drawl. At seven o'clock we reached Truro, and I began to look forward to my journey's end.
It came presently, with the grey castle of St. Michael crowning the Mount, the wide blue bay, and at last Penzance itself. Passengers streamed from the train towards the barrier, followed by bag-laden porters. I had thought the holiday season over, but found myself in the midst of a belated invasion of American tourists, who were calling loudly for vehicles and criticizing the Cornish landscape. Passively I waited until these enthusiasts had left the station for their hotel. Newlyn and Madron Church were not for me, nor ancient Cornish crosses and Druidical remains. Cornwall had known me in other days, and had shown me its cromlehs, logan stones, black cairns, and giants' caves. I was aware that it was the last stronghold of Ancient Britain, and I had even read Mr. Ruskin's criticism of Turner's picture of the Land's End. My present duty was to seek out my new employers without delay, in order to act as chauffeur to a nephew who had the fancy to be driven about the countryside at night.
I set about doing so as soon as the coast was clear. Giving up my ticket at the barrier, I asked a direction at the first shop I came to outside. The shopkeeper, a surly figure of a Cornish grocer busily slicing bacon with a great knife, hardly deigned to look up as he answered that lie had never heard of Colonel Gravenall or Charmingdene. At the next shop a barber with an open razor in his hand gave me a similar but more courteous reply. Two more shops and I was no better off, and so it went on, down the street.
It puzzled me to find that my new employer was so little known. Even the policeman of whom I inquired as I crossed the road could tell me nothing of him or his house. I was turning away from this official, greatly perplexed, when it occurred to me to ask him if he could direct me to St. Bree. Hitherto I had merely asked for my employer and his residence by their names.
The policeman, a large dark man with a meditative eye, said yes, he knew St. Bree.
"The house I want is at St. Bree," I explained. "Will you tell me how to get there?"
He lifted his hand and pointed with his forefinger in the direction of the distant hills.
"St. Bree is a good five miles yonder, in the middle of the moors."
I looked from his pointing finger to him. "And how do I find my way?" I asked.
I was to follow the road out of town, he told me, until it divided into two, when I was to take the high one on the right, for the lower road ran on to Land's End and the sea. The higher road climbed across the moors, and at the end of two miles and a furlong or so would bring me to a granite roadside cross, or "crass," as he called it. From the cross I was to make my way over the moors to the highest point I could see.
"But how will I know the highest point when I reach it?" I interrupted in some surprise.
"Because you cannot mistake it," was his reply. "St. Bree is the loneliest and highest place in Cornwall. Four parishes meet there by a holed stone, and they all slope downward to the moors or sea. Keep across the moors until ye come to a spot where everything is beneath ye, and you'll be there."
I thanked him for this rather Celtic direction, and departed upon my way.
Chapter 2
THE HOUSE BY "THE OYSTERS"
■ I put my best foot foremost for "the loneliest and highest place in Cornwall," the hamlet of St. Bree, where four parishes met by a holed stone, and all sloped downward to moors and sea. The heather stretched away on my right hand, the sea shimmered to the left; Penzance, holy headland of St. Anthony, lay behind me in the rear. Before me climbed the rugged
10
