accomplish. Her father had been ever ready franklv 
 to acknowledge himself in the wrong when he had been 
 convinced that he was mistaken, and now in the light 
 of eternitv, with eyes undarkened by prejudice, he must 
 know that he was in error in his condemnation of 
 Coppinger, and be glad that his daughter was doing 
 something to save that man from an untimely and 
 bloody death. 
 
 Not a soul did Judith meet or pass on her way. She 
 had determined in the tirst case to go to Pentvre Glaze. 
 She would see if Captain Cruel were there. She trusted 
 he was at his house. If so, her course was simple ; 
 she would warn him and return to Mr. Menaida's 
 cottage as quickly as her feet would bear her. The 
 wind caught at her cloak, and she turned in alarm, 
 fancying that it was plucked by a human hand. No 
 one, however, was behind her.
 
 3 84 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 In Pentyre lane it was dark, very dark. The rude 
 lialf-walls, half-hedges stood up high, walled towards 
 the lane, hedged with earth and planted with thorns 
 towards the fields. The wind hissed through the 
 bushes ; there was an ash tree by a gate. One branch 
 sawed against another, producing a weird, even shrill 
 sound, like a cr}^ 
 
 The way led past a farm, and she stole along before it 
 with the utmost fear as she heard the dog in the yard 
 begin to bark furiously, and she believed that it was 
 not chained up, might rush forth at her. It might fall 
 upon her, and hold her there till the farmer came forth 
 and found her, and inquired into the reason of her 
 being there at night. If found and recognized, what 
 excuse could she give ? What explanation could satisfy 
 the inquisitive ? 
 
 She did not breathe freely till she had come out on 
 the down ; the dog was still barking, but, as he had 
 not pursued her, she was satisfied that he was not at 
 large. Her way now lay for a while over open common, 
 and then again entered a lane between the hedges that 
 enclosed the fields and meadows of the Glaze, 
 
 A dense darkness fell over the down, and Judith for
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 185 
 
 a while was uncertain of lier way, the track being 
 undistinguishable from the short turf on either side. 
 Suddenly she saw some flashes of light that ran along 
 the ground and then disappeared. 
 
 " This is the road," said a voice. 
 
 Judith's heart stood still, and her blood curdled in 
 her veins. If the cloud were to roll away — and she could 
 see far off its silvery fringe, she would become visible. 
 The voice was that of a man, but whether that of a 
 smuggler or of a coastguard she could not guess. By 
 neither did she care to be discovered. By the dim, 
 uncertain light she stole off the path, and sank upon the 
 ground among some masses of gorse that stood on the 
 common. Between the prickly tufts she might lie, and 
 in her dark cloak be mistaken for a patch of furze. She 
 drew her feet under the skirt, that the white stockings 
 might not betray her, and plucked the hood of her cloak 
 closely round her face. The gorse was sharp, and the 
 spikes entered her hands and feet, and pricked her as 
 she turned herself about between the bushes to bring 
 herself deeper among them. 
 
 From where she lay she could see the faintly illumined 
 horizon, and against that horizon figures were visible,
 
 1 86 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 one — then another — a third — she could not count accu- 
 rately, for there came several together; but she was con- 
 vinced there must have been over a dozen men. 
 
 " It's a'most too rough to-night, I reckon," said one 
 of the men. 
 
 "No it is not — the wind is not direct on shore. 
 They'll try it." 
 
 " Coppinger and his chaps are down in the cove 
 already," said a third. "They wouldn't go out if they 
 wasn't expecting the boats from the Black Prince.'' 
 
 " You are sure they're down, Wyvill ? " 
 
 " Sure and sartain. I seed 'em pass, and mighty 
 little I liked to let 'em go b}- — without a pop from my 
 pistol. But I'd my orders. No orders against the 
 pistol going off of itself. Captain, if I have a chance 
 presently ? " 
 
 No answer was given to this ; but he who had been 
 addressed as Captain asked — 
 
 " Are the asses out ? " 
 
 " Yes ; a whole score, I reckon." 
 
 " Then they'll come up the mule-path. We must 
 watch that. Lieutenant Hanson will be ready with the 
 cutter to run out and stop their wa}- back by water tO'
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 187 
 
 the Prince. The Princes men will take to the sea, and 
 he'll settle with them : but Coppinger's men will run> 
 up the cliffs, and we must tackle them. Go on." 
 
 Several now disappeared into the darkness, moving 
 towards the sea. 
 
 " Here, a word with you, Wyvill," said the Captain. 
 
 " Right, sir— here I be." 
 
 " Dash it ! — it is so dark ! Here, step back — a word 
 in your ear." 
 
 " Right you are, sir." 
 
 They came on to the turf close to where Judith 
 crouched. 
 
 " What is that ? " said the Captain, hastily. 
 
 "What, sir ?" 
 
 " I thought I trod on something like cloth. Have 
 you a light ? " 
 
 " No, sir ! Home has the dark lantern." 
 
 " I suppose it is nothing. What is all that dark 
 stuff there ? " 
 
 *' ril see, sir," said Wyvill, stooping, and groping; 
 with his hand. " By George, sir ! it's naught but 
 fuzz." 
 
 "Very well, \Vyvill — a word between us. I know
 
 i88 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ■that if 3-ou have the chance you intend to send a bullet 
 into Coppinger. I don't blame you. I won't say I 
 wouldn't do it — unofficially — but looky" here, man, if 
 you can manage without a bullet — say a blow with the 
 butt-end on his forehead and a roll over the cliffs — I'd 
 prefer it. In self-defence of course we must use fire- 
 arms. But there's some squeamish stomachs, you 
 understand ; and if it can come about accidentally, as 
 it were — as if he'd missed his footing — I'd prefer it. 
 Make it pleasant all round, if you can." 
 
 " Yes, sir; leave it to me." 
 
 " It oughtn't to be difficult, you know, Wyvill. I 
 hear he's broke one arm, so is like to be insecure in his 
 hold climbing the cliffs. Then no questions asked, 
 and more pleasant, you know. You understand me ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir; thank you, sir." 
 
 Then they went on, and were lost to sight and to 
 hearing. For some minutes Judith did not stir. She 
 lay, recovering her breath ; she had hardly ventured to 
 breathe whilst the two men were b}' her, the Cap- 
 tain with his foot on her skirt. Now she remained 
 motionless, to consider what was to be done. It was 
 ■of no further use her going on to Pentyre Glaze. Cop-
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 189' 
 
 pinger had left it. Wyvill, who had been planted as 
 spy, had seen him with his carriers defile out of the 
 lane with the asses that were to bring up the smuggled 
 goods from the shore. 
 
 She dare not take the path by which on the preceding 
 afternoon she had descended with Jamie to the beach, 
 for it was guarded by the Preventive men. 
 
 There was but one way by which she could reach the 
 shore and warn Coppinger, and that was by the chim- 
 ney of the cave — a way dangerous in daylight, one, 
 moreover, not easy to find at night. The mouth of the 
 chimney opened upon a ledge that overhung the sea 
 half-way down the face of the precipice, and this 
 ledge could only be reached by a narrow track — a track 
 apparently traced by sheep. 
 
 Judith thought that she might find her way to that 
 part of the down from which the descent was to be 
 made : for she had noticed that what is locally called 
 a "new-take" wall came near it, and if she could hit 
 this wall, she believed she could trace it up to where it 
 approached the cliff: and the track descended some- 
 where thereabouts. She waited where she lay till the 
 heavy clouds rolled by, and for a brief space the sky
 
 190 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 was comparatively clear. Then she rose, and took the 
 direction in which she ought to go to reach the " new- 
 take " wall. x\s she went over the down, she heard the 
 sea roaring threateningly ; on her left hand the glint of 
 the lighthouse on Trevose Head gave her the direction 
 she must pursue. But, on a down like that, with a 
 precipice on one hand ; in a light, uncertain at best, 
 often in complete darkness, it was dangerous to advance 
 €xcept by thrusting the foot forward tentatively, before 
 taking a step. The sea and the gnawing winds caused 
 the cliffs to crumble ; bits were eaten out of the surface, 
 and in places there were fissures in the turf where a 
 rent had formed, and where shortly a mass would fall. 
 It is said that the duties on customs were originally 
 instituted in order to enable the Crown to afford protec- 
 tion to trade against pirates. The pirates ceased to 
 infest the seas, but the duties were not only not taken 
 •off, but were increased, and becarhe a branch of the 
 public revenue. Perhaps some consciousness that the 
 profits were not devoted to the purpose originally in- 
 tended, bred in the people on the coast a feeling of 
 resentment against the imposition of duties. There 
 ^certainly existed an impression, a conviction rather,
 
 IVA/LV/A'G OF DANGER. 191 
 
 that the violation of a positive law of this nature was 
 in no respect criminal. Adventurers embarked in the 
 illicit traffic without scruple, as they did in poaching. 
 The profit was great, and the danger run enhanced 
 the excitement of the pursuit, and gave a sort of heroic 
 •splendour to the achievements of the successful smug- 
 gler. 
 
 The Government, to stop a traffic that injured legiti- 
 mate trade, and affected the revenue, imposed severe 
 penalties. Smuggling was classed among the felonies, 
 '" without benefit of clergy," the punishment for which 
 was death and confiscation of goods. The conscious- 
 ness that they would be dealt with with severity did 
 not deter bold men from engaging in the traffic, but 
 made them desperate in self-defence when cauglit. 
 Conflicts with Revenue officers were not uncommon, 
 and lives were lost on both sides. The smugglers 
 ■were not bound together by any link, and sometimes 
 one gang was betrayed by another, so as to divert 
 suspicion and attention from their own misdeeds, or 
 out of jealousy, or on account of a quarrel. It was so on 
 this occasion: the success of Coppinger, the ingenuity 
 with which he had carried on his defiance of the law,
 
 192 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 caused envy of him, because he was a foreigner — was, at 
 all events, not a Cornishman; this had induced a rival to 
 give notice to the Revenue officers, through Scantlebray 
 — a convenient go-between in a good many question- 
 able negotiations. The man who betrayed Coppinger 
 dared not be seen entering into communication with the 
 officers of the law. He, therefore, employed Scantle- 
 bray as the vehicle through whom, without suspicion 
 resting on himself, his rival might be fallen upon and 
 his proceedings brought to an end. 
 
 It was now very dark. Judith had reached and 
 touched a wall ; but in the darkness lost her bearings. 
 The Trevose light was no longer visible, and directly 
 she left the wall to strike outwards she became confused 
 as to her direction, and in the darkness groped along 
 with her feet, stretching her hands before her. Then 
 the rain came down, lashing in her face. The wind 
 had shifted somewhat during the evening, and it was no 
 guidance to Judith to feel from what quarter the rain 
 drove against her. Moreover, the cove formed a great 
 curve in the coast-line, and was indented deeply in 
 some places, so that to grope round the edge without 
 light in quest of a point only seen or noticed once
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 193 
 
 seemed a desperate venture. Suddenly Judith's foot 
 caught. It was entangled, and she could not disen- 
 gage it. She stooped, and put her hand on a chain. 
 It was Jamie's steel dog-chain, one link of which had 
 • caught in a tuft of restharrow. 
 
 She had found the spot she wanted, and now waited 
 only till the rain had rushed further inland, and a 
 fringe of light appeared in the sky, to advance to the 
 very edge of the cliff. She found it expedient to stoop 
 as she proceeded, so as to discover some indications of 
 the track. There were depressions where feet had 
 worn the turf, and she set hers therein, and sought the 
 next. Thus creeping and groping, she neared the edge. 
 
 And now came the moment of supreme peril, when, 
 trusting that she had found the right path, she must go 
 over the brink. If she were mistaken, the next step 
 would send her down two hundred feet, to where she 
 heard the roar, and felt the breath of the sea stream up 
 to her from the abyss. Here she could distinguish 
 nothing; she must trust to Providence to guide her 
 steps. She uttered a short and earnest prayer, and 
 then boldly descended. She could not stoop now. To 
 stoop was to dive headlong down. She felt her way, 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 194 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 however, with her feet, reached one firm station, then 
 another. Her hands touched the grass and earth of 
 the ragged margin, then with another step she was 
 below it, and held to the rain-splashed fangs of rock. 
 
 Clinging, with her face inward, feeling with her feet, 
 and never sure but that the next moment might see her 
 launched into air, she stole onward, slowly, cautiously, 
 and ever with the gnawing dread in her heart lest 
 she should be too late. One intense point of con- 
 sciousness stood out in her brain — it told her that if, 
 whilst thus creeping down, there should come the flash 
 and explosion of firearms, her courage would fail, her 
 head would spin, and she would be lost. 
 
 How long she was descending she could not tell, 
 how many steps she took was unknown to her — she 
 had not counted — but it seemed to her an entire night 
 that passed, with every change of position an hour was 
 marked ; then, at last, she was conscious that she stood 
 on more level ground. She had reached the terrace. 
 
 A little further, and on her left-hand would open the 
 mouth of the shaft, and she must descend that, in pro- 
 foundest darkness. A cry ! A light flashed into her eyes 
 and dazzled her. A hand at the same moment clutched
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 19S 
 
 her, or she would have reeled back and gone over the 
 cliff. 
 
 The light was held to pour over her face. Who held 
 it and who grasped her she could not see ; but she 
 knew the moment she heard a voice exclaim — 
 
 "Judith!" 
 
 In her terror and exhaustion she could but gasp for 
 breath for a few moments. 
 
 By degrees her firmness and resolution returned, and 
 •she exclaimed, in broken tones, panting between every 
 few words — 
 
 " Captain Cruel ! — you are betrayed — they are after 
 you ! " 
 
 He did not press her. He waited till she could speak 
 again, lowering the lantern. 
 
 Then, without the glare in her eyes, she was able to 
 •speak more freely. 
 
 " There is a boat — a Revenue cutter — waiting in the 
 bay — and — above — are the Preventive men — and they 
 will kill you." 
 
 *' Indeed," said he. "And you have come to warn 
 me?" 
 
 ^' Yes."
 
 196 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "Tell me — are there any above, where you came 
 down ? " 
 
 " None ; they are on the ass-path." 
 
 " Can you ascend as you came down ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He extinguished his lantern, or covered it. 
 
 *' I must no more show light. I must warn those 
 below." He paused, then said — 
 
 " Dare you mount alone ? " 
 
 ** I came down alone." 
 
 " Then do this one thing more for me. Mount, and 
 go to Pentyre. Tell your aunt — three lights, red, 
 white, red. Then ten minutes, and then, red, red, 
 white. Can you remember ? Repeat after me : ' Three 
 lights — red, white, r€d ; then ten minutes, and next, 
 red, red, and white.' " 
 
 Judith repeated the words. 
 
 " That is right. Lose no time. I dare not give you 
 a light. None must now be shown. The boat from the 
 Black Prince is not in — this lantern was her guide. 
 Now it is out she will go back. You will remember the 
 signals ? I thank you for what you have done. There 
 is but one woman would have done it, and that Judith."
 
 WARNING OF DANGER. 197 
 
 He stepped inside the shaft to descend. When hid- 
 den, he allowed his light again to show, to assist him 
 in his way down. Judith only waited till her eyes, that 
 had been dazzled by the light, were recovered, and then 
 she braced herself to resume her climb ; but now it 
 was to be up the cliff.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 CHAINED. 
 
 To ascend is easier than to go down. Judith was na 
 longer alarmed. There was danger still, that was in- 
 evitable ; but the danger was as nothing now to what 
 it had been. It is one thing to descend in total dark- 
 ness into an abyss where one knows that below are sharp 
 rocks, and a drop of two hundred feet to a thundering, 
 raging sea, racing up the sand, pouring over the shelves 
 of rock, foaming where divided waves clash. Wher* 
 Judith had been on the beach in the afternoon the tide 
 was out, now it was flowing, and had swept over all that 
 tract of white sand and pebble where she had walked. 
 She could not indeed now see the water, but she heard 
 the thud of a billow as it smote a rock, the boil and the 
 hiss of the waves and spray. To step downward, 
 groping the way, \vith a depth and a wild throbbing sea
 
 CHAINED. 199^ 
 
 beneath, demanded courage, and courage of no mean 
 order ; but it was other to mount, to be able to feel with 
 the foot the ascent in the track, and to grope upwards 
 with the hand from one point of clutch to another, tc 
 know that every step upwards was lessening the peril, 
 and bringing nearer to the sward and to safety. 
 
 Without great anxiety, therefore, Judith turned to 
 climb. Cruel Coppinger had allowed her to essay it 
 unaided. Would he have done that had he thought it 
 involved danger, or rather, serious danger ? Judith was 
 sure he would not. His confidence that she could climb 
 to the summit unassisted made her confident. As she 
 had descended she had felt an interior qualm and sinking 
 at every step she took ; there was no such sensation 
 now as she mounted. 
 
 She was not much inconvenienced by the wind, for the 
 wind was not directly on shore ; but it soughed about 
 her, and eddies caught her cloak and jerked it. It 
 would have been better had she left her cloak above on 
 the turf. It incommoded her in her climb ; it caught 
 in the prongs of rock. 
 
 The rain, the w^ater running off the rock, had wet her 
 shoes, soaked them, and every step was in moisture
 
 200 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 that oozed out of them. She was glad now to rest on 
 her right hand. In descending the left had felt and 
 held the rock, and it had been rubbed and cut. 
 Probably it was bleeding. 
 
 Surely there was a little more light in the sky where 
 the sky showed between the dense masses of vapour. 
 Judith did not observe this, for she did not look aloft ; 
 but she could see a steely tract of sea, fretted into foam, 
 reflecting an illumination from above, greater than the 
 twilight could cast. Then she remembered that there 
 had been a moon a few nights before, and thought that 
 it was probably risen by this time. 
 
 Something chill and wet brushed her face. It startled 
 her for a moment, and then she knew by the scent that 
 it was a bunch of samphire growing out of the side of 
 the crag. 
 
 Shrill in her ear came the scream of a gull that rushed 
 by in the darkness, and she felt, or believed she felt, 
 the fan from the wings. Again it screamed, and near 
 the ear it pierced her brain like an awl, and then again, 
 still nearer, unnerving her. In the darkness she fancied 
 that this gull was about to attack her with beak and 
 claws, and she put up her left arm as a protection to
 
 CHAINED. 20 1 
 
 her eyes. Then there broke out a jabber of sea-birds' 
 voices, lau^jhing mockingly, at a little distance. 
 
 Whither had she got ? 
 
 The way was no longer easy — one step before another 
 — there was a break of continuity in the path, if path 
 the track could be called. 
 
 Judith stood still, and put forward her foot to test the 
 rock in front. There was no place where it could rest. 
 Had she, bewildered by that gull, diverged from the 
 track ? It would be well to retreat a few steps. She 
 endeavoured to do this, and found that she encountered 
 a difficulty in finding the place where she had just 
 planted her foot. 
 
 It was but too certain that she was off the track line. 
 How to recover it she knew not. With the utmost 
 difficulty she did reach a point in her rear where she 
 <;ould stand, clinging to the rock; but she clung now 
 with both hands. There was no tuft of samphire to 
 brush her face as she descended. She must have got 
 •wrong before she touched that. But where was the 
 samphire ? She cautiously felt along the surface of 
 the crag in quest of it, but could not find it. There 
 •was, however, a little above her shoulder, a something
 
 202 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 that felt like a ledge, and which might be the track. If 
 she had incautiously crept forward at a level without 
 ascending rapidly enough, she was probably below the 
 track. Could she climb to this point ? — climb up the 
 bare rock, with sheer precipice below her ? And, sup- 
 posing that the shelf she felt with her hand were not 
 the track, could she descend again to the place where 
 she had been ? 
 
 Her brain spun. She lost all notion as to where she 
 might be — perhaps she was below the path, perhaps 
 she was above it. She could not tell. She stood with 
 arms extended, clinging to the rock, and her heart beat 
 in bounds against the flinty surface. The clasp of 
 her cloak was pressing on her throat, and strangling 
 her. The wind had caught the garment, and was 
 playing with the folds, carrying it out and flapping it 
 behind her over the gulf. It was irksome ; it was a 
 danger to her. She cautiously slid one hand to her 
 neck, unhasped the mantle, and it was snatched from 
 her shoulders and carried away. She was lighter with- 
 out it, could move with greater facility ; cold she was 
 not, wet she might become, but what mattered that if 
 she could reach the top of the cliff?
 
 CHAINED. 205 
 
 Not only on her own account was Judith alarmed. 
 She had undertaken a commission. She had promised 
 to bear a message to her aunt from Coppinger that con- 
 cerned the safety of his men. What the signal meant 
 she did not know, but suspected that it conveyed a 
 message of danger. 
 
 She placed both her hands on the ledge, and felt with 
 her knee for some point on which to rest it, to assist 
 her in lifting herself from where she stood to the higher 
 elevation. There was a small projection, and after a 
 moment's hesitation she drew her foot from the shelf 
 whereon it had rested and leaned the left knee on 
 this hunch. Then she clung with both hands, and 
 with them and her knee endeavoured to heave herself 
 up about four feet, that is, to the height of her shoulders. 
 A convulsive quiver seized on her muscles. She was 
 sustained by a knee and her hands only. If they gave 
 way she could not trust to recover her previous lodgment 
 place. One desperate strain, and she was on the ledge,, 
 on both knees, and was feeling with her hands to ascer- 
 tain if she had found the track. Her fingers touched 
 thrift and passed over turf. She had not reached what 
 she sought. She was probably further from it than.
 
 .204 JN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 before. As all her members were quivering after the 
 effort, she seated herself on the shelf she had reached, 
 leaned back against the wet rock, and waited till her 
 racing pulses had recovered evenness of flow, and her 
 muscles had overcome the first effects of their tension. 
 
 Her position was desperate. Rain and perspiration 
 mingled dripped from her brow, ran over and blinded 
 her eyes. Her breath came in sobs between her parted 
 lips. Her ears were full of the booming of the surge 
 far below, and the scarcely less noisy throb of her blood 
 in her pulses. 
 
 When she had started on her adventurous expedition 
 ■she had seen some stars that had twinkled down on her, 
 .and had appeared to encourage her. Now, not a star 
 was visible, only, far off on the sea, a wan light that fell 
 through a rent in the black canopy over an angry deep. 
 Beyond that all was darkness, between her and that all 
 ■was darkness. 
 
 As she recovered her self-possession, with the abate- 
 ment of the tumult in her blood she was able to review 
 her position, and calculate her chances of escape from 
 it. 
 
 Up the track from the cave the smugglers would
 
 CHAINED. 205 
 
 almost certainly escape, because that was the only way^ 
 unwatched, by which they could leave the bea:h with- 
 out falling into the hands of the Preventive men. 
 
 If they came by the path — that path could not be far 
 off, though in which direction it lay she could not guess. 
 She would call, and then Coppinger or some of his- 
 men would come to her assistance. 
 
 By this means alone could she escape. There wa& 
 nothing for her to do but to wait. 
 
 She bent forward and looked down. She might have 
 been looking into a well ; but a little way out she could 
 see, or imagine she saw, the white fringes of surf stealing 
 in. There was not sufficient light for her to be certain' 
 whether she really saw foam, or whether her fancy, 
 excited by the thunder of the tide, made her suppose 
 she saw it. 
 
 The shelf she occupied was narrow and inclined ; if 
 she slipped from it she could not trust to maintain her- 
 self on the lower shelf, certainly not if she slid down in 
 a condition of unconsciousness. And now reaction after 
 the strain was setting in, and she feared lest she might 
 faint. In her pocket was the dog-chain that had caught 
 her foot. She extracted that now, and groping along
 
 2o6 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 the wall of rock behind her, caught a stout tuft of coarse 
 heather, wiry, well rooted ; and she took the little steel 
 chain and wound it about the branches and stem of the 
 plant, and also about her wrist — her right wrist — so as 
 to fasten her to the wall. That was some relief to her, 
 to know that in the event of her dropping out of con- 
 sciousness there was something to hold her up, though 
 that was only the stem of an erica, and her whole 
 weight would rest on its rootlets. Would they suffice 
 to sustain her ? It was doubtful ; but there was nothing 
 else on which she could depend. 
 
 Suddenly a stone whizzed past, struck the ledge, and 
 rebounded. Then came a shower of earth and pebbles. 
 They did not touch her, but she heard them clatter down. 
 
 Surely they had been displaced by a foot, and that a 
 foot passing above. 
 
 Then she heard a shot — also overhead, and a cry. 
 She looked aloft, and saw against the half-translucent 
 vapours a black struggling figure on the edge of the 
 cliff. She saw it but for an instant, and then was 
 struck on the face by an open hand, and a body crashed 
 on to the shelf at her side, rolled over the edge, and 
 plunged into the gulf below.
 
 CHAINED. 207 
 
 She tried to cry, but her voice failed her. She felt 
 her cheek stung by the blow she had received. A 
 feeling as though all the rock were sinking under her 
 came on, as though she were sliding — not shooting — 
 but sliding down, down, and the sky went up higher, 
 higher — and she knew no more.
 
 CHAPTER XVI, 
 
 ON THE SHINGLE 
 
 The smugglers, warned by Coppinger, had crept up the 
 path in silence, and singly, at considerable intervals 
 between each, and on reaching the summit of the cliffs 
 had dispersed to their own homes, using the precaution 
 to strike inland first, over the "new-take" wall. 
 
 As the last of the party reached the top he encoun- 
 tered one of the coastguards, who, by the orders of his 
 superior, was patrolling the down to watch that the 
 smugglers did not leave the cove by any other path 
 than the one known — that up and down which donkeys 
 were driven. This donkey-driving to the beach was 
 not pursued solely for the sake of contraband ; the 
 beasts brought up loads of sand, which the farmers 
 professed they found valuable as manure on their stiff
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 209 
 
 soil, and also the masses of seaweed cast on the strand 
 after a gale, and which was considered to be possessed 
 of rare fertilizing qualities. 
 
 No sooner did the coastguard see a man ascend the 
 cliff, or rather come up over the edge before him, than 
 he fired his pistol to give the signal to his fellows^ 
 whereupon the smuggler turned, seized him by the 
 throat, and precipitated him over the edge. 
 
 Of this Coppinger knew nothing. He had led the 
 procession, and had made his way to Pentyre Glaze by 
 a roundabout route, so as to evade a guard set to watch 
 for him approaching from the cliffs, should one have- 
 been so planted. 
 
 On reaching his door, his first query was whether the 
 signals had been made. 
 
 " What signals ? " asked Miss Trevisa. 
 
 " I sent a messenger here with instructions." 
 
 *' No messenger has been here." 
 
 " What, no one — not " he hesitated, and said, 
 
 " not a woman ? " 
 
 *' Not a soul has been here — man, woman, or child — 
 since you left." 
 
 " No one to see you ? " 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 2IO IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " No one at all, Captain." 
 
 Coppinger did not remove his hat ; he stood in the 
 doorway biting his thumb. Was it possible that Judith 
 had shrunk from coming to his house to bear the mes- 
 sage ? Yet she had promised to do so. Had she been 
 intercepted by the Preventive men ? Had — had she 
 reached the top of the cliff? Had she, after reaching 
 the top, lost her way in the dark, taken a false direc- 
 tion, and Coppinger did not allow the thought to 
 
 find full expression in his brain. He turned, without 
 another word,and hastened to the cottage of Mr. Menaida. 
 He must ascertain whether she had reached home. 
 
 Uncle Zachie had not retired to bed ; Scantlebray had 
 been gone an hour; Zachie had drunk with Scantlebray, 
 and he had drunk after the departure of that individual 
 to indemnify himself for the loss of his company. Con- 
 sequently Mr. Menaida was confused in mind and thick 
 in talk. 
 
 " Where is Judith?" asked Coppinger, bursting in 
 on him. 
 
 " In bed, I suppose," answered Uncle Zachie, after a 
 while, when he comprehended the question, and had 
 had time to get over his surprise at seeing the Captain.
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 211 
 
 " Are you sure ? When did she come in ? " 
 
 " Come in ? " said the old man, scratching his fore- 
 head with his pipe. " Come in — bless you, I don't 
 know; some time in the afternoon. Yes, to be sure it 
 was, some time in the afternoon." 
 
 " But she has been out to-night ? " 
 
 "No — no — no," said Uncle Zachie, "it was Scantle- 
 bray." 
 
 '* I say she has — she has been to " he paused, 
 
 then said — " to see her aunt." 
 
 " Aunt Dunes ! bless my heart, when ? " 
 
 " To-night." 
 
 ^' Impossible ! " 
 
 ■" But I say she has. Come, Mr. Menaida. Go up 
 to her room, knock at the door, and ascertain if she be 
 back. Her aunt is alarmed — there are rough folks 
 about." 
 
 ^' Why, bless me ! " exclaimed Mr, Menaida ; " so 
 there are. And — well, wonders '11 never cease. How 
 came you here ? I thought the guard were after you. 
 Scantlebray said so." 
 
 " Will you go at once and see if Judith Trevisa is 
 home?"
 
 212 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Coppinger spoke with such vehemence, and looked so 
 threateningly at the old man, that he staggered out of 
 his chair, and, still holding his pipe, went to the stairs. 
 
 " Bless me ! " said he, " whatever am I about ? I've 
 forgot a candle. Would you oblige me with lighting 
 one ? My hand shakes, and I might light my fingers 
 by mistake," 
 
 After what seemed to Coppinger to be an intolerable 
 length of time, Uncle Zachie stumbled down the stairs- 
 again. 
 
 " I say," said Mr. Menaida, standing on the steps^ 
 " Captain — did you ever hear about Tincombe Lane ? — 
 
 ' Tincombe Lane is all up-hill, 
 
 Or down hill, as you take it ; 
 You tumble up and crack your crown, 
 Or tumble down and break it.' 
 
 — It's the same with these blessed stairs. Would you 
 mind lending me a hand ? By the powers, the banister 
 is not firm ! Do you know how it goes on ? — 
 
 ' Tincombe Lane is crooked and straight 
 As pot-hook or as arrow. 
 'Tis smooth to foot, 'tis full of rut, 
 'Tis wide, and then 'tis narrow.'
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 213 
 
 — Thank you, sir, thank you. Now take the candle. 
 Bah ! I've broke my pipe — and then comes the moral — 
 
 ' Tincombe Lane is just like life 
 
 From when you leave your mother, 
 'Tis sometimes this, 'tis sometimes that, 
 'Tis one thin? or the other.' " 
 
 '£3 
 
 In vain had Coppinger endeavoured to interrupt the 
 flow of words, and to extract from thick Zachie the 
 information he needed, till the old gentleman was back 
 in his chair. 
 
 Then Uncle Zachie observed — " Blessy' — I said so — 
 I said so a thousand times. No— she's not there. Tell 
 Aunt Dunes so. Will you sit down and have a drop ? 
 The night is rough, and it will do you good — take the 
 chill out of your stomach and the damp out of your 
 chest." 
 
 But Coppinger did not wait to decline the offer. He 
 turned at once, left the house, and dashed the door 
 back as he stepped out into the night. He had not 
 gone a hundred paces along the road before he heard 
 voices, and recognized that of Mr. Scantlebray — 
 
 " I tell you the vessel is the Black Prince, and I know 
 he was to have unloaded her to-night."
 
 214 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 ** Anyhow he is not doing so. Not a sign of him." 
 
 " The night is too dirty." 
 
 " Wyvill " Coppinger knew that the Captain at 
 
 the head of the coastguard was speaking. " Wyvill, I 
 heard a pistol-shot. Where is Jenkyns ? If you had 
 not been by me I should have said you had acted wide 
 of your orders. Has any one seen Jenkyns ? " 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Who is that ? " 
 
 Suddenly a light flashed forth, and glared upon Cop- 
 pinger. The Captain in command of the coastguard 
 uttered an oath. 
 
 " You out to-night, Mr. Coppinger ? Where do you 
 come from ? " 
 
 *' As you see — from Polzeath." 
 
 " Humph ! From no other direction ? " 
 
 " I'll trouble you to let me pass." 
 
 Coppinger thrust the Preventive man aside, and went 
 on his way. 
 
 When he was beyond ear-shot, Scantlebray said — 
 *' I trust he did not notice me along with you. You 
 see, the night is too dirty. Let him bless his stars, it 
 has saved him."
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 215 
 
 " I should like to see Jenkyns," said the officer. " I 
 am almost certain I heard a pistol-shot ; but when I 
 sent in the direction whence it came, there was no one 
 to be seen. It's a confounded dark night." 
 
 " I hope they've not give us the slip, Captain ? " said 
 Wyvill. 
 
 " Impossible," answered the officer. " Impossible. 
 I took every precaution. They did not go out to-night. 
 As Mr. Scantlebray says, the night was too dirty." 
 
 Then they went on. 
 
 In the meantime Coppinger was m.aking the best of 
 his way to the downs. He knew his direction even in 
 the dark^ie had the "new-take" wall as a guide. What 
 the coastguard did not suspect was that this "new-take" 
 had been made for the very purpose of serving as a 
 guide by which the smugglers could find their course in 
 the blackest of winter's nights ; moreover, in the fiercest 
 storm the wall served as a shelter, under lea of which 
 they might approach their cave. Coppinger was with- 
 out a lantern. He doubted if one would avail him, in 
 his quest : moreover, the night was lightening, as tha 
 moon rode higher. 
 
 The smuggler captain stood for a moment on the
 
 3i6 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 '€'dge of the cliffs to consider what course he should 
 •adopt to find Judith. If she had reached the summit, 
 it was possible enough that she had lost her way and 
 had rambled inland among lanes and across fields, 
 tpixy-led. In that case it was a hopeless task to search 
 for her; moreover, there would be no particular neces- 
 -sity for him to do so, as, sooner or later, she must reach 
 'a cottage or a farm, where she could learn her direc- 
 tion. But if she had gone too near the edge, or if, in 
 her ascent, her foot had slipped, then he must search 
 the shore. The tide was ebbing now, and left a margin 
 on which he could walk. This was the course he must 
 adopt. He did not descend by the track to the chim- 
 ney, as the creeping down of the latter could be effected 
 in absolute darkness only with extreme risk ; but he 
 bent his way over the down skirting the crescent inden- 
 tation of the cove to the donkey-path, which was now, 
 as he knew, unwatched. By that he swiftly and easily 
 descended to the beach. Along the shore he crept 
 carefully towards that portion which was overhung by 
 the precipice along which the way ran from the mouth 
 of the shaft. The night was mending, or at all events 
 .seemed better. The moon, as it mounted, cast a glim-
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 217 
 
 mer through the least opaque portions of the driving 
 clouds. Coppinger looked up, and could see the ragged 
 fringe of down torn with gullies, and thrust up into 
 prongs, black as ink against the grey of the half-trans- 
 lucent vapours. And near at hand was the long dorsal 
 ridge that concealed the entrance to the cave, sloping 
 rapidly upwards and stretching away before him into 
 shadow. 
 
 Coppinger mused. If one were to fall from above, 
 would he drop between the cliff and this curtain, or 
 would he strike and be projected over it on to the 
 shelving sand up which stole the waves? He knew 
 that the water eddying against friable sandstone strata 
 that came to the surface had eaten them out with the 
 wash, and that the hard flakes of slate and ribs of 
 quartz" stood forth, overhanging the cave. Most cer- 
 tainly, therefore, had Judith fallen, her body must be 
 sought on the sea-face of the masking ridge. The 
 smuggler stood at the very point where in the pre- 
 ceding afternoon Jamie and the dog had scrambled up 
 that fin-like blade of rock and disappeared from the 
 astonished gaze of Judith. The moon, smothered be- 
 hind clouds, and yet, in a measure self-assertive, cast
 
 2i8 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 sufficient light down into the cove to glitter on, and 
 transmute into steel, that sea-washed and smoothed^ 
 and still wet, ridge, sloping inland as a sea-wall. As- 
 Coppinger stood looking upwards he saw in the uncertain 
 light something caught on the fangs of this saw-ridge,, 
 moving uneasily this way, then that, something dark,, 
 obscuring the glossed surface of the rock, as it might 
 be a mass of gigantic sea-tangles. 
 
 "Judith!" he cried. "Is that you?" And he 
 plunged through the pool that intervened, and scram- 
 bled up the rock. 
 
 He caught something. It was cloth. "Judith! 
 Judith ! " he almost shrieked in anxiety. That which 
 he had laid hold of yielded, and he gathered to him a 
 garment of some sort, and with it he slid back into the 
 pool, and waded on to the pebbles. Then he examined 
 his capture by the uncertain light, and by feel, and con- 
 vinced himself that it was a cloak — a cloak with clasp 
 and hood — just such as he had seen Judith wearing 
 when he flashed his lantern over her on the platform 
 at the mouth of the shaft. 
 
 He stood for a moment, numbed as though he had) 
 been struck on the head with a mallet, and irresolute.
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 21 9 
 
 He had feared that Judith had fallen over the edge, but 
 he had hoped that it was not so. This discovery seemed 
 to confirm his worst fears. 
 
 If the cloak were there — she also would probably be 
 there also, a broken heap. She who had thrown him 
 down and broken him, had been thrown down herself, 
 and broken also — thrown down and broken because she 
 had come to rescue him from danger. Coppinger put 
 his hand to his head. His veins were beating as 
 though they would burst the vessels in his temples, 
 and suffuse his face with blood. As he stood thus 
 clasping his brow with his right hand, the clouds were 
 swept for an instant aside, and for an instant the moon 
 sent down a weird glare that ran like a wave along the 
 sand, leaped impediments, scrambled up rocks, and 
 flashed in the pools. For one moment only — but that 
 sufficed to reveal to him a few paces ahead a black 
 heap: there was no mistaking it. The rounded outlines 
 were not those of a rock. It was a human body lying 
 on the shingle half immersed in the pool at the foot of 
 the reef! 
 
 A cry of intensest, keenest anguish burst from the 
 heart of Coppinger. Prepared though he was for what
 
 220 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 he must see by the finding of the cloak, the sight of 
 that motionless and wrecked body was more than he 
 could endure with composure. In the darkness that 
 •ensued after the moon gleam he stepped forward, 
 slowly, even timidly, to where that human wreck lay, 
 .and knelt on both knees beside it on the wet 
 sand. 
 
 He waited. Would the moon shine out again and 
 show him what he dreaded seeing ? He would not put 
 ■down a hand to touch it. One still clasped his brow, the 
 other he could not raise so high, and he held it against 
 his breast where it had lately been strapped. He tried 
 to hold his breath, to hear if any sound issued from 
 what lay before him. He strained his eyes to see if 
 there were any, the slightest, movement in it. Yet 
 he knew there could be none. A fall from these cliffs 
 above must dash every spark of life out of a body that 
 reeled down them. He turned his eyes upwards to see 
 if the cloud would pass ; but no — it seemed to be one 
 that was all-enveloping, unwilling to grant him that 
 glimpse which must be had, but which would cause 
 .him acutest anguish. 
 
 He could not remain kneeling there in suspense any
 
 ON THE SHINGLE. 221 
 
 longer. In uncertainty he was not. The horror was- 
 before him, inevitable — and must be faced. 
 
 He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew forth 
 tinder-box and flint. With a hand that had never 
 trembled before, but now shaking as with an ague^ 
 he struck a light. The sparks flew about, and were 
 long in igniting the touch-wood. But finally it was 
 kindled, and glowed red. The wind fanned it into- 
 fitful flashes, as Coppinger, stooping, held the lurid- 
 spark over the prostrate form, and passed it up and 
 down on the face. Then suddenly it fell from his 
 hand, and he drew a gasp. The dead face was that 
 of a bearded man. 
 
 A laugh — a wild, boisterous laugh — rang out into the- 
 night, and was re-echoed by the cliff, as Coppinger 
 leaped to his feet. There was hope still. Judith had 
 not fallen.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 
 
 CoppiiNGER did not hesitate a moment now to leave 
 the corpse on the beach where he had found it, and to 
 hasten to the cave. 
 
 There was a third alternative to which hitherto he 
 had given no attention. Judith, in ascending the cliff, 
 might have strayed from the track, and be in such 
 a position that she could neither advance nor draw 
 back. He would, therefore, explore the path from the 
 chimney mouth, and see if any tokens could be found of 
 her having so done. 
 
 He again held his smouldering tinder, and by this 
 feeble glimmer made his way up the inclined beach 
 within the cave, passed under the arch of the rock
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. iit, 
 
 where low, and found himself in that portion where 
 was the boat. 
 
 Here he knew of a receptacle for sundries, such as 
 might be useful in an emergency, and to that he made 
 his way, and drew from it a piece of candle and 
 a lantern. He speedily lighted the candle, set it in 
 the lantern, and then ascended the chimney. 
 
 On reaching the platform at the orifice in the face of 
 the rock, it occurred to him that he had forgotten to 
 bring rope with him. He would not return for that, 
 imless he found a need for it. Rope there was below, 
 of many yards length. Till he knew that it was 
 required, it seemed hardly worth his while to encumber 
 ihimself with a coil that might be too long or too short 
 for use. He did not even know that he would find 
 Judith. It was a chance, that was all. It was more 
 probable that she had strayed on the down, and was 
 now back at Polzeath, and safe and warm in bed. 
 
 From the ledge in front of the shaft Coppinger 
 proceeded with caution and leisurely, exploring every 
 portion of the ascent with lowered lantern. There 
 were plenty of impressions of feet wherever the soft 
 and crumbly beds had been traversed, and where the
 
 224 IK THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 dissolved stone had been converted into cla}- or mud, 
 but these were the impressions of the smugglers 
 escaping from their den. Step by step he mounted, 
 till he had got about half-way up, when he noticed^ 
 what he had not previously observed, that there was 
 a point at which the track left the ledge of stratified 
 vertical rock that had inclined its broken edgeupwards^ 
 and by a series of slips mounted to another fractured 
 stratum, a leaf of the story-book turned up with the 
 record of infinite ages sealed up in it. It was possible 
 that one unacquainted with the course might grope 
 onwards, following the ledge instead of deserting it 
 for a direct upward climb. As Coppinger now 
 perceived, one ignorant of the way and unprovided 
 with a light would naturally follow the shelf. He 
 accordingly deserted the track, and advanced along 
 the ledge. There was a little turf in one place,, 
 in the next a tuft of armeria, then mud or clay, and 
 there — assuredly a foot had trodden. There was 
 a mark of a sole that was too small to have belonged 
 to a man. 
 
 The shelf at first was tolerabl}' broad, and could be 
 followed without risk by one whose head was steady ;;
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 225 
 
 but for how long would it so continue? These 
 rough edges, these laminae of upheaved slate were 
 treacherous — they were sometimes completely broken 
 down, forming gaps, in places stridable, in others 
 discontinuous for many yards. 
 
 The footprint satisfied Coppinger that Judith had 
 crept along this terrace, and so had missed the right 
 course. It was impossible that she could reach the 
 summit by this way — she must have fallen or be 
 clinging at some point further ahead, a point from 
 which she could not advance, and feared to retreat. 
 
 He held the lantern above his head, and peered 
 before him, but could see nothing. The glare of 
 the artificial light made the darkness beyond its 
 radius the deeper and more impervious to the eye. 
 He called, but received no answer. He called again, 
 with as little success. He listened, but heard no other 
 sound than the mutter of the sea, and the wail of the 
 wind. There was nothing for him to do but to go 
 forward ; and he did that, slowly, searchingly, with 
 the light near the ground, seeking for some further 
 trace of Judith. He was obliged to use caution, as 
 the ledge of rock narrowed. Here it was hard, and 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 226 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 the foot passing over it made no impression. Then 
 ensued a rift and a slide of shale, and here he thought 
 he observed indications of recent dislodgment. 
 
 Now the foot-hold was reduced, he could no longer 
 stoop to examine the soil ; he must stand upright and 
 hold to the rock with his right hand, and move with 
 precaution lest he should be precipitated below. 
 
 Was it conceivable that she had passed there ? 
 — there in the dark ? And yet — if she had not, she 
 must have been hurled below. 
 
 Coppinger, clinging with his fingers, and thrusting 
 one foot before the other, then drawing forward that 
 foot, with every faculty on the alert, passed to where, 
 for a short space, the ledge of rock expanded, and there 
 he stooped once more with the light to explore. Beyond 
 was a sheer fall, and the dull glare from his lantern 
 showed him no continuance of the shelf. As he rose 
 from his bent position, suddenly the light fell on 
 a hand — a delicate, childish hand — hanging down. 
 He raised the lantern, and saw her whom he sought. 
 At this point she had climbed upwards to a higher 
 ledge, and on that she lay, one arm raised, fastened 
 by a chain to a tuft of heather — her head fallen against
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 227 
 
 the rock, and feet and one arm over the edge of the 
 cliff. She was unconscious, sustained by a dog-chain 
 and a little bunch of ling. 
 
 Coppinger passed the candle over her face. It was 
 white, and the e3'es did not close before the light. 
 
 His position was vastly difficult. She hung there 
 chained to the cliff, and he doubted whether he could 
 sustain her weight if he attempted to carry her back 
 whilst she was unconscious, along the way he and she 
 had come. It was perilous for one alone to move 
 along that strip of surface ; it seemed impossible for 
 one to effect it bearing in his arms a human 
 burden. 
 
 Moreover, Coppinger was well aware that his left 
 arm had not recovered its strength. He could not 
 trust her weight on that. He dare not trust it on his 
 right arm, for to return by the way he came the right 
 hand would be that which was toward the void. The 
 principal weight must be thrown inwards. 
 
 What was to be done ? This, primarily : to release 
 the insensible girl from her present position, in which 
 the agony of the strain on her shoulder perhaps 
 prolonged her unconsciousness.
 
 228 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Coppinger mounted to the shelf on which she lay, 
 and bowing himself over her, whilst holding her, so 
 that she should not slip over the edge, he disentangled 
 the chain from her wrist and the stems of the heather. 
 Then he seated himself beside her, drew her towards 
 him, with his right arm about her, and laid her head or^ 
 his shoulder. 
 
 And the chain ? 
 
 That he took and deliberatel}' passed it round her 
 waist and his own body, fastened it, and muttered ^ 
 *' For life or for death ! " 
 
 There, for a while, he sat. He had set the lantern 
 beside him. His hand was on Judith's heart, and he 
 held his breath, and waited to feel if there were pul- 
 sation there ; but his own arteries were in such 
 agitation, the throb in his finger-ends prevented with 
 his being able to satisfy himself as to what he desired 
 to know. 
 
 He could not remain longer in his present position. 
 Judith might never revive. She had swooned through 
 over-exhaustion, and nothing could restore her to life but 
 the warmth and care she would receive in a house ; he 
 cursed his folly, his thoughtlessness, in having brought
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEA TH. 229 
 
 with him no flask of brandy. He dared remain no longer 
 where he was, the ebbing powers in the feeble life might 
 sink beyond recall. 
 
 He thrust his right arm under her, and adjusted the 
 chain about him so as to throw some of her weight off 
 the arm, and then cautiously slid to the step below, 
 and, holding her, set his back to the rocky wall. 
 
 So, facing the Atlantic Ocean, facing the wild night 
 sky, torn here and there into flakes of light, otherwise 
 cloaked in storm-gloom, with the abyss below, an 
 abyss of jagged rock and shingle shore, he began to 
 make his way along the track by which he had gained 
 that point. 
 
 He was at that part where the shelf narrowed to a 
 foot, and his safety and hers depended largely on the 
 power that remained to him in his left arm. With 
 the hand of that arm he felt along and clutched every 
 projecting point of rock, and held to it with every 
 sinew strained and starting. He drew a long breath. 
 Was Judith stirring on his arm ? 
 
 The critical minute had come. The slightest move- 
 ment, the least displacement of the balance, and both 
 would be precipitated below.
 
 230 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "Judith!" said he, hoarsel}-, turning his head 
 towards her ear. ''Judith!" 
 
 There was no reply. 
 
 " Judith ! For Heaven's sake — if you hear me — 
 do not lift a finger. Do not move a muscle." 
 
 The same heavy weight on him without motion. 
 
 "Judith ! For life— or death ! " 
 
 Then suddenly from off the ocean flashed a tiny 
 spark — far, far awa}^ 
 
 It was a signal from the Black Prince. 
 
 He saw it, fixed his eyes steadily on it, and began to 
 move sideways, facing the sea, his back to the rock, 
 reaching forward with his left arm, holding Judith in 
 the right. 
 
 " For life ! " 
 
 He took one step sideways, holding with the dis- 
 engaged hand to the rock. The bone of that arm was 
 but just knit. Not onl}? so, but that of the collar was. 
 also recentl}- sealed up after fracture. Yet the salvation 
 of two lives hung on these two infirm joints. The arm 
 was stift'; the muscles had not recovered flexibility, 
 nor the sinews their strength. 
 
 " For death ! "
 
 FOR LIFE OR DEATH. 231 
 
 A second sidelong step, and the projected foot slid 
 in greasy marl. He dug his heel into the wet and 
 yielding soil, he stamped in it ; then, throwing all his 
 weight on the left heel, aided by the left arm, he drew 
 himself along and planted the right beside the left„ 
 
 He sucked the air in between his teeth with a hiss. 
 The soft soil was sinking — it would break away. The 
 light from the Black Prince seemed to rise. With a 
 wrench he planted his left foot on rock — and drew up 
 the right to it. 
 
 "Judith! For life! " 
 
 That star on the black sea — what did it mean ? He 
 knew. His mind was clear, and though in intense 
 concentration of all his powers on the effort to pass 
 this strip of perilous path, he could reason of other 
 things, and knew why the Black Prince had exposed 
 her light. The lantern that he had borne, and left on 
 the shelf, had been seen by her, and she supposed it 
 to be a signal from the terrace over the cave. 
 
 The next step was full of peril. With his left foot 
 advanced, Coppinger felt he had reached the shale. 
 He kicked into it, and kicked away an avalanche of 
 loose flakes that slid over the edge. But he drove his
 
 232 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 foot deep into the slope, and rammed a dent into which 
 he could fix the right foot when drawn after it. 
 
 " For death ! " 
 
 Then he crept along upon the shale. 
 
 He could not see the star now. His sweat, rolling 
 off his brow, had run over his eyelids and charged the 
 lashes as with tears. In partial blindness he essayed 
 the next step. 
 
 " For life ! " 
 
 Then he breathed more freely. His foot was on the 
 grass. 
 
 The passage of extreme danger w^as over. From the 
 point now reached the ledge widened, and Coppinger 
 was able to creep onward with less stress laid on the 
 fractured bones. The anguish of expectation of death 
 was lightened ; and as it lightened nature began to 
 assert herself. His teeth chattered as in an ague fit, 
 and his breath came in sobs. 
 
 In ten minutes he had attained the summit — he was 
 on the down above the cliffs. 
 
 "Judith," said he, and he kissed her cheeks and 
 brow and hair. " For life — for death — mine, only 
 mine."
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 UNA. 
 
 When Judith opened her eyes, she found herself in a 
 strange room, but as she looked about her she saw 
 Aunt Dionysia with her hands behind her back looking 
 out of the window. 
 
 " Oh, aunt ! Where am I ? " 
 
 jSIiss Trevisa turned. 
 
 " So you have come round at last, or pleased to 
 pretend to come round. It is hard to tell whether 
 or not dissimulation was here." 
 
 " Dissimulation, aunt ? " 
 
 " There's no saying. Young folks are not what they 
 were in my day. They have neither the straight- 
 forwardness nor the consideration for their elders and 
 betters." 
 
 " But— where am I ? "
 
 234 /A' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "At the Glaze; not where I put you, but where 3-00 
 have put yourself." 
 
 " I did not come here, auntie, dear." 
 
 " Don't auntie dear me, and deprive me of my 
 natural sleep." 
 
 "Have I?" 
 
 " Have you not ? Three nights have I had to sit 
 up. And natural sleep is as necessary to me at my 
 age as is stays. I fall abroad without one or the- 
 other. Give me my choice — whether I'd have nephews- 
 and nieces crawling about me or erysipelas, and I'd. 
 choose the latter." 
 
 " But, aunt — I'm sorry if I am a trouble to you." 
 
 " Of course you are a trouble. How can you be 
 other ? Don't burs stick ? But that is neither here 
 nor there." 
 
 " Aunt, how came I to Pentyre Glaze ? " 
 
 " I didn't invite you, and I didn't bring you — you 
 may be sure of that. Captain Coppinger found you 
 somewhere on the down at night, when you ought io 
 have been at home. You were insensible, or pretended 
 to be so — it's not for me to say which." 
 
 " Oh, aunt, I don't ^^■ant to be here."
 
 UNA. 235 
 
 " Nor do I want you here — and in my room, too. 
 Hoity-toity ! nephews and nieces are just Hke pigs — 
 you want them to go one way and they run the 
 other." 
 
 " But I should hke to know where Captain Cop- 
 pinger found me, and all about it. I don't remember 
 anything." 
 
 " Then you must ask him yourself." 
 
 " I should like to get up ; may I ? " 
 
 " I can't say till the doctor comes. There's nof 
 telling — I might be blamed. I shall be pleased 
 enough, when you are shifted to your own room," and 
 she pointed to a door. 
 
 " My room, auntie ? " 
 
 " I suppose so ; I don't know whose else it is." 
 
 Then Miss Trevisa whisked out of the room. 
 
 Judith lay quietly in bed trying to collect her 
 thoughts and recall something of what had happened. 
 She could recollect fastening her wrist to the shrub by 
 her brother's dog-chain ; then, with all the vividness of 
 a recurrence of the scene — the fall of the man, the 
 stroke on her cheek, his roll over and plunge down the 
 precipice. The recollection made a film come over
 
 236 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 lier eyes and her heart stand still. After that she 
 remembered nothing. She tried hard to bring to mind 
 one single twinkle of remembrance, but in vain. It 
 was like looking at a wall and straining the eyes to 
 see through it. 
 
 Then she raised herself in bed to look about her. 
 She was in her aunt's room, and in her aunt's bed. 
 She had been brought there by Captain Coppinger. 
 He, therefore, had rescued her from the position of 
 peril in which she had been. So far she could under- 
 stand. She would have liked to know more, but more, 
 probabl}', her aunt could not tell her, even if inclined 
 to do so. 
 
 \Vhere was Jamie ? Was he at Uncle Zachie's ? 
 Had he been anxious and unhappy about her ? She 
 hoped he had got into no trouble during the time he 
 had been free from her supervision. Judith felt that 
 she must go back to Mr. Menaida's and to Jamie. She 
 could not stay at the Glaze. She could not be happy 
 with her ever-grumbling, ill-tempered aunt. Besides, 
 her father would not have wished her to be there. 
 
 What did Aunt Dunes mean when she pointed to a 
 •door and spoke of her room ?
 
 UNA. 237 
 
 Judith could not judge whether she were strong till 
 she tried her strength. She slipped her feet to the 
 floor, stood up and stole over the floor to that door 
 which her aunt had indicated. She timidl}' raised the 
 latch, after listening at it, opened and peeped into a 
 small apartment. To her surprise she saw the little 
 bed she had occupied at her dear home, the rector}-, 
 her old washstand, her mirror, the old chairs, the 
 framed pictures that had adorned her walls, the 
 common and trifling ornaments that had been arranged 
 on her chimney-piece. Every object with which she 
 had been familiar at the parsonage for many years, 
 and to which she had said good-bye, never expecting 
 to have a right to them any more — all these were 
 there, furnishing the room that adjoined her aunt's 
 apartment. 
 
 She stood looking round in surprise, till she heard a 
 step on the stair outside, and, supposing it was that of 
 Aunt Dionysia, she ran back to bed, and dived under 
 the clothes and pulled the sheets over her golden head. 
 
 Aunt Dunes entered the room, bringing with her a 
 bowl of soup. Her eye at once caught the opened 
 door into the little adjoining chamber.
 
 .238 lA' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " You have been out of bed ! " 
 
 Judith thrust her head out of its hiding-place, and 
 said, frankl}^, " Yes, auntie ! I could not help myself. 
 I went to see. How have you managed to get all my 
 things together ? " 
 
 " I ? I have had nothing to do with it." 
 
 " But— who did it, auntie ? " 
 
 ^' Captain Coppinger ; he was at the sale." 
 
 ^' Is the sale over, aunt ? " 
 
 ** Yes, whilst you have been ill." 
 
 " Oh, I am so glad it is over, and I knew nothing 
 about it." 
 
 "Oh, exactly! Not a thought of the worry you 
 have been to me ; deprived of my sleep — of my bed — 
 ■of my bed," repeated Aunt Dunes, grimly. " How- 
 can you expect a bulb to flower if you take it out of 
 the earth and stick it on a bedroom chair stirring 
 broth ? I have no patience with you young people. 
 You are consumed with selfishness." 
 
 " But, auntie ! Don't be cross. Why did Captain 
 Coppinger buy all my dear crinkum-crankums ? " 
 
 Aunt Dionysia snorted and tossed her head. 
 
 Judith suddenly flushed; she did not repeat the
 
 UNA. 239 
 
 question, but said hastily, "Auntie, I want to go back 
 to Mr. Menaida." 
 
 " You cannot desire it more than I do," said Miss 
 Trevisa, sharply. " But whether he will let you go is 
 another matter." 
 
 " Aunt Dunes, if I want to go, I will go ! " 
 
 ''Indeed !" 
 
 *' I will go back as soon as ever I can." 
 
 /' Well, that can't be to-day, for one thing." 
 
 The evening of that same day Judith was removed 
 into the adjoining room, "her room," as Miss Trevisa 
 designated it. " And mind you sleep soundl}', and 
 don't trouble me in the night. Natural sleep is as suit- 
 able to me as green peas to duck." 
 
 When, next morning, the girl awoke, her eyes ranged 
 round and lighted everywhere on familiar objects. The 
 two mezzotints of Happy and Deserted Auburn, the old 
 and battered pieces of Dresden ware, vases with flowers 
 encrusted round them, but with most of the petals 
 broken off — vases too injured to be of value to a pur- 
 chaser, valuable to her because full of reminiscences — • 
 the tapestry firescreen, the painted fans with butterflies 
 on them, the mirror blotched with damp, the inlaid
 
 240 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 wafer-box and ruler, the old snuffer-tray. Her e3'es 
 filled with tears. A gathering together into one room 
 of old trifles did not make that strange room to be 
 home. It was the father, the dear father, who, now 
 that he was taken avva}-, made home an impossibility,, 
 and the whole world, however crowded with old familiar 
 odds and ends, to be desert and strange. The sight of 
 all her old " crinkum crankums," as she had called 
 them, made Judith's heart smart. It was kindly meant 
 by Coppinger to purchase all these things and collect 
 them there ; but it was a mistake of judgment. Grate- 
 ful she was, not gratified. 
 
 In the little room there was an ottoman with a wool- 
 work cover representing a cluster of dark red, pink, 
 and white roses ; and at each corner of the ottoman 
 was a tassel, which had been a constant source of 
 trouble to Judith, as the tassels would come off, some- 
 times because the cat played with them, sometimes 
 because Jamie pulled them off in mischief, sometimes 
 because they caught in her dress. Her father had em- 
 broidered those dreadful roses on a buff ground one 
 winter when confined to the house by a heavy cold and 
 cough. She valued that ottoman for his sake, and
 
 UNA. 241 
 
 would not have suffered it to go into the sale had she 
 possessed any place she could regard as her own where 
 to put it. She needed no such article to remind her of 
 the dear father— the thought of him would be for ever 
 present to her without the assistance of ottomans to 
 refresh her memory. 
 
 On this ottoman, when dressed, Judith seated herself, 
 and let her hands rest in her lap. She was better ; she 
 would soon be well ; and when well would take the 
 first opportunity to depart. 
 
 The door was suddenly thrown open by her aunt, and 
 in the doorway stood Coppinger looking at her. He 
 raised his hand to his hat in salutation, but said 
 nothing. She was startled, and unable to speak. In 
 another moment the door was shut again. 
 
 That day she resolved that nothing should detain 
 her longer than she was forced. Jamie — her own dear 
 Jamie — came to see her, and the twins were locked in 
 each other's arms. 
 
 " ph, Ju ! darling Ju ! You are quite well, are you 
 not ? And Captain Coppinger has given me a grey 
 donkey instead of Tib; and I'm to ride it about when- 
 ever I choose ! " 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 242 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 " But, dear, Mr. Menaida has no stable, and no pad- 
 dock." 
 
 " Oh, Ju ! that's nothing. I'm coming up here, and 
 we shall be together — the donkey and you and me 
 and Aunt Dunes ! " 
 
 " No, Jamie. Nothing of the sort. Listen to me. 
 You remain at Mr. Menaida's. I am coming back." 
 
 " But I've already brought up my clothes." 
 
 " You take them back. Attend to me. You do not 
 come here. I go back to Mr. Menaida's imme- 
 diately." 
 
 " But, Ju ! you've got all your pretty things from the 
 parsonage here ! " 
 
 "They are not mine. Mr. Coppinger bought them 
 for himself." 
 
 " But— the donkey ? " 
 
 " Leave the donkey here. Pa}^ attention to my 
 words. I lay a strict command on you. As j-ou love 
 me, Jamie, do not leave Mr. Menaida's ; remain there 
 till my return." 
 
 That night there was a good deal of noise in the 
 house. Judith's room lay in a wing, nevertheless she 
 heard the riot, for the house was not large, and the
 
 UNA. 2^3 
 
 sounds from the hall penetrated ever}' portion of it. She 
 was frightened, and went into Miss Trevisa's room. 
 
 " Aunt ! what is this dreadful racket about ? " 
 
 ''Goto sleep — you cannot have every one shut his 
 mouth because of you." 
 
 " But what is it, auntie ? " 
 
 " It is nothing but the master has folk with him, if 
 3'ou wish particularly to know. The whole cargo of the 
 Black Frince has been run, and not a linger has been 
 laid by the coastguard on a single barrel or bale. So 
 they are celebrating their success. Go to bed and 
 sleep. It is naught to you." 
 
 " I cannot sleep, aunt. They are singing now." 
 
 " Why should they not ; have you aught against it ? 
 You are not mistress here, that I am aware of." 
 
 " But, auntie, are there many downstairs ? " 
 
 " I do not know. It is no concern of mine — and 
 certainly none of yours." 
 
 Judith was silenced for a while by her aunt's ill- 
 humour ; but she did not return to her room. Pre- 
 sentl}^ she asked — 
 
 "Are you sure, aunt, that Jamie is gone back to Pol- 
 ^eath ? "
 
 244 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Miss Trevisa kicked the stool from under her feet, in 
 her impatience. 
 
 " Really ! you drive me desperate. I did not bargain 
 for this. Am I to tear over the country on post-horses 
 to seek a nephew here and a niece there ? I can't tell 
 where Jamie is, and what is more, I do not care. I'll 
 do my duty by you both. I'll do no more ; and that 
 has been forced on me, it was not sought by me. 
 Heaven be my witness." 
 
 Judith returned to her room. The hard and sour 
 woman would afford her no information. 
 
 In her room she threw herself on her bed, and began 
 to think. She was in the very home and head-quarters 
 of contrabandism. But was smuggling a sin ? Surely 
 not that, or her father would have condemned it de- 
 cidedly. She remembered his hesitation relative to it, 
 in the last conversation they had together. Perhaps 
 it was not actually a sin — she could recall no text in 
 Scripture that denounced it — but it was a thing for- 
 bidden, and though she did not understand why it 
 was forbidden, she considered that it could not be an 
 altogether honourable and righteous traffic. Judith 
 was unable to rest. It was not the noise that disturbed .
 
 UNA. 245 
 
 her so much as her uneasiness about Jamie. Had he 
 obeyed her and gone back to Uncle Zachie ? Or had 
 he neglected her injunction, and was he in the house, 
 was he below, along with the revellers ? 
 
 She opened the door gently, and stole along the pas- 
 sage, to the head of the stairs, and listened. She could 
 smell the fumes of tobacco ; but to these she was 
 familiar. The atmosphere of Mr. Menaida's cottage 
 was redolent of the Virginian weed. The noise was, 
 however, something to wdiich she was utterly unaccus- 
 tomed : the boisterous merriment, the shouts, and 
 occasional oaths. Then a fiddle was played. There 
 was disputation, a pause, then the fiddle recommenced ; 
 it played a jig ; there was a clatter of feet, then a roar 
 of laughter — and then — she was almost sure she heard 
 the voice of her brother. 
 
 Regardless of herself, thinking only of him, without 
 a moment's consideration, she ran down the stairs and 
 threw open the door into the great kitchen, or hall. 
 
 It was full of men — wild, rough fellows — drinking 
 and smoking ; there were lights and a fire. The atmo- 
 sphere was rank with spirits and tobacco ; on a chair 
 sat a sailor fiddling, and in the midst of the room, on a
 
 246 /A' THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 table, was Jamie dancing a jig, to the laughter and 
 applause of the revellers. 
 
 The moment Judith appeared silence ensued — the 
 men were surprised to see a pale and delicate girl 
 stand before them, with a crown of gold like a halo 
 round her ivory-white face. But Judith took no notice 
 of an}^ one there — her eyes were on her brother, and 
 her hand raised to attract his attention. Judith had 
 been in bed, but, disturbed by the uproar, had risen, 
 and drawn on her gown ; her feet, however, were bare, 
 and her magnificent hair poured over her shoulders 
 unbound. Her whole mind, her whole care, was for 
 Jamie; on hersel not a thought rested; she had for- 
 gotten that she was but half clothed. 
 
 " Jamie ! Jamie ! " she cried. " My brother ! my 
 brother ! " 
 
 The fiddler ceased, lowered his violin, and stared at 
 her. 
 
 " Ju, let me alone ! It is such fun," said the boy. 
 
 " Jamie ! this instant you shall come w^th me. Get 
 down off the table ! " 
 
 As he hesitated, and looked round to the men who^ 
 had been applauding him for support against his.
 
 UNA. 247 
 
 sister, she went to the table, and caught him by the 
 feet. 
 
 "Jamie ! in pity to me ! Jamie ! think — papa is but 
 just dead." 
 
 Then tears of sorrow, shame, and entreaty filled her 
 eyes. 
 
 " No, Ju ! I'm not tied to your apron-strings," said 
 the lad, disengaging himself. 
 
 But in an instant he was caught from the table by the 
 strong arm of Coppinger, and thrust towards the door. 
 
 "Judith, you should not have come here." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Coppinger — and Jamie ! why did you let 
 him " 
 
 Coppinger drew the girl from the room into the 
 passage. 
 
 "Judith, not for the world would I have had you 
 here," said he, in an agitated voice. " I'll kill your 
 aunt for letting you come down." 
 
 " Mr. Coppinger, she knew nothing of my coming. 
 Come I must — I heard Jamie's voice." 
 
 " Go," said the Captain, shaking the boy. He was 
 ashamed of himself and angry. " Beware how you 
 disobey your sister again."
 
 248 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 Coppinger's face was red as fire. He turned to 
 Judith — 
 
 " Your feet are bare. Let me carry you upstairs — 
 carry you once more." 
 
 She shook her head. " As I came down so I can 
 return." 
 
 "' \"\'ill you forgive me ? " he said, in a low tone. 
 
 ** Heaven forgive you," she answered, and burst into 
 tears. " You will break my heart, I foresee it."
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 A GOLDFISH. 
 
 Next day — just in the same way as the day before — 
 when Judith was risen and dressed, the door was thrown 
 open, and again Coppinger was revealed, standing out- 
 side, looking at her with a strange expression, and 
 saying no word. 
 
 But Judith started up from her chair and went to 
 him in the passage, put forth her delicate white hand, 
 laid it on his cuff, and said : " Mr. Coppinger, may I 
 speak to you ? " 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " Where you like — downstairs will be best, in the 
 hall, if no one be there." 
 
 " It is empty." 
 
 He stood aside, and allowed her to precede him.
 
 2 50 IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 The staircase was narrow, and it would have been 
 dark but for a small dormer-window through which 
 light came from a squally sky covered with driving white- 
 vapours. But such light as entered from a white and 
 wan sun fell on her head as she descended — that head 
 of hair was like the splendour of a beech tree touched 
 by frost before the leaves fall. 
 
 Coppinger descended after her. 
 
 When they were both in the hall, he indicated his 
 armchair by the hearth for her to sit in, and she 
 obeyed. She was weak and now also nervous. She 
 must speak to the smuggler firmly, and that required 
 all her courage. 
 
 The room was tidy ; all traces of the debauch of the 
 preceding night had disappeared. 
 
 Coppinger stood a few paces from her. He seemed 
 to know that what she was going to say would displease 
 him, and he did not meet her clear eyes, but looked 
 with a sombre frown upon the floor. 
 
 Judith put the fingers of her right hand to her heart 
 to bid it cease beating so fast, and then rushed into 
 what she had to say, fearing lest delay should heighten 
 the difficulty of saying it.
 
 A GOLDFISH. 251 
 
 " I am so — so thankful to you, sir, for what you have 
 done for me. My aunt tells me that 3'ou found and 
 carried me here. I had lost my way on the rocks,, 
 and but for you I would have died." 
 
 " Yes," he said, raising his eyes suddenly and 
 looking piercingly into hers, " but for me you would 
 have died." 
 
 " I must tell you how deeply grateful I am for this 
 and for other kindnesses. I shall never forget that 
 this foolish, -silly little life of mine I owe to you." 
 
 Again her heart was leaping so furiously as to need 
 the pressure of her fingers on it to check it. 
 
 " We are quits," said Coppinger, slowly. " You 
 came — you ran a great risk to save me. But for you 
 I might be dead. So, this rude and worthless — this 
 evil life of mine," he held out his hands, both palms 
 before her, and spoke with quivering voice — " I owe 
 to you." 
 
 "Then," said Judith, "as you say, we are quits. 
 Yet — no. If one account is cancelled, another remains 
 unclosed. I threvv^ you down and broke your bones. 
 So there still remains a score against me." 
 
 " That I have forgiven long ago," said he. "Throw
 
 252 ]]V THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 me down, break me, kill me, do with me what you 
 will — and — I will kiss your hand." 
 
 " I do not wish to have my hand kissed," said Judith, 
 hastily, " I let you understand that before." 
 
 He put his elbow against the mantel-shelf, and 
 leaned his brow against his open hand, looking 
 down at her, so she could not see his face without 
 raising her eyes, but he could rest his on her and study 
 her, note her distress, the timidity with which she 
 spoke, the wince when he said a word that implied his 
 attachment to her. 
 
 " I have not only to thank you, Captain Coppinger 
 — but I have to say good-bye." 
 
 " What— go ? " 
 
 " Yes — I shall go back to Mr. Menaida to-day." 
 
 He stamped, and his face became blood-red. " You 
 shall not. I will it- — here you stay." 
 
 " It cannot be," said Judith, after a moment's pause 
 to let his passion subside. " You are not my guardian, 
 though very generously you have undertaken to be 
 valuer for me in dilapidations. I must go, I and 
 Jamie." 
 
 He shook his head. He feared to speak, his anger 
 ■choked him.
 
 A GOLDFISH. 255 
 
 " I cannot remain here myself, and certainly I 
 ^vill not let Jamie be here." 
 
 " Is it because of last night's foolery you say that ? "■ 
 
 " I am responsible for my brother. He is not very 
 clever ; he is easily led astray. There is no one to 
 think for him, to care for him, but myself. I could 
 never let him run the risk of such a thing happening 
 again." 
 
 " Confound the boy ! " burst forth Coppinger. " Are 
 you going to bring him up as a milk-sop ? You are 
 wrong altogether in the way you manage him." 
 
 " I can but follow my conscience." 
 
 " And is it because of him that you go ? " 
 
 " Not because of him onl}'." 
 
 " But I have spoken to your aunt ; she consents." 
 
 "But I do not," said Judith. 
 
 He stamped again, passionately. 
 
 " I am not the man who will bear to be disobeyed 
 and my will crossed. I say — Here you shall stay." 
 
 Judith waited a moment, looking at him steadily out 
 of her clear, glittering irridescent eyes, and said slowly, 
 " I am not the girl to be obliged to stay where my 
 common sense and m\' heart say Stay not."
 
 254 /.V THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 He folded his arms, lowered his chin on his breast, 
 and strode up and down the room. Then, suddenly, he 
 stood still opposite herand asked, in a threatening tone — 
 
 "Do you not like your room ? Does that not please 
 your humour ? " 
 
 " It has been most kind of you to collect all my little 
 bits of rubbish there. I feel how good you have been, 
 how full of thought for me ; but, for all that, I can- 
 not stav." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " I have said, on one account, because of Jamie." 
 
 He bit his lips—" I hate that boy." 
 
 " Then most certainly he cannot be here. He must 
 be with those who love him." 
 
 " Then stay." 
 
 " I cannot — I will not. I have a will as well as 
 you. My dear papa always said that my will was 
 strong." 
 
 "You are the onl}^ person who has ever dared to 
 resist me." 
 
 " That may be ; I am daring — because you have been 
 iind." 
 
 " I' i to you. Yes — to you only."
 
 A GOLDFISH. 255 
 
 " It maybe so, and because kind to me, and me only, 
 I, and I only, presume to say No when you say Yes." 
 
 He came again to the fireplace and again leaned 
 against the mantel-shelf. He was trembling with 
 passion. 
 
 " And what if I say that, if you go, I will turn old 
 Dunes — I m^ean your aunt — out of the house ? " 
 
 "You will not say it, Mr. Coppinger; you are too 
 noble, too generous, to take a mean revenge." 
 
 " Oh ! you allow there is some good in me ? " 
 
 " I thankfully and cheerfully protest there is a great 
 ■deal of good in you — and I would there were more." 
 
 " Come — stay here and teach me to be good — be my 
 •crutch ; I will lean on you, and you shall help me along 
 the right way." 
 
 "You are too great a weight, Mr. Coppinger," said 
 she, smiling — but it was a frightened and a forced 
 smile. " You would bend and break the little crutch." 
 
 He heaved a long breath. He was looking at her 
 from under his hand and his bent brows. 
 
 " You are cruel — to deny me a chance. And what if 
 I were to say that I am hungry, sick at heart, and 
 faint. Would vou turn vour back and leave vr ? "
 
 256 /-\- THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 "No, assuredly not." 
 
 " I am hungiy." 
 
 She looked up at him, and was frightened by the 
 glitter in his eyes. 
 
 * " I am hungry for the sight of you, for the sound of 
 your voice." 
 
 She did not say anything to this, but sat, with her 
 hands on her lap, musing, uncertain how to deal with 
 this man, so strange, impulsive, and yet so submissive 
 to her, and even appealing to her pity. 
 
 " Mr. Coppinger, I have to think of and care for Jamie^ 
 and he takes up all my thoughts and engrosses all my^ 
 time." 
 
 " Jamie, again ! " 
 
 " So that I cannot feed and teach another orphan."" 
 
 " Put off }our departure — a week. Grant me that. 
 Then you will have time to get quite strong, and also- 
 you will be able to see whether it is not possible for 
 you to live here. Here is your aunt — it is natural and 
 right that 30U should be with her. She has been made 
 your guardian by your father. Do you not bow to- 
 his directions." 
 
 "Mr. Coppinger, I cannot stay here."
 
 A GOLDFISH 257 
 
 " I am at a disadvantage," he exclaimed. " Man 
 always is when carrying on a contest with a woman. 
 Stay — stay here and listen to me." He puf out his 
 hand and pressed her back into the chair, for she was 
 about to rise. "Listen to what I say. You do not 
 know — you cannot know — how^ near death you and I 
 — yes, you and I — were, chained together." His deep 
 voice shook. " You and I were on the face of the 
 cliff. There was but one little strip, the width of my 
 hand " — he held out his palm before her — " and that 
 was not secure. It was sliding away under my feet. 
 Below was death, certain death — a wretched death. 
 I held you. That little chain tied us two — us two 
 together. All your life and mine hung on was my 
 broken arm and broken collar-bone. I held you to me 
 with my right arm and the chain. I did not think we 
 should live. I thought that together — chained together, 
 I holding you — so we would die — so we would be found 
 — and my only care, my only prayer was, if so, that so 
 we might be washed to sea and sink together, I holding 
 you and chained to you, and you to me. I prayed that 
 we might never be found ; for I thought if rude hands 
 were laid on us that the chain would be unloosed, my 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 258 IN THE ROAR OF IHE SEA. 
 
 arm unlocked from about you, and that we should be 
 carried to separate graves. I could not endure that 
 thought. Let us go down together — bound, clasped 
 together — into the depths of the deep sea, and there 
 rest. But it was not to be so. I carried you over that 
 stage of infinite danger. An angel or a devil — I cannot 
 say which — held me up. And then I swore that never 
 in life should you be loosed from me, as I trusted that 
 in death we should have remained bound together. 
 See ! " He put his hand to her head and drew a lock 
 of her golden hair and wound it about his hand and 
 arm. " You have me fast now — fast in a chain of 
 gold — of gold infinitely precious to me — infinitely 
 strong — and you will cast me off, who never thought 
 to cast you off when tied to you with a chain of iron. 
 What say you ? Will you stand in safety on your 
 cliff of pride and integrity and unloose the golden band 
 and sa}^, ' Go down^ — -down. I know nothing in you to 
 love. You are naught to me but a robber, a wrecker, a 
 drunkard, a murderer — go down into Hell ? ' " 
 
 In his quivering excitement he acted the whole 
 scene, unconscious that he was so doing, and the 
 drops of agony stood on his brow and rolled — drip —
 
 A GOLDFISH. 259 
 
 drip — drip — from it. Man does not weep ; his tears 
 exude more bitter than those that flow from the eyes^ 
 and they distill from his pores. 
 
 Judith was awed by the intensity of passion in the 
 man, but not changed in her purpose. His vehemence 
 reacted on her, calming her, giving her determination 
 to finish the scene decisively and finally. 
 
 " Mr. Coppinger," she said, looking up to him, who 
 still held her by the hair wound about his hand and 
 arm, "it is you who hold me in chains, not I you. 
 And so I — 3-our prisoner — must address a gaoler. Am 
 I to speak in chains, or will you release me ? " 
 
 He shook his head, and clenched his hand on the 
 gold hair. 
 
 "Very well," said she, "so it must be; I, bound, 
 plead my cause with you — ^at a disadvantage. This is 
 what I must say at the risk of hurting you ; and. 
 Heaven be my witness, I would not wound one who 
 has been so good to me — one to whom I owe my life, 
 m}' power now to speak and entreat." She paused 
 a minute to gain breath and strengthen herself for 
 what she had to say. 
 
 " Mr. Coppinger — do you not yourself see that it is
 
 26o IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 quite impossible that I should remain in this house 
 — that I should have anything more to do with you ? 
 Consider how I have been brought up — what my 
 thoughts have been. I have had, from earliest child- 
 hood, my dear papa's example and teachings, sinking 
 into my heart till they have coloured my very life- 
 blood. My little world and your great one are quite 
 different. What I love and care for is folly to you, 
 and your pursuits and pleasures are repugnant to me. 
 You are an eagle — a bird of prey." 
 
 "A bird of prey," repeated Coppinger. 
 
 " And you soar and fight, and dive, and rend in 
 your own element ; whereas I am a little silver 
 trout " 
 
 " No " — he drew up his arm wound round with her 
 hair—" No— a goldfish." 
 
 " Well, so be it ; a goldfish swimming in my own 
 crystal element, and happy in it. You would not take 
 me out of it to gasp and die. Trust me. Captain Cop- 
 pinger, I could not — even if I would — live in your 
 world." 
 
 She put up her hands to his arm and drew some 
 o( the hair through his fingers, and unwound it from
 
 A GOLDFISH. 261 
 
 his sleeve. He made no resistance. He watched her, 
 in a dream. He had heard every word she had said, 
 and he knew that she spoke the truth. They belonged 
 to different realms of thought and sensation. He 
 •could not breathe — he would stifle — in hers, and it 
 was possible — it was certain — that she could not 
 ■endure the strong, rough quality of his. 
 
 Her delicate fingers touched his hand, and sent a 
 spasm to his heart. She was drawing away another 
 •strand of hair, and untwisting it from about his arm, 
 passing the wavy fire-gold from one hand to the other. 
 And as every strand was taken off, so went light and hope 
 from him, and despair settled down on his dark spirit. 
 
 He was thinking whether it would not have been 
 better to have thrown himself down when he had her 
 in his arms, and bound to him by the chain. 
 
 Then he laughed. 
 
 She looked up, and caught his wild eye. There 
 was a timid inquiry in her look, and he answered 
 it. 
 
 " You may unwind your hair from my arm, but it is 
 woven round and round my heart, and you cannot loose 
 it thence."
 
 262 nx THE ROAR OF THE SEA. 
 
 She drew another strand awav, and released that also 
 from his arm. There remained now but one red-gold 
 band of hair fastening her to him. He looked entreat- 
 ingly at her, and then at the hair. 
 
 " It must indeed be so," she said, and released herself 
 wholly. 
 
 Then she stood up, a little timidly, for she could 
 not trust him in his passion and his despair. But he 
 did not stir; he looked at her with fixed, dreamy eyes. 
 She left her place, and moved towards the door. 
 She had gone forth from Mr. Menaida's without hat 
 or other cover for her head than the cloak with its 
 hood, and that she had lost. She must return bare- 
 headed. She had reached the door ; and there she 
 waved him a farewell. 
 
 " Goldfish ! " he cried. 
 
 She halted. 
 
 " Goldfish, come here ; one — one word only." 
 
 She hesitated whether to yield. The man was 
 dangerous. But she considered that with a few strides- 
 he might overtake her if she tried to escape. Therefore: 
 she returned towards him, but came not near enough 
 for him to touch her.
 
 A GOLDFISH. 263 
 
 " Hearken to me," said he. " It may be as you say. 
 It is as you say. You have your world ; I have mine. 
 You could not live in mine, nor I in yours." But his 
 "voice thrilled, " Swear to me — swear to me now — that 
 whilst I live no other shall hold you, as I would have 
 held you, to his side ; that no other shall take your hair 
 and wind it round him, as I have — I could not endure 
 'that. Will you swear to me that ? — and you shall go." 
 
 " Indeed I will ; indeed, indeed I will." 
 
 " Beware how you break this oath. Let him beware 
 who dares to seek you." He was silent, looking on 
 the ground, his arms folded. So he stood for some 
 minutes, lost in thought. Then suddenl}' he cried out, 
 "Goldfish!" 
 
 He had found a single hair, long — a yard long — of 
 the most intense red-gold, lustrous as a cloud in the 
 west over the sunken sun. It had been left about his 
 arm and hand. 
 
 "Goldfish!" 
 
 But she was gone. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, 
 CHILWORTH AND LONDON. 
 
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