outside, singing the psalm, and Juliot's sweet, untaught, but musical voice sang also.

When the psalm was done, Constantine said, 'I thank you. Can you sing me something else? I should like something of Mozart.' 'I don't know him,' said Juliot. I play mostly sacred music. My brother does not care for any other. I can play you some of Tallis or Purcell.'

'Anything,' said Constantine; but it is not very lively; perhaps, however, it may be more soothing.'

'My brother Paul likes psalm tunes most of all,' she said,' and so I play more psalm tunes than anything else. I can play and sing Jackson's "Te Deum" if you like, and "Angels ever bright and fair."

'What sort of music do you like best, yourself?' asked Constantine.

'I' exclaimed Juliot, modestly colouring-'I--oh I—I do not know. I never considered. Of course I like that which pleases Paul best.'

'Does Mr. Featherstone object to your playing other than sacred music?'

'Oh no,' answered Juliot frankly, turning her honest face, and looking full at him out of her frank violet eyes, 'not at all. Paul is not a Methodist. I can play gavottes and quadrilles ; and he and I sing together Jackson's pretty duet, "Time has not thinned thy flowing hair." But he says that no music speaks to his heart like the old psalm tunes. Whenever Paul is fretted about anything or has met with annoyance, I can always bring his gentle, sweet look back on his dear face with a psalm tune. When I saw that you were awake and looking a little troubled, I played the "Old Hundredth." I thought it would have the same effect on you as it does on my brother.'

'Is he married?' asked Constantine.

'Paul married!' echoed Juliot, and laughed. 'I cannot fancy him with a wife. And yet she would be a happy woman who won him, for Paul is the gentlest of men. The animals all love him. When he goes out on the cliffs, the gulls come round him in flights; and the sheep run to him when he appears on a common. As for the cows and horses-I am sure they adore him. I never hurt an animal, that I know, but they will not come to me as they go to Paul. The people round look on him as someone quite out of the ordinary, and come to him to have their arms and legs

struck when suffering from swellings, and they bring him kerchiefs to bless, when anyone has cut himself in the hay or corn field, that he may stop the flow of blood.'

But does this succeed?'

'Of course it does. Paul would not do it else. But he is very humble, and it pains him if anyone says it is because he is so good. I think that is the reason. He thinks that it is given him that he may do a little good to make up for the great wrongs done to men, and the sins committed in the sight of God, by our grandfather-Red Featherstone.'

'I do not know quite where I am. Am I in Devon, or Cornwall, or in Wales?'

'You are in Devon. This is the parish of Welcombe. Our little Marsland brook runs down to the sea and divides the counties and the parish from Morwenstowe. We have a little harbour: it is the only bay in which in decent weather a boat may run in and be safe. We keep a boat there. Paul is very particular about his boat. It is the old cutter that our grandfather had. When there is a storm, my brother is on the look-out to help distressed vessels, and save those who are in peril. Paul is so good. He was returning from Hayle, where he had some business, when he saved you, not so far out from Black Rock, where the people say the spirit of our poor uncle is engaged weaving ropes of sand. At one time we heard a great many stories about what went on in his time; of his wickednesses, of how he wrecked vessels, and murdered the crews when washed ashore, and of how he plundered on the coasts of France and Wales. But now we are told nothing; the people know that it distresses my brother to hear these tales. It is now about forty years since he was killed. If ever there was a case of murder, that was one-a man called Gaverock ran him through with an old spear whilst he sat in the sun on a rock warming himself. It was a treacherous and cruel act, though I admit my poor uncle deserved his death. People say he wilfully wrecked vessels, and if the sailors and passengers swam ashore he killed them; but I cannot believe this; I think this is an exaggeration. Do not talk to Paul about his uncle; he cannot endure it.' Just then Paul Featherstone came in.

"You are not overstraining our patient's attention?' said he. 'Remember, he must be spared.'

'Paul, I have been telling him where he is-he did not quite understand.'

You are in Marsland in Welcombe,' said Mr. Featherstone, ' and you will also find a Welcome in Marsland.' He turned to his sister. 'I am making a joke, Juliot.'

'So I hear. You are very humorous, Paul.'

"Will you bring up the beef broth for our friend?' said Paul Featherstone; 'I believe it is quite ready.'

'I hope my sister has not made you talk more than your strength can bear?' said Mr. Featherstone, addressing Constantine. 'Not at all; she has been speaking to me, and playing and singing for my pleasure.'

'Juliot is always ready to do a kindness. Her heart overflows with goodness. In Welcombe, near the church is a holy well to which people came in Catholic times for the blessed water that healed infirmities and cleared eyes of the scales that covered them. The parish takes its name from this well. It never fails. The limpid spring never diminishes, never runs dry, and all the way down to the sea, whither its waters run, the grass is green and flowers bloom. My sister Juliot's heart is a better holy well than that. It also never fails, and whithersoever its influence reaches it bears healing, strength, and beauty and love. I am glad you are here, to know Juliot. Do not raise your voice to speak to me. I can hear, and you will weary yourself with the effort.'

'I cannot sufficiently thank you for your kindness,' said Constantine.

'Oh, I do nothing. My sister thinks and cares for you. I am only her servant, and do what she designs. I am the hand that executes what her head and heart devise. I hope you will not think me wanting in courtesy if I ask your name.'

'Gaverock,' answered Constantine after a pause, and with

some nervousness.

6

Rock,' said Mr. Featherstone, who had not caught the full name. Now that is indeed curious, that the Rock should come to the Stone, whereas generally the stone comes from the rock. Our name,' he explained, 'is Feather-stone.'

Just then Juliot came in, bearing a bowl of soup on a tray.

'Sister,' said Paul, turning to her, our patient, whom by God's providence we have been able to help, is called Rock. Mr. Rockmy sister, Miss Featherstone. Juliot, I have made a joke. I have said that now the rock has come to the stone instead of the stone proceeding from the rock. Do you follow me?'

'Oh, Paul, how clever and humorous you are!'

CHAPTER XVIII.

MARSLAND.

MARSLAND HOUSE was built by William Atkyns in 1656, as a stone in the wall testifies. It is one of the most picturesque and delightful specimens of a small gentleman's house of the seventeenth century that we know. Not that it has architectural adornment. Of that it is absolutely free, but that it remains to this day perfectly untouched. It stands as it was when built, without an addition, and without a stone of the structure having been thrown down. An avenue leads to a little gatehouse that closes with strong oak doors. In this gatehouse lived the porter, with a peephole to command the avenue, and windows to light him, opening into the first court-quadrangle it is not, but an oblong court, before the face of the house. The entrance is from the east, and the face of the house is to the east, away from the sea. The north side of this court is closed by a high wall. On the south side is the wall of the garden, with a door in it; the ground slopes rapidly to the south into the glen of the Marsland brook, and the garden takes all the sun, and is screened from the sea-gales by a dense wood of beech. The most prominent feature in the façade is the immense hall chimney forming a buttress, one side of which is utilised as the wall of the porch. The front consists of several gables of irregular heights, charmingly picturesque. If we enter the porch, we pass through the house by a passage one side of which screens off the hall, and the other the kitchen and cellar and buttery. We then emerge upon the quadrangle of the mansion, into which the hall also looks, westward, and in which, on the north, are the drawing-room windows, securing by this arrangement shelter and sun. The west side is formed of sundry domestic buildings, and the south side is occupied by the servants' apartments.

Marsland Coombe is the most beautiful on this portion of the north Cornish and Devon coast. It is deep, clothed with oak coppice, and opens on a lovely bay. But scarcely a tourist who visits the coast thinks of looking in on this gem of old English country life and architecture. Since visitors have frequented this coast, settlers from the metropolis and elsewhere have come, and have built mansions-such miracles of hideousness that the traveller may rub his eyes, and, looking from the modern to the ancient, ask whether, after all, we have progressed during the two

hundred years since Marsland was built. At the present day, Marsland, like so many other mansions of the gentry of a century or two ago, is turned into a farmhouse, and no guide-book calls the attention of the tourist to its beauty.

At all times Marsland was out of the way. The old north coast road from Bideford to Stratton, which is as ancient as British times, runs along the watershed of the streams which empty after a brief course down the thousand coombes into the sea, and, on the other hand, of the Tamar and Torridge. This watershed is a long backbone of elevated moorland within sight of the sea. Between it and the ocean are numerous-innumerable-deeply cleft valleys, becoming deeper as they near the sea, without the intervening hills becoming lower. The consequence is that a road skirting the cliffs would be a road consisting of scramble and slide up and down hills as steep as mediæval high-pitched roofs. Let the reader look at the back of his hand, and he may imagine a road taken across his knuckles to represent the high road, and his fingers with the clefts between will well represent the conformation of the land between that road and the sea. His finger-ends accordingly figure for precipitous headlands standing out of the ocean. The ravine between his index finger of the left hand and the middle finger represents the Welcombe valley, near the head of which stands. the little parish church. The fissure between the middle finger and the ring finger symbolises the Marsland glen, which divides the counties. Halfway between the knuckles of the hand and the finger-nail, on the slope to the south, lies old Marsland House. The valley between the ring finger and the little finger is that of Morwenstowe, and the end of the ring finger is the splendid crag of Hennacliff, rising 450 feet sheer out of the waves. The high road traverses bleak and barren moor, where the stiff clay soil refuses to yield anything but rushes and gorse, and this dreary country stretches away to the east, and in it rises the Tamar. On the other side the coombes are fertile, and, being sheltered by the folds of the hills, give pleasant pasture meadows and leafy coppices. To the present day there is no inn in either Welcombe or Morwenstowe, nothing to invite the traveller to diverge from the high road to visit these glens. At the time of which we write, some seventy years ago, this angle of coast was as little visited as Iceland, and those who dwelt in it were unknown beyond the moor side and road.

The Atkyns family, who, in the seventeenth century, owned the