little thought her old lover had been lately in the neighbourhood, and she was even now meditating an excursion to inquire after him, in one of those mysterious modes, which were yet resorted to occasionally by the lovers of the far-west.

"A health to our squire!" cried Colan, filling a cup of cyder, "and to our bonny young lady, and welcome back to Trevethlan."

"Faith," said Owen, "they're not come back to do much good to Trevethlan, I reckon. There's none of the fortune come with 'em as folks used to talk about, or they'd never ha' gone through the town with a rubbishy old chay from Helston."

"Small blame to Squire Randolph," observed Germoe, "that he don't throw away the little he's left, like our poor master before him. And, for my part, I'd rather have him among us, poor though he may be, than away nobody knows where.

There'll be more smiles in Trevethlan than there's been this many a day."

"Then there's not much to smile about," Owen replied; "and the best maybe the squire could do, were to take back some of that's been stolen from him. There's many a lad ready to strike a blow for Trevethlan."

"Wild talk, Edward," said Breage; "wild talk, and nothing but it. We live by the law now-a-days."

"And there's a pleasanter way," observed Dame Miniver. "Miss Mildred of Pendar'l 's as pretty a lady as ever stepped, and she might bring the squire all his land again, and fulfil the saying quite agreeable,

"There's too much ill blood atween the houses," Colan said. "A deal too much. Didn't the lady of Pendar'l turn the late squire away? And didn't our young master send her back from his gate with a flea in her ear? Don't ye recollect how Jeffrey chuckled about it? The young folks have ne'er seen one another, Mrs. Miniver."

"How d'ye know?" the hostess asked. "And trust me, if meet they did, there'd meet a couple predestinated to fall in love. In all the old tales that ever I read, the true gentleman falls in love with the wrong lady. But, of course, they must meet, or they haven't the chance, and somehow they always do meet."

"Well," said Germoe, "I'll wager the day ne'er dawns that sees that match. The saying'll not hold good in our time—mark my words."

"There's a deal of wisdom in those old sayings," quoth Mistress Miniver. "Ay, and in others too. Mind ye not how old Maud Basset foretold a fortune for her child, and the gipsy crossed it, and both came out as true as gospel? Those sayings are not to be looked down upon, Master Germoe."

"If ever that saying comes true in my time," muttered Owen, "and not on our side, there'll be a tale told of Pendar'l—that's all I know."

But the remark excited no attention, and from such predictions the company slid by degrees into the kindred and fascinating subject of preternatural visitations, a wide field in that remote district of the west; and they drew their seats closer round the fire, and dropped their voices, until they almost frightened one another into a reluctance to separate on their different ways homeward.

They would, perhaps, have expressed themselves in a more discontented manner, if they had known the intention with which Randolph sought the home of his fathers: he has himself obscurely intimated it, in his soliloquy by the sea. To persuade his sister to remain in those old halls, under the guardianship of Polydore Riches; to return himself to London, to obtain, in spite of all obstacles, an interview with Mildred Pendarrel; to extract from her the confession which he was convinced she was ready to make; to exchange mutual vows; to look round the world for the path which he might cut to honour and fortune; to return and claim his bride, who by that time would be her own mistress—such was the scheme upon which he was at present resolved. It was a wild outline, and he did not trouble himself to fill up the details. Young and ardent, he looked straight to the summit of his ambition, and recked nothing of the ravines which separated the various intervening ridges.

But with all his determination he hesitated to disclose his idea to Helen. He felt that to her he was everything. Until quite recently they had always shared one another's thoughts. He trembled at the anguish he should inflict by such a separation. And so he deferred the confidence from time to time, persuading himself that it would best be made on the very eve of his departure, until this was indefinitely postponed by intelligence that Pendarrel Hall was being prepared for the immediate reception of its mistress.

In the meanwhile his sister and he renewed their former acquaintance with the good folks of the hamlet, and to external appearance resumed the way in which they had lived before the late Mr. Trevethlan's death. It was a quiet, dreamy sort of life, of which a faint sketch was given in the outset of this narrative. They were born in a land of romance; the whole region was classic ground. From King Arthur's castle of Tintagel in the north-east, to Merlin's stone in Mount's Bay, respecting which an old prophecy—

was said to be fulfilled by some stragglers from the Spanish Armada, every field might be supposed the scene of some chivalrous exploit, or magical enchantment, or superstitious sacrifice. There dwelt the last of the British druids: their strange monuments were still standing on the wild moors and in the cultivated domains, on the desolate carns and among the crags of the sea-shore. Such was the oracular stone at Castle Trereen,—at that time not forced from its resting-place by sacrilegious hands, and requiring no chain to keep it from logging too far. Such was Lanyon Quoit, a cromlech on the moorland beyond Madron, and not very far from the battle-field, where the Saxon Athelstan finally defeated the Britons, and drove them to perish of hunger in the caves of Pendeen. The curious stranger still marks their strong fortresses, Castle Chun and Castle Dinas, occupying the highest ground between Mount's Bay and the Irish Sea; he may read the name of their chieftain, Rialobran, on his tombstone, Mên Skryfa, now prostrate among the herbage; and he may note the sanguinary nature of the struggle, in the title which it gained for the Land's End, of Penvonlas, or the Headland of Blood.

And, again, the customs of the country still kept alive some faint memorials of those heathen times, and of the accommodating spirit of the earliest Christian missionaries. To such an origin is ascribed the salutation of the orchards at Christmas, already referred to: the mistletoe of the apple was not so sacred as that of the oak, but neither was it despicable. And the bonfires of St. John's Eve were said to tell of the days when the cromlechs of Cam Brey were surrounded by a mystic grove, and the officiating priests hurried their human victims through purifying flames to the blood-stained altar.

Nor was the land less indebted for romantic associations to those fabulous historians, who peopled Britain with royalty, beauty, chivalry, and faery, and assigned to Cornwall the honour of producing the renowned Sir Tristan. Not a few hours were whiled away at Trevethlan Castle in discoursing of their marvellous adventures, their strange wandering towns of Camelot and Caerleon, and the general phantasmagoric character of their narratives. They plotted out the kingdom in an imaginary map, and whatever scenery they required, they regarded as existing and well known. Did they want a lake, from whence should issue a hand bearing a magic sword, they troubled not themselves with any mention of its landmarks: a forest perilous arose wherever they willed: a bridge to be