THE

CORNHILL MAGAZINE.

JANUARY, 1887.

THE GAVEROCKS.

A TALE OF THE CORNISH COAST.

BY THE AUTHOR OF 'JOHN HERRING,' 'MEHALAH,' etc.

CHAPTER I.

THE BROTHERS.

THE road was bad. To speak with accuracy, the road was not a road, but a track. To be more accurate still, it was not a track, but a series of tracks cut by cart and carriage and gig wheels in the turf, and through it to the sparry stone beneath, that worked up in lumps like sugar, but which were so hard that the wheel of a laden wain would not crush them.

Along this course-this tangled skein of wheel tracks, over a moor, bounced and pitched and lurched and dived a tax-cart with two men in it, so much alike that one was the duplicate of the other.

One drove, whilst the other sat holding to the back of the seat with one hand, to the side with the other, and with his eyes fixed on the horse's ears. The driver was more accustomed to the motions of the cart, was able to balance himself without holding a rail.

Hardly a tree was visible. The down was covered with short grass, dotted over with dark-green clumps of gorse, spotted with gold where stray flowers bloomed, but covered with bursting seedpods. Here and there a hedge appeared with thorns on the top, curling over away from the West, and leafing only on the nether surface.

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Beyond, where the sun was setting in a bed of quivering fire, lay the Atlantic, with the horizon half-way up the sky.

The horse or the driver, or the horse and driver together, groped among the ruts for the least profound and the least knobby at bottom-groped with the wheels of the tax-cart; did not like one rut, tried another, then a third, after that went recklessly at any rut that offered, found that did not succeed, once more went through the course of selection, and finally abandoned the exercise of intelligence and reason for happy-go-lucky, like many a man at the outstart of life who tries one line, then another, and finally allows himself to jolt on in whatever rut receives him. In vain did horse, or driver, or horse and driver together, endeavour to find ruts to the gauge of the cart; all the conveyances that had ever gone before and cut for themselves grooves had been just too broad or just too narrow, so that the tax-cart always went with one wheel deep in a furrow and the other high on the turf.

Between the driver and the setting sun and sea, fused into one sheet of flame, stood a house-a long, low house, all roof, except on the side that was approached by the cart, the side that looked inland. As the road was not a road, but a skein of tracks, so the side was not a side, but an irregular face. It was formed of a front with doorway and low, wide windows and two uneven projecting gables, one at each extremity. About this house clustered some miserable trees-beech, that had died at their heads, and lived a sickly, apologetic life in the lower branches, where à few shrivelled leaves appeared. The trunks of these trees were inclined inland, at an angle so acute that any one unaccustomed to the habits of trees on the coast would have expected them to fall at the first puff of wind.

This house was Towan. It belonged at the beginning of the century which we honour with living in it to Hender Gaverock (the name pronounced Gav'r-ock), a man of some property-in fact, a small country squire.

Towan was situated in the parish of St. Kevin, on the north coast of Cornwall, about four miles from Padstow, and twelve from Wadebridge.

The cart in which the two men rode belonged to Hender Gaverock, and contained his two sons, Gerans and Constantine, fine young men with hair auburn-a warm chestnut, and with blue eyes; young men singularly alike in build and height, and feature, singularly dissimilar in expression. Gerans, the elder,