Chapter 3 - Page 2

tenterhooks. It's so dangerous up there! You might tumble any minute."

"_I_ never tumble," Trevennack made answer with solemn gravity,
spreading one hand on either side as if to balance himself like an
acrobat. But he descended as he spoke and took his place beside them.

Tyrrel looked at the view and looked at the pretty girl. It was
evident he was quite as much struck by the one as by the other.
Indeed, of the two, Cleer seemed to attract the larger share of his
attention. For some minutes they stood and talked, all five of them
together, without further introduction than their common admiration
for that exquisite bay, in which Trevennack appeared to take an almost
proprietary interest. It gratified him, obviously, a Cornish man, that
these strangers (as he thought them) should be so favorably impressed
by his native county. But Tyrrel all the while looked ill at ease,
though he sidled away as far as possible from the edge of the cliff,
and sat down near Cleer at a safe distance from the precipice. He was
silent and preoccupied. That mattered but little, however, as the rest
did all the talking, especially Trevennack, who turned out to be
indeed a perfect treasure-house of Cornish antiquities and Cornish
folk-lore.

"I generally stand below, on top of Michael's Crag," he said to
Eustace, pointing it out, "when the tide allows it; but when it's
high, as it is now, such a roaring and seething scour sets through the
channel between the rock and the mainland that no swimmer could stem
it; and then I come up here, and look down from above upon it. It's
the finest point on all our Cornish coast, this point we stand on. It
has the widest view, the purest air, the hardest rock, the highest and
most fantastic tor of any of them."

"My husband's quite an enthusiast for this particular place," Mrs.
Trevennack interposed, watching his face as she spoke with a certain
anxious and ill-disguised wifely solicitude.

"He's come here for years. It has many associations for us."

"Some painful and some happy," Cleer added, half aloud; and Tyrrel,
nodding assent, looked at her as if expecting some marked recognition.

"You should see it in the pilchard season," her father went on,
turning suddenly to Eustace with much animation in his voice. "That's
the time for Cornwall--a month or so later than now--you should see it
then, for picturesqueness and variety. 'When the corn is in the
shock,' says our Cornish rhyme, 'Then the fish are off the rock'--and
the rock's St. Michael's. The HUER, as we call him, for he gives the
hue and cry from the hill-top lookout when the fish are coming, he
stands on Michael's Crag just below