The Moon Rock

a blurred record of wanderings from place to place in pursuit of something which was never to be found. Her earliest recol

churchyard on the cliffs, and he spent his time attempting to decipher inscriptions wh

stood, carrying away earth, and tombstones, and bones. Nor was it a garden. Nothing grew in the dank air but crawling things which were horrible to the eye. There were great rank growths of toadstools, yellow, blue, livid whit

dland, but the sea had beaten him in the long run, carrying off the stones piecemeal until only one remained, a sturdy pillar of granite which marked the bones of one who, some hundred and fifty years before had been "An English Gentleman and a Christian"-so much

those early days, with the difference that the Cornish granite ro

above the grey surges of the Atlantic, among a wilderness of dark rocks, facing black moors, which rolled away from the cliffs as lonely and desolate as eter

tenant, and it stood in the teeth of Atlantic gales. The few scattered houses and farms of the moors cringed from the wind in sheltered depres

his wife and daughter. It was a house, and it was furnished; what more was necessary? It was nothing to him if his wife and daughter were unhappy. It was nothing to him if the sea roared

an encircling arm of rock, and reached by a steep path down the cliff. Around her towered an amphitheatre of vast cliffs in which the sea sang loud music to the spirit of solitude. In the moa

onsciousness in the dark mask. It seemed to her to be watching and waiting for something. For what? Its glance seemed to follow her like the eyes of a picture. And it conveyed a menace by its mere proximity, even when she could

a rite and solemn ceremony, now fallen into decay. There was a story of one young wife who, getting no answer, left her desolate cottage at midnight and swam out to the Moon Rock at high tide. She had scrambled up its slippery sides and called her husband from the summit. She had called and calle

ow, straining her ears for the reply. After a time the response would come faintly from the sea, at first far out, then sounding louder and clearer as the spirit of the husband guided his drowned body back to his wife's arms. When it sounded close to the rock the evanes

er, but her love was embittered by her helplessness to mitigate her mother's unhappy lot. Thalassa was a savage old pagan whose habitual watchful secretiveness relaxed into roaring melody in his occasional cups; in neither aspect could he be considered a suitable companion for the budding mind of a girl, but he loomed in her thoughts as a figure of greater import than her father or mother. Her father was a gloomy recluse, her mother was crushed and broken in spirit. Thalassa had been the practical head of the house ever since Sisily could remember anything, an

new nothing whatever. The secrets of the huddle of civilization are not to be gathered from books or solitude. Sisily was completely unsophisticated in the ways of the world, and her deep passionate temperament was full of latent capacity for good

mother rather than on any resentment of his neglect of herself. But Robert Turold had never been able to

the water to the horizon, where the Scilly Islands shimmered and disappeared in a grey, melting mist.

red her to himself as a white wildflower in a grey wilderness. He could not see himself as an exotic growth in that rugged se

ery yards of the path and had almost

u," he explained. "I kne

he had something to say to her, but as he did not speak she commenced the ascent of the stiff cliff path. He started after her, but th

Her hand indicated the line of savage cliffs, the tossi

me back here again s

closer, so close that she

ow," she hur

o you. It may be the final opportunity-the

ps and then stopping. As he did not sp

ou wish to

e leaving Cornwall?"

. Mother is dead, and my father does not care for me." She flushed

aimed-"I love you, Sisily-that is what I

ng glance from her dark

at you say?" she repli

e I first met you," he replied. "And, si

"You think I am lonely, and you are sorry for me.

ore her in th

said curtly. "We are not likely to meet again for s

rds, but he was at a loss to

ave caught a strange note in her soft voice. "

her's money?" he observed, glancing at her c

ut the title ever since I

afternoon that I was brought down

f you are to have it-the m

a bitter, almos

m know that they cannot do what they like with me." He brought out this obscure threat in a savage voice. "If I had only

d on the lengthening s

a misery. My father was always cruel to her because of them, I do not know why. It is in his nature to be cruel, I think. He has

ved. Let them have it between them, and the money too. Sisily, I love you, dear, love you better than all the titles and

of him with downcast gaze, an

ex as he believed himself to be, he would have

th a sudden access of male brutality. "There

ou ask," she replied. Her face was st

o London?" he persisted, trying to

ook he

y with you

trange intense note

u more than all the world. We have no

uty to your fath

ave nothing to do with this title or your father's money. I will make my own way with you by my side. I have a friend in London who would be o

l kept silent, "it may be that I have misunderstood. I though

him. "It is not that-do not think so. You have been kind and good to m

f also after this afternoon,

ke with a sudden uplifting of her head. Above them, from

me," she said, "I

good-by

t I shall often

ng the hand which hung at his side, and turned swiftly-but too lat

isily!"

glanced irresolutely towards the path, and then r

ilight deepened, and in the lengthening shadows the rocks assumed crouching menacing s