Chapter 1 - Page 2

still fresh in his
mind, was forced to admit, as he looked about him, that the position
of his friend's house on that rolling brown moor was far from a
smiling one.

"You used to come here when you were a boy, though," he objected,
after a pause, with a glance at the great breakers that curled in upon
the cove; "and you must surely have found it pleasant enough then,
what with the bathing and the fishing and the shooting and the
boating, and all the delights of the sea and the country."

Walter Tyrrel nodded his head. It was clear the subject was extremely
distasteful to him.

"Yes--till I was twelve or thirteen," he said, slowly, as one who
grudges assent, "in my uncle's time, I liked it well enough, no doubt.
Boys don't realize the full terror of sea or cliff, you know, and are
perfectly happy swimming and climbing. I used to be amphibious in
those days, like a seal or an otter--in the water half my time; and I
scrambled over the rocks--great heavens, it makes me giddy now just to
THINK where I scrambled. But when I was about thirteen years old"--his
face grew graver still--"a change seemed to come over me, and I began
. . . well, I began to hate Penmorgan. I've hated it ever since. I
shall always hate it. I learned what it all meant, I suppose--rocks,
wrecks, and accidents. I saw how dull and gloomy it was, and I
couldn't bear coming down here. I came as seldom as I dared, till my
uncle died last year and left it to me. And then there was no help for
it. I HAD to come down. It's a landlord's business, I consider, to
live among his tenants and look after the welfare of the soil,
committed to his charge by his queen and country. He holds it in
trust, strictly speaking, for the nation. So I felt I must come and
live here. But I hate it, all the same. I hate it! I hate it!"

He said it so energetically, and with such strange earnestness in his
voice, that Eustace Le Neve, scanning his face as he spoke, felt sure
there must be some good reason for his friend's dislike of his
ancestral home, and forebore (like a man) to question him further.
Perhaps, he thought, it was connected in Tyrrel's mind with some
painful memory, some episode in his history he would gladly forget;
though, to be sure, when one comes to think of it, at thirteen such
episodes are rare and improbable. A man doesn't, as a rule, get
crossed in love at that early age; nor does he generally form lasting
and abiding antipathies. And indeed, for the matter of that, Penmorgan
was quite gloomy enough in itself, in all conscience, to account for
his dislike--a lonely and gaunt-looking granite-built house, standing
bare and square on the edge of a black moor, under shelter of a rocky