lunatic asylum, and called itself the centre of the Duchy) stood
three miles back from the lip of this happy valley, whither on summer
evenings its burghers rambled to eat cream and junket at the Dairy
Farm by the river bank, and afterwards sit to watch the fish rise,
while the youngsters and maidens played hide-and-seek in the woods.
But there came a day when the names of Watt and Stephenson waxed great
in the land, and these slow citizens caught the railway frenzy.
They took it, however, in their own fashion. They never dreamed of
connecting themselves with other towns and a larger world, but of
aggrandisement by means of a railway that should run from Tregarrick
to nowhere in particular, and bring the intervening wealth to their
doors. They planned a railway that should join Tregarrick with Cuckoo
Valley, and there divide into two branches, the one bringing ore and
clay from the moors, the other fetching up sand and coal from the sea.
Surveyors and engineers descended upon the woods; then a cloud of
navvies. The days were filled with the crash of falling timber and the
rush of emptied trucks. The stream was polluted, the fish died, the
fairies were evicted from their rings beneath the oak, the morals of
the junketing houses underwent change. The vale knew itself no longer;
its smoke went up week by week with the noise of pick-axes and oaths.

On August 13th, 1834, the Mayor of Tregarrick declared the new line
open, and a locomotive was run along its rails to Dunford Bridge, at
the foot of the moors. The engine was christened _The Wonder of the
Age_; and I have before me a handbill of the festivities of that proud
day, which tells me that the mayor himself rode in an open truck,
"embellished with Union Jacks, lions and unicorns, and other loyal
devices." And then Nature settled down to heal her wounds, and the
Cuckoo Yalley Railway to pay no dividend to its promoters.

It is now two years and more since, on an August day, I wound up my
line by Dunford Bridge, and sauntered towards the Light Horseman Inn,
two gunshots up the road. The time was four o'clock, or thereabouts,
and a young couple sat on a bench by the inn-door, drinking cocoa out
of one cup. Above their heads and along the house-front a vine-tree
straggled, but its foliage was too thin to afford a speck of shade as
they sat there in the eye of the westering sun. The man (aged about
one-and-twenty) wore the uncomfortable Sunday-best of a mechanic,
with a shrivelled, but still enormous, bunch of Sweet-William in his
buttonhole. The girl was dressed in a bright green gown and a white
bonnet. Both were flushed and perspiring, and I still think they must
have ordered hot cocoa in haste, and were repenting it at leisure.
They lifted their eyes and blushed with a yet warmer red as I passed
into the porch.

Two men were seated in the cool tap-room, each with a pasty and a mug
of beer. A composition of sweat and coal-dust had caked their faces,
and so deftly smoothed all distinction out of their features that
it seemed at the moment natural and proper to take them for twins.
Perhaps this was an error: perhaps, too, their appearance of extreme
age was produced by the dark grey dust that overlaid so much of them
as showed above the table. As twins, however, I remember them, and
cannot shake off the impression that they had remained twins for an
unusual number of years.

One addressed me. "Parties outside pretty comfortable?" he asked.

"They were drinking out of the same cup," I answered.

He nodded. "Made man and wife this mornin'. I don't fairly know
what's best to do. Lord knows I wouldn' hurry their soft looks and
dilly-dallyin'; but did 'ee notice how much beverage was left in the
cup?"

"They was mated at Tregarrick, half-after-nine this mornin'," observed
the other twin, pulling out a great watch, "and we brought 'em
down here in a truck for their honeymoon. The agreement was for an
afternoon in the woods; but by crum! sir, they've sat there and held
one another's hand for up'ards of an hour after the stated time to
start. And we ha'nt the heart to tell 'em so."

He walked across to the window and peered over the blind.

"There's a mort of grounds in the cocoa that's sold here," he went
on, after a look, "and 'tisn't the sort that does the stomach good,
neither. For their own sakes, I'll give the word to start, and chance
their thankin' me some day later when they learn what things be made
of."

The other twin arose, shook the crumbs off his trousers, and stretched
himself. I guessed now that this newly-married pair had delayed
traffic at the Dunford terminus of the Cuckoo Valley Railway for
almost an hour and a half; and I determined to travel into Tregarrick
by the same train.

So we strolled out of the inn towards the line, the lovers following,
arm-in-arm, some fifty paces behind.

"How far is it to the station?" I inquired.

The twins stared at me.

Presently we turned down a lane scored with dry ruts, passed an oak
plantation, and came on a clearing where the train stood ready. The
line did not finish: it ended in a heap of sand. There were eight
trucks, seven of them laden with granite, and an engine, with a
prodigiously long funnel, bearing the name _The Wonder of the Age_ in
brass letters along its boiler.

"Now," said one of the twins, while the other raked up the furnace,
"you can ride in the empty truck with the lovers, or on the engine
along with us--which you like."

I chose the engine. We climbed on board, gave a loud whistle, and
jolted oil. Far down, on our right, the river shone between the
trees, and these trees, encroaching on the track, almost joined their
branches above us. Ahead, the moss that grew upon the sleepers gave
the line the appearance of a green glade, and the grasses, starred
with golden-rod and mallow, grew tall to the very edge of the rails.
It seemed that in a few more years Nature would cover this scar
of 1834, and score the return match against man. Hails, engine,
officials, were already no better than ghosts: youth, and progress lay
in the pushing trees, the salmon leaping against the dam below, the
young man and maid sitting with clasped hands and amatory looks in the
hindmost truck.

At the end of three miles or so we gave an alarming whistle, and
slowed down a bit. The trees were thinner here, and I saw that a
high-road came down the hill, and cut across our track some fifty
yards ahead. We prepared to cross it cautiously.

"Ho-o-oy! Stop!"

The brake was applied, and as we came to a standstill a party of men
and women descended the hill towards us.

"'Tis Susan Warne's seventh goin' to be christen'd, by the look of
it," said the engine-driver beside me; "an', by crum! we've got the
Kimbly."

The procession advanced. In the midst walked a stout woman, carrying a
baby in long clothes, and in front a man bearing in both hands a plate
covered with a white cloth. He stepped up beside the train, and,
almost before I had time to be astonished, a large yellow cake was
thrust into my hands. Engine-driver and stoker were also presented
with a cake apiece, and then the newly-married pair, who took and ate
with some shyness and giggling.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" asked the stoker, with his mouth full.

"A boy," the man answered; "and I count it good luck that you men of
modern ways should be the first we meet on our way to church. The
child 'll be a go-ahead if there's truth in omens."

"You're right, naybour. We're the speediest men in this part of the
universe, I d' believe. Here's luck to 'ee, Susan Warne!" he piped
out, addressing one of the women; "an' if you want a name for your
seventh, you may christen 'en after the engine here, the _Wonder of
the Age_."

We waved our hats and jolted off again towards Tregarrick. At the
end of the journey the railway officials declined to charge for
the pleasure of my company. But after some dispute, they agreed to
compromise by adjourning to the Railway Inn, and drinking prosperity
to Susan Warne's seventh.




THE CONSPIRACY ABOARD THE _MIDAS_.


"Are you going home to England? So am I. I'm Johnny; and I've never
been to England before, but I know all about it. There's great palaces
of gold and ivory--that's for the lords and bishops--and there's
Windsor Castle, the biggest of all, carved out of a single
diamond--that's for the queen. And she's the most beautiful lady in
the whole world, and feeds her peacocks and birds of paradise out of
a ruby cup. And there the sun is always shining, so that nobody wants
any candles. O, words would fail me if I endeavoured to convey to you
one-half of the splendours of that enchanted realm!"

This last sentence tumbled so oddly from the childish lips, that I
could not hide a smile as I looked down on my visitor. He stood just
outside my cabin-door--a small serious boy of about eight, with long
flaxen curls hardly dry from his morning bath. In the pauses of
conversation he rubbed his head with a big bath-towel. His legs
and feet were bare, and he wore only a little shirt and velveteen
breeches, with scarlet ribbons hanging untied at the knees.

"You're laughing!"

I stifled the smile.

"What were you laughing at?"

"Why, you're wrong, little man, on just one or two points," I answered
evasively.

"Which?"

"Well, about the sunshine in England. The sun is not always shining
there, by any means."

"I'm afraid you know very little about it," said the boy, shaking his
head.

"Johnny! Johnny!" a voice called down the companion-ladder at this
moment. It was followed by a thin, weary-looking man, dressed in
carpet slippers and a suit of seedy black. I guessed his age at fifty,
but suspect now that the lines about his somewhat prim mouth were
traced there by sorrows rather than by years. He bowed to me shyly,
and addressed the boy.

"Johnny, what are you doing here? in bare feet!"

"Father, here is a man who says the sun doesn't always shine in
England."

The man gave me a fleeting embarrassed glance, and echoed, as if to
shirk answering--

"In bare feet!"

"But it does, doesn't it? Tell him that it does," the child insisted.

Driven thus into a corner, the father turned his profile, avoiding my
eyes, and said dully--

"The sun is always shining in England."

"Go on, father; tell him the rest."

"--and the use of candles, except as a luxury, is consequently unknown
to the denizens of that favoured clime," he wound up, in the tone of a
man who repeats an old, old lecture.

Johnny was turning to me triumphantly, when his father caught him by
the hand and led him back to his dressing. The movement was hasty,
almost rough. I stood at the cabin-door and looked after them.

We were fellow-passengers aboard the _Midas_, a merchant barque of
near on a thousand tons, homeward bound from Cape Town; and we had
lost sight of the Table Mountain but a couple of days before. It was
the first week of the new year, and all day long a fiery sun made life
below deck insupportable. Nevertheless, though we three were the only
passengers on board, and lived constantly in sight of each other, it
was many days before I made any further acquaintance with Johnny and
his father. The sad-faced man clearly desired to avoid me, answering
my nod with a cold embarrassment, and clutching Johnny's hand whenever
the child called "Good-morning!" to me cordially. I fancied him
ashamed of his foolish falsehood; and I, on my side, was angry because
of it. The pair were for ever strolling backwards and forwards on
deck, or resting beneath the awning on the poop, and talking--always
talking. I fancied the boy was delicate; he certainly had a bad cough
during the first few days. But this went away as our voyage proceeded,
and his colour was rich and rosy.

One afternoon I caught a fragment of their talk as they passed, Johnny
brightly dressed and smiling, his father looking even more shabby and
weary than usual. The man was speaking.

"And Queen Victoria rides once a year through the streets of London on
her milk-white courser, to hear the nightingales sing in the Tower.
For when she came to the throne the Tower was full of prisoners, but
with a stroke of her sceptre she changed them all into song-birds.
Every year she releases fifty; and that is why they sing so
rapturously, because each one hopes his turn has come at last."

I turned away. It was unconscionable to cram the child's mind
with these preposterous fables. I pictured the poor little chap's
disappointment when the bleak reality came to stare him in the face.
To my mind, his father was worse than an idiot, and I could hardly
bring myself to greet him next morning, when we met.

My disgust did not seem to trouble him. In a timid way, even, his eyes
expressed satisfaction. For a week or two I let him alone, and then
was forced to speak.

It happened in this way. We had spun merrily along the tail of the
S.E. trades and glided slowly to a standstill on a glassy ocean, and
beneath a sun that at noon left us shadowless. A fluke or two of wind
had helped us across the line; but now, in 2° 27' north latitude, the
_Midas_ slept like a turtle on the greasy sea. The heat of the near
African coast seemed to beat like steam against our faces. The pitch
bubbled like caviare in the seams of the white deck, and the shrouds
and ratlines ran with tears of tar. To touch the brass rail of the
poop was to blister the hand, to catch a whiff from the cook's galley
was to feel sick for ten minutes. The hens in their coops lay with
eyes glazed and gasped for air. If you hung forward over the bulwarks
you stared down into your own face. The sailors grumbled and cursed
and panted as they huddled forward under a second awning that was
rigged up to give them shade rather than coolness; for coolness was
not to be had.

On the second afternoon of the calm I happened to pass this awning,
and glanced in. Pretty well all the men were there, lounging, with
shirts open and chests streaming with sweat; and in their midst on a
barrel, sat Johnny, with a flushed face.

The boatswain--Gibbings by name--was speaking. I heard him say--"An'
the Lord Mayor 'll be down to meet us, sonny, at the docks, wi' his
five-an'-fifty black boys all ablowin' blowin' Hallelujarum on their
silver key-bugles. An' we'll be took in tow to the Mansh'n 'Ouse an'
fed--" here he broke off and passed the back of his hand across his
mouth, with a glance at the ship's cook, who had been driven from his
galley by the heat. But the cook had no suggestions to make. His soul
was still sick with the reek of the boiled pork and pease pudding he
had cooked two hours before under a torrid and vertical sun.

"We'll put it at hokey-pokey, nothin' a lump, if you _don't_ mind,
sonny," the boatswain went on; "in a nice airy parlour painted white,
with a gilt chandelier an' gilt combings to the wainscot." His picture
of the Mansion House as he proceeded was drawn from his reading in
the Book of Revelations and his own recollections of Thames-side
gin-palaces and the saloons of passenger steamers, and gave the
impression of a virtuous gambling-hell. The whole crew listened
admiringly, and it seemed they were all in the stupid conspiracy. I
resolved, for Johnny's sake, to protest, and that very evening drew
Gibbings aside and expostulated with him.

"Why," I asked, "lay up this cruel, this certain disappointment for
the little chap? Why yarn to him as if he were bound for the New
Jerusalem?"

The boatswain stared at me point-blank, at first incredulously, then
with something like pity.

"Why, sir, don't you know? Can't you see for yoursel'? It's because
he _is_ bound for the New Jeroosalem; because--bless his tender
soul!--that's all the land he'll ever touch."

"Good Lord!" I cried. "Nonsense! His cough's better; and look at his
cheeks."

"Ay--we knows that colour on this line. His cough's better, you say;
and I say this weather's killing him. You just wait for the nor'-east
trades."

I left Gibbings, and after pacing up and down the deck a few times,
stepped to the bulwarks, where a dark figure was leaning and gazing
out over the black waters. Johnny was in bed; and a great shame swept
over me as I noted the appealing wretchedness of this lonely form.

I stepped up and touched him softly on the arm.

"Sir, I am come to beg your forgiveness."

Next morning I joined the conspiracy.

After his father, I became Johnny's most constant companion. "Father
disliked you at first," was the child's frank comment; "he said you
told fibs, but now he wants us to be friends." And we were excellent
friends. I lied from morning to night--lied glibly, grandly.
Sometimes, indeed, as I lay awake in my berth, a horror took me lest
the springs of my imagination should run dry. But they never did. As a
liar, I out-classed every man on board.

But by-and-bye, as we caught the first draught of the trades, the boy
began to punctuate my fables with that hateful cough. This went on for
a week; and one day, in the midst of our short stroll, his legs gave
way under him. As I caught him in my arms, he looked up with a smile.

"I'm very weak, you know. But it'll be all right when I get to
England."

But it was not till we had passed well beyond the equatorial belt that
Johnny grew visibly worse. In a week he had to lie still on his couch
beneath the awning, and the patter of his feet ceased on the deck. The
captain, who was a bit of a doctor, said to me one day--

"He will never live to see England."

But he did.

It was a soft spring afternoon when the _Midas_ sighted the Lizard,
and Johnny was still with us, lying on his couch, though almost too
weak to move a limb. As the day wore on we lifted him once or twice to
look.

"Can you see them quite plain?" he asked; "and the precious stones
hanging on the trees? And the palaces--and the white elephants?"

I stared through my glass at the serpentine rocks and white-washed
lighthouse above them, all powdered with bronze and gold by the
sinking sun, and answered--

"Yes, they are all there."

All that afternoon we were beside him, looking out and peopling the
shores of home with all manner of vain shows and pageants; and when
one man broke down another took his place.

As the sun fell, and twilight drew on, the bright revolving lights on
the two towers suddenly flashed out their greeting. We were about to
carry the child below, for the air was chilly; but he saw the flash,
and held up a feeble hand.

"What is that?"

"Those two lights," I answered, telling my final lie, "are the
lanterns of Cormelian and Cormoran, the two Cornish giants. They'll
be standing on the shore to welcome us. See--each swings his lantern
round, and then for a moment it is dark; now wait a moment, and you'll
see the light again."

"Ah!" said the child, with a smile and a little sigh, "it is good to
be--home!"

And with that word on his lips, as he waited for the next flash,
Johnny stretched himself and died.




LEGENDS OF ST. PIRAN.


I.--SAINT PIRAN AND THE MILLSTONE.

Should you visit the Blackmore tin-streamers on their feast-day, which
falls on Friday-in-Lide (that is to say, the first Friday in March),
you may note a truly Celtic ceremony. On that day the tinners pick out
the sleepiest boy in the neighbourhood and send him up to the highest
_bound_ in the works, with instructions to sleep there as long as he
can. And by immemorial usage the length of his nap will be the measure
of the tinners' afternoon siesta for twelve months to come.

Now, this first week in March is St. Piran's week: and St. Piran is
the miners' saint. To him the Cornishmen owe not only their tin, which
he discovered on the spot, but also their divine laziness, which he
brought across from Ireland and naturalised here. And I learned his
story one day from an old miner, as we ate our bread and cheese
together on the floor of Wheal Tregobbin, while the Davy lamp between
us made wavering giants of our shadows on the walls of the adit, and
the sea moaned as it tossed on its bed, two hundred feet above.

*       *       *       *       *

St. Piran was a little round man; and in the beginning he dwelt on
the north coast of Ireland, in a leafy mill, past which a stream came
tumbling down to the sea. After turning the saint's mill-wheel, the
stream dived over a fall into the Lough below, and the _lul-ul-ur-r-r_
of the water-wheel and fall was a sleepy music in the saint's ear noon
and night.

It must not be imagined that the mill-wheel ground anything. No; it
went round merely for the sake of its music. For all St. Piran's
business was the study of objects that presented themselves to his
notice, or, as he called it, the "Rapture av Contemplation"; and as
for his livelihood, he earned it in the simplest way. The waters of
the Lough below possessed a peculiar virtue. You had only to sink a
log or stick therein, and in fifty years' time that log or stick would
be turned to stone. St. Piran was as quick as you are to divine the
possibilities of easy competence offered by this spot. He took time by
the forelock, and in half a century was fairly started in business.
Henceforward he passed all his days among the rocks above the fall,
whistling to himself while he whittled bits of cork and wood into
quaint shapes, attached them to string, weighted them with pebbles,
and lowered them over the fall into the Lough--whence, after
fifty years he would draw them forth, and sell them to the simple
surrounding peasantry at two hundred and fifty _per centum per annum_
on the initial cost.

It was a tranquil, lucrative employment, and had he stuck to the
Rapture of Contemplation, he might have ended his days by the fall.
But in an unlucky hour he undertook to feed ten Irish kings and their
armies for three weeks anend on three cows. Even so he might have
escaped, had he only failed. Alas! As it was, the ten kings had no
sooner signed peace and drunk together than they marched up to St.
Piran's door, and began to hold an Indignation Meeting.

"What's ailing wid ye, then?" asked the saint, poking his head out at
the door; "out wid ut! Did I not stuff ye wid cow-mate galore when the
land was as nakud as me tonshure? But 'twas three cows an' a miracle
wasted, I'm thinkin'."

"Faith, an' ye've said ut!" answered one of the kings. "Three cows
between tin Oirish kings! 'Tis insultin'! Arrah, now, make it foive,
St. Piran darlint!"

"Now may they make your stummucks ache for that word, ye marautherin'
thieves av the world!"

And St. Piran slammed the door in their faces.

But these kings were Ulstermen, and took things seriously. So they
went off and stirred up the people: and the end was that one sunshiny
morning a dirty rabble marched up to the mill and laid hands on the
saint. On what charge, do you think? Why, for _Being without Visible
Means of Support!_

"There's me pethrifyin' spicimins!" cried the saint: and he tugged at
one of the ropes that stretched down into the Lough.

"Indade!" answered one of the ten kings: "Bad luck to your spicimins!"
says he.

"Fwhat's that ye're tuggin.' at?" asks a bystander.

"Now the Holy Mother presarve your eyesight, Tim Coolin," answers St.
Piran, pulling it in, "if ye can't tell a plain millstone at foive
paces! I never asked ye to see _through_ ut," he added, with a
twinkle, for Tim had a plentiful lack of brains, and that the company
knew.

Sure enough it was a millstone, and a very neat one; and the saint,
having raised a bit of a laugh, went on like a cheap-jack:

"Av there's any gintleman prisunt wid an eye for millstones, I'll
throuble him to turn ut here. Me own make," says he, "jooled in wan
hole, an' dog-chape at fifteen shillin'--"

He was rattling away in this style when somebody called out, "To think
av a millstone bein' a visible means av support!" And this time the
laugh turned against the saint.

"St. Piran dear, ye've got to die," says the spokesman.

"Musha, musha!"--and the saint set up a wail and wrung his hands. "An'
how's it goin' to be?" he asked, breaking off; "an' if 'tis by Shamus
O'Neil's blunderbust that he's fumblin' yondther, will I stand afore
or ahint ut? for 'tis fatal both ends, I'm thinkin', like Barney
Sullivan's mule. Wirra, wirra! May our souls find mercy, Shamus
O'Neil, for we'll both, be wantin' ut this day. Better for you,
Shamus, that this millstone was hung round your black neck, an' you
drownin' in the dept's av the Lough!"

The words were not spoken before they all set up a shout. "The
millstone! the millstone!" "Sthrap him to ut!" "He's named his
death!"--and inside of three minutes there was the saint, strapped
down on his own _specimen_.

"Wirra, wirra!" he cried, and begged for mercy; but they raised a
devastating shindy, and gave the stone a trundle. Down the turf it
rolled and rolled, and then _whoo!_ leaped over the edge of the fall
into space and down--down--till it smote the waters far below, and
knocked a mighty hole in them, and went under--

For three seconds only. The next thing that the rabble saw as they
craned over the cliff was St. Piran floating quietly out to sea on the
millstone, for all the world as if on a life-belt, and untying his
bonds to use for a fishing-line! You see, this millstone had been made
of cork originally, and was only half petrified; and the old boy had
just beguiled them. When he had finished undoing the cords, he stood
up and bowed to them all very politely.

"Visible Manes av Support, me childher--merely Visible Manes av
Support!" he called back.

'Twas a sunshiny day, and while St. Piran chuckled the sea twinkled
all over with the jest. As for the crowd on the cliff, it looked
for five minutes as if the saint had petrified them harder than the
millstone. Then, as Tim Coolin told his wife, Mary Dogherty, that same
evening, they dispersed promiscuously in groups of one each.

Meanwhile, the tides were bearing St. Piran and his millstone out into
the Atlantic, and he whiffed for mackerel all the way. And on the
morrow a stiff breeze sprang up and blew him sou'-sou-west until he
spied land; and so he stepped ashore on the Cornish coast.

In Cornwall he lived many years till he died: and to this day there
are three places named after him--Perranaworthal, Perranuthno and
Perranzabuloe. But it was in the last named that he took most delight,
because at Perranzabuloe (Perochia Sti. Pirani in Sabulo) there was
nothing but sand to distract him from the Study of Objects that
Presented Themselves to his Notice: for he had given up miracles. So
he sat on the sands and taught the Cornish people how to be idle. Also
he discovered tin for them; but that was an accident.


II.--SAINT PIRAN AND THE VISITATION.

A full fifty years had St. Piran dwelt among the sandhills between
Perranzabuloe and the sea before any big rush of saints began to pour
into Cornwall: for 'twas not till the old man had discovered tin for
us that they sprang up thick as blackberries all over the county; so
that in a way St. Piran had only himself to blame when his idle ways
grew to be a scandal by comparison with the push and bustle of the
newcomers.

Never a notion had he that, from Rome to Land's End, all his holy
brethren were holding up their hands over his case. He sat in his
cottage above the sands at Perranzabuloe and dozed to the hum of the
breakers, in charity with all his parishioners, to whom his money
was large as the salt wind; for his sleeping partnership in the
tin-streaming business brought him a tidy income. And the folk knew
that if ever they wanted religion, they had only to knock and ask for
it.

But one fine morning, an hour before noon, the whole parish sprang to
its feet at the sound of a horn. The blast was twice repeated, and
came from the little cottage across the sands.

"'Tis the blessed saint's cow-horn!" they told each other. "Sure the
dear man must be in the article of death!" And they hurried off to the
cottage, man, woman, and child: for 'twas thirty years at least since
the horn had last been sounded.

They pushed open the door, and there sat St. Piran in his arm-chair,
looking good for another twenty years, but considerably flustered. His
cheeks were red, and his fingers clutched the cow-horn nervously.

"Andrew Penhaligon," said he to the first man that entered, "go you
out and ring the church bell."

Off ran Andrew Penhaligon. "But, blessed father of us," said one or
two, "we're all _here_! There's no call to ring the church bell, seem'
you're neither dead nor afire, blessamercy!"

"Oh, if you're all here, that alters the case; for 'tis only a
proclamation I have to give out at present. To-morrow mornin'--Glory
be to God!--I give warnin' that Divine service will take place in the
parish church."

"You're sartin you bain't feelin' poorly, St. Piran dear?" asked one
of the women.

"Thank you, Tidy Mennear, I'm enjoyin' health. But, as I was sayin',
the parish church 'll be needed to-morrow, an' so you'd best set to
and clean out the edifice: for I'm thinkin'," he added, "it'll be
needin' that."

"To be sure, St. Piran dear, we'll humour ye."

"'Tisn' that at all," the saint answered; "but I've had a vision."

"Don't you often?"

"H'm! but this was a peculiar vision; or maybe a bit of a birdeen
whispered it into my ear. Anyway, 'twas revealed to me just now in a
dream that I stood on the lawn at Bodmin Priory, and peeped in at the
Priory window. An' there in the long hall sat all the saints together
at a big table covered with red baize and plotted against us. There
was St. Petroc in the chair, with St. Guron by his side, an' St. Neot,
St. Udy, St. Teath, St. Keverne, St. Wen, St. Probus, St. Enodar, St.
Just, St. Fimbarrus, St. Clether, St. Germoe, St. Veryan, St. Winnock,
St. Minver, St. Anthony, with the virgins Grace, and Sinara, and
Iva--the whole passel of 'em. An' they were agreein' there was no
holiness left in this parish of mine; an' speakin' shame of me, my
childer--of me, that have banked your consciences these fifty years,
and always been able to pay on demand: the more by token that I kept a
big reserve, an' you knew it. Answer me: when was there ever a panic
in Perranzabuloe? ''Twas all very well,' said St. Neot, when his turn
came to speak, 'but this state o' things ought to be exposed.' He's
as big as bull's beef, is St. Neot, ever since he worked that miracle
over the fishes, an' reckons he can disparage an old man who was
makin' millstones to float when he was suckin' a coral. But the upshot
is, they're goin' to pay us a Visitation to-morrow, by surprise. And,
if only for the parish credit, we'll be even wid um, by dad!"

St. Piran still lapsed into his native brogue when strongly excited.

But he had hardly done when Andrew Penhaligon came running in--

"St. Piran, honey, I've searched everywhere; an' be hanged to me if I
can find the church at all!"

"Fwhat's become av ut?" cried the saint, sitting up sharply.

"How should I know? But devil a trace can I see!"

"Now, look here," St. Piran said; "the church was there, right
enough."

"That's a true word," spoke up an old man, "for I mind it well. An
elegant tower it had, an' a shingle roof."

"Spake up, now," said the saint, glaring around; "fwich av ye's gone