CHAPTER XII.

THE PIXIES' HOLE.

On the following evening Sybil had set forth on an errand of charity to one of the many poor who blessed the bounteous hand of her mother—the widow of a fisherman who had perished during the pilchard season in the past summer—and she meant to return, as she stated, by the sea-shore.

Sybil had much cause for thought, and was somewhat disposed to linger on the way. The ample means enjoyed by her parents on the one hand, with the general seclusion of their lives on the other, and their studied avoidance of society when in England, had now given the girl much reason for reflection.

Her papa's mysterious absence too, and her mamma's nervous anxiety about American letters, were not without singularity; and why had both so sedulously abstained from all introduction to the family of the Trecarrels, who were greatly esteemed in the neighbourhood, and who were undoubtedly people of the best style? By the system of which this seemed merely a portion, she was even now debarred from having properly presented to her this Mr. Audley Trevelyan, who seemed so well disposed to admire—perhaps, to love her.

"We have made but few acquaintances and, of course, still fewer friends at Porthellick," said Sybil, half aloud; "now why is it thus—to have means in plenty and so few to love us? What can be the reason? Mamma has some secret; but what can that secret be? Poor mamma—she looks so sweet always, and yet so sad at times!"

She would write to Denzil, she thought, on the subject of these mysteries; but Denzil was yet at sea, and it would be long, long, before she might receive his answer; and, then, there would be an awkwardness in their parents' reading, as they would certainly wish to do, his letters and perceiving the doubts she had suggested—the secrets she wished to probe. Perhaps when her papa, whose especial pet she wras, returned, she might venture to give some hints, to make some inquiries; and as she saw the white sails of the shipping and the smoke of many a passing steamer, she lifted her eyes to heaven with an unuttered prayer in her heart, that she might soon again hear his voice and cast herself into his arms.

By one of those lanes peculiar to Cornwall, where the old road is sunk so deep in the ground and the bordering walls are so high that the surrounding scenery is sometimes hidden, lanes where in summer the elms cast their leafy shadows, and the fragrant wild rose and honeysuckle mingle with the long tangles of the bramble, Sybil reached the shore and descended to the very margin of the sea.

It was one of those evenings which, even in the last days of autumn, come to the rocky and rugged duchy, when the atmosphere is so mild and balmy that one might think it was in the early weeks of spring, when the grey cliffs and purple moorland glisten in the yellow rays as the sunlight falls softly between the flying clouds, on land and sea; and the sparkling stream, that rolls from rock to rock on its passage to the shore, makes music in its plash as it falls from the cascade into the pool below, where the brown trout lurks in safety and unseen; and Sybil, as she wandered on, felt, she knew not why, an emotion of calm and contentment growing in her heart.

But in its serenity and beauty the evening was deceptive, and old fishermen on the heights, and other weather-beaten salts who lingered, telescope in hand, on many a rude pier that jutted into the Bristol Channel, when looking seaward detected that which the landsman saw not—the tokens of a coming storm; for seamen have strange instincts peculiarly their own, and can read the sky like the pages of a mighty book.

Across the sea the sun, now setting, poured a steady stream of golden radiance, like a broad and glittering pathway from the far horizon to the very shore, by the margin of which Sybil was now lingering; and it tinted with warm light the flinty brow of many a storm-beaten headland, and those fantastic piles of grey granite which cap the hills in Cornwall, and are there called carns.

Seated on a fragment of rock, lulled by the regular and monotonous rolling of the surge, Sybil was immersed in thoughts of her absent father and brother, each now traversing the same sea, and yet so far apart upon its waters; she thought of Audley Trevelyan. Should she ever meet him in society as she wished to do? A little time and it might be too late, for Rose Trecarrel was so lovely, and already seemed to consider him as her own property; for it was by her side he sat in church, where they used the same books, and it was she that he usually shawled or cloaked first for the carriage; so if they were not already engaged, they might very soon be so.

Amid this reverie she was startled by a distant voice holloing, and apparently to her. She looked up, and on the summit of a cliff that overhung the shore, some two hundred feet or so above where she was seated, a man was gesticulating violently and beckoning to her.

Was he mad or tipsy? was her mamma ill; or what did this person mean? She listened intently and thought she heard her own name; he was evidently addressing her, and pointing to the sea. At last his voice distinctly reached her ear.

"Look out, Miss Devereaux,—the tide is coming in!"

She glanced hastily round her, and a chill struck upon her heart, for the fragment of granite on which she sat was almost environed by the encroaching sea, and the stripe of yellow sand, by which she had been walking at the base of the cliffs, was nearly covered by the surf, which was already chafing white and angrily about the rocky headlands which formed the horns of a little bay.

Heedless of wetting her feet, Sybil gathered her skirts in her hand and rushed shoreward, when a greater terror smote her heart as she looked around her. The man on the cliff had disappeared; no aid seemed nigh, and no living thing was visible save a solitary chough or red-legged crow, which was perched on a fragment of rock, from whence he eyed her in quiet security.

She was at a part of the coast where the land receded and the sea advanced between two headlands of granite, precipitous and sheer, but crowned by groves of ancient trees. The water, as yet, was smooth as a mill-pond within the bay, and reflected in its glassy depths the coast that towered above it; while no sound came along the vast expanse of shore, save the hollow gurgle of the flowing tide, as it sought the recesses of the many caverns and fissures in the lower rocks. In the offing, however, the rising waves were edged with white, and this sign, together with the lowering sky and gathering clouds, showed that the coming night would be a rough one.

From the stripe of sandy beach, now nearly covered by the incoming sea, the only path lay round a little moss-grown slope at the base of an enormous rock, from whence it wound upward to the verge of a steep precipice and led to the deep old lane, already described. Over this mossy and angular ledge the angry tide had already rolled its spray, consequently it was too slippery for the footsteps of the affrighted girl, who, after thrice approaching it, finally shrunk back, and ran, with wetted feet, towards the centre of the bay, keeping close to the sheer cliffs, against which the flowing sea was rising fast, and beginning to surge and boom, throwing masses of foam and froth over her whole person, while the scared seagulls and puffins whirled in flights around her.

Once or twice a wild shriek escaped Sybil; then her voice began to fail her, and she could only utter prayers that were earnest, deep, and piteous.

Wildly and despairingly she looked upward to the summits of the cliffs; they were impending and inaccessible, by their gloomy outline fully illustrating the influence and fury of what is called "the Atlantic drift," which is especially turned into the Bristol Channel, where the rocks, by the waves for ever heaving and rolling in mighty undulations, are worn into concave fronts, and form thus a hopeless barrier to the shipwrecked, and to all who might seek to ascend them.

She turned seaward with haggard eyes and wrung her poor little hands; not a boat was near, and nothing now was visible between the horns of the bay save the smoke of some distant steamer, hull-down below the horizon line, as she sped on her way to the coast of Ireland. The flowing tide was above Sybil's ankles now; she knew that at high water it would mount to several feet, and that ere long her drowned corse should be dashed and battered, at the sport of the waves, against those very rocks at which she glanced so despairingly!

The man who had seen from their summit and warned her—where was he now, and who was he? He knew her name, and yet had he abandoned her to her fate in that terrible place, with the sea and the darkness closing fast around her; for the sun had set and dun clouds were piled in stormy masses now, where so lately all was golden sheen.

Suddenly she bethought her of a cavern in the rocks known as the Pixies' Hole, which her brother Denzil had often explored—a gloomy place, the haunt at times of the seal and of the zart, as old Cornish folks called the sea-urchin. It was one of those great caverns in which, in the barbarous times of old, the Cornish men took shelter from the Romans and Saxons, just as the children of Israel did from the Midianites in the dens of the mountains; and there, by local superstition, still abode, unscared by the whistle of the adjacent railway, certain little beings known as the Pixies, who came hither from Devonshire on dark nights, mounted on the farmers' horses, and were heard to sing in its recesses while pounding their cider.

Gathering her skirts again, the poor girl dashed through the water, and ere long reaching the mouth of the cavern, clambered in breathlessly, falling, the while, more than once on her tender hands, when her feet slipped, on the glassy surface of the sea-weedy rocks and stones, which covered all the ascent to this gaunt and gloomy place of refuge.

She knew that it penetrated far inland, and hoped that there for a time she should be safe; but there would be hours of darkness, cold, and captivity to endure, ere the ebb of the tide would permit her to escape, and by that time what must be the terror of her poor mamma!

When fairly within this place her courage rose a little, for she saw that it closely resembled a grotto she had frequently visited and sketched—the Cave of Porthmellin. The floor of this great fissure in the rocks ascended at an angle from the shore, mid as the tide advanced, Sybil found herself compelled to retire further and further still, inward and upward amid its dreary uncertainties, while the rising tide, now rolling into the bay with the full force of a west wind, began to surge with a sound as of thunder, about the mouth by which she had entered, and that orifice seemed to lessen rapidly as the water rose within it.

The roar of the sea woke a hundred weird echoes amid the impenetrable gloom beyond her; while the view outward from the point now attained by the breathless and affrighted girl, for a time proved strange and, to her artistic eye, full of wonderful effects. The walls of rock were dark, and yet so polished by time and the seas of ages as to emit reflected light, and to reveal little pools of crystal water lying still and motionless in fissures and crevices, where star-fish, shells, and hermit-crabs had been left by the last ebb-tide.

With growing terror Sybil could perceive that by each successive wave the mouth of her refuge grew smaller, and it was evident that ere long it would be covered by the sea, while she should be shut within!

A cry escaped her with this awful conviction; but she uttered no more, for the echoes of her voice came back to her strangely and with melancholy variations, as if from vast distances. If the cavern mouth were totally submerged, should she be suffocated; or if not, might she otherwise too surely die of cold, and lie there till some holiday explorer, or some boy in search of puffins' nests, found her remains? A cold current of air that swept past her from within the cavern warned her that it had an outlet somewhere; but it filled her soul with greater terror, for she remembered to have heard Denzil, old Derrick Braddon, and others say, that the Pixies' Hole terminated in the shaft of an old and long unused mine, down which she might fall and be dashed to a very pulp, if she ventured one foot further; for all was gloomy horror round her now; and as her knees yielded under her, and she sank upon them to pray, she felt the still rising tide flow over them as it had rolled completely above the rocky arch of the cave and submerged it!

Feeling the ground with her hands outspread, the unhappy girl continued to creep a few yards further in, and then she paused, for all that she knew to the contrary, on the very verge of the fatal mine!

One little while she was full of pious resignation to die, for she had lived an innocent and guiltless life. She drew from her bosom a locket and fervently kissed it, as it contained the hair of her parents and Denzil—all she loved on earth. She knelt with her bowed head between her hands to shut out the horrid booming and sucking sounds of the sea in the lower part of the cave, and closing her eyes, as if the more to concentrate her thoughts, burst into passionate and vehement prayer.

Then anon the horror of death—and especially of such a death, amid gloom and darkness, unseen, unpitied, and unknown, would draw from her a piteous wail, that was lost amid the bellowing of the sea, for a storm of wind had now risen in the channel.

Of that newly-found admirer whom she had been learning to love, Audley Trevelyan, she had totally ceased to think; her heart was wholly occupied by thoughts of her papa, her mamma, her brother Denzil—all of whom she might never, never see more!

Dread of falling headlong down the shaft of the ancient mine, more than a thousand feet, perhaps, made her, we have said, pause breathlessly, and lie on the sloping floor of rock, listening to her watery death coming nearer and nearer with a gurgling sound, that, to her nervous and excited imagination, seemed like the chuckle of a destroying fiend! The dark unspeakable himself was alleged by the peasantry to frequent the oozy recess of the Pixies' Hole, and the bottom of the old shaft was said, by the same veracious authorities, to be haunted by the unquiet spirits of ancient miners, who had perished there in the time of old.

Rapidly, yet terribly, through the mind of Sybil, then, as she fully believed herself to be, hovering on the verge of death, came back the eighteen years of her past life; at Como, in the old palace by the Arno; among the Apennines and the wild Abruzzi; Rome, Athens, and elsewhere, all passed before her like a rapid phantasmagoria—days and hours of happiness and pleasure. The faces and voices of her parents and her brother so beloved, came vividly amid those memories of their strange and aimless wandering in foreign lands. The secret of her mother—whatever it was—she should never learn now; but gleams of hope and the desire to live, mingled with the blackness of her despair, for existence seemed sweet, and she felt so young to die, when a long life should be before her.

At Porthellick she must long since have been missed, and her fancy pictured the agony of her lonely and tender mother; the wild, noisy grief of Winny Braddon, and the honest anxiety of those who might be fruitlessly seeking for her along the cliffs or through the bay by boats; seeking for her alive or dead.

All their search would be vain, for the tide was still rising, and now where she stood, not daring to go further, the water flowed above her knees. A little time, a very little time more, and she should be lying drowned, the sport of the waves within the Pixies' Hole, or borne by them in their reflux, into the mighty waste of sea that washes the rugged shore of Cornwall.

A shrill cry escaped her as the water flowed to her waist; and gaspingly she felt with her hands for a little ledge of rock, up which she clambered, being in her terror endued by unnatural strength; and then, dripping and despairing, she felt a numbness come over all her faculties, which prevented her responding to certain strange sounds, somewhat like those of human voices mingled with the barking of a dog, now coming out of the inner gloom, while again a superstitious dread, the result of Winny Braddon's teaching, began to mingle with her more solid fears and sufferings.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE TIDE IN!

For a little space we shall return to the pretty villa of Porthellick, and to the anxious life of her who dwelt there; her thoughts ever with her absent son and husband. In this instance we put Denzil before his father, for the return of Richard Lord Lamorna, was looked for daily, but that of his son might be the event of years to come; so Denzil's last fond glance ere he left her, and his calm aspect as he lay asleep and all unconscious that she hovered near his pillow, were deeply impressed on his poor mother's heart; and now an eternity of waters rolled between them, for his ship, she knew, must be ploughing the wide Indian Ocean.

To the wayfarer along the coast-road towards the quaint village of Endellion (with its weather-beaten church, and the ivied ruins of Rhoscarrock), that white-walled villa with its rose covered peristyle buried among the pale-green drooping willows from which the locality takes its Cornish name, no better example of peace, content and quiet could be given.

Yet the place was fated to be one of anxiety and sorrow.

Seated at a little buhl escritoire in her drawing-room, Constance was lingering over the last letter from her husband, after the removal of the tea equipage, and long after Sybil had set out on her charitable mission to the fisherman's widow.

"Richard is very long of returning, surely!" was her prevailing thought, as she sat with her graceful head resting on a white and dimpled hand, quite unconscious that the sun had set beyond the sea, and that the shades of evening were deepening around her.

No upbraiding thought of that absent husband entered the gentle heart of Constance; yet with all that heart's gentleness, she could not but think somewhat bitterly of the late Lord Lamorna, whose unreasonable prejudices and pride of birth and station, though only the result, the growth and maturity of centuries of time, and many generations of Trevelyans, had cost her years of anxiety, of unmerited seclusion and wandering in foreign lands under a name which was not that of her children's father, and thus keeping them in ignorance of their real family, its claims and rank—for the mystery had been continued, even to the gazetting of Denzil, under the name of Devereaux!

The rising wind as a sudden gust swept through the grove of willows, roused her from these thoughts, and she found old Winny Braddon, hard-featured and keen-eyed, lingering near, with anxiety depicted in her face.

"The winter is setting in early, surely," said Constance; "we are not out of autumn yet, Winny, and see how dark the evening has become!"

"En hâv perkou gwâv, my mother used to say, old Cornish for 'in summer, remember winter,'" replied Winny. "A sad night it will be for the poor fellows on board ship, ma'am, I fear."

"Do not say so, Winny!"

"The waves are rolling in fast, and breaking white as snow upon Tintagel Head, and all along Trebarreth Strand."

"And where is Miss Devereaux?"

"I know not, ma'am—only she has not returned."

"And she was to come by the shore!" exclaimed Constance, starting from her seat.

"The shore! do you mean the bit of sand that lies near the Pixies' Hole?"

"Yes—yes."

"The tide has long since been in—my God! oh mistress, our poor chealveen may be lost!" exclaimed Winny, using the old endearing local word for 'child.'

Constance closed her escritoire with trembling hands, and went, in alarm, to the windows which faced the sea. The sun, we have said, had long since set, and athwart the dim and black and stormy clouds that now hid the point of his departure, a torrent of rain was falling aslant upon the dark and foam-flecked sea, and would ere long be drenching all the rocky shore. A little time and all should be darkness, and where was the absent Sybil?

Close-hauled, and running fast before the blast for shelter in Portquin Bay, a large boat, the last, perhaps, of the autumn pilchard fishers, careening wildly over amid the foam, was seen to vanish round a promontory.

A sudden access of terror now seized the heart of Constance. Instantly a mounted servant was dispatched to the hut of the widow, and the man soon came galloping back, with a scared visage and the tidings that Miss Devereaux had left her more than three hours ago, and had certainly descended to the beach, as she had been seen to do so. By this time, darkness had fairly set in; rain was falling fast upon the bleak coast, and "sowing wide the pathless main," while a heavy gale from thence was dashing a flood tide upon the shore, and the soul of Constance grew sick with apprehension.

"The tide in! oh my God—in what can I have offended Thee to be punished thus? My Sybil—my Sybil—is the cup of my bitterness to be filled to overflowing!" she exclaimed, in a low voice as she sank upon a sofa, while Winny Braddon wrung her hands, and in the noisy grief peculiar to her class, lamented, as already said, "the darling chealveen" she had nursed in her bosom.

Constance would have gone forth in person to search, bleak and rainy though the night; but she was too feeble and delicate to face the storm, nor would Nurse Braddon permit her. She sent all her servants, male and female, in search of the tidings she was terrified to hear; and ever and anon she rushed to the front portico and looked out upon the gloomy night, to where away beyond the willow groves that grew around the villa, the bleak high road wound seaward over a bare Cornish moor, towards those clumps of old trees that crowned the rocks which overlooked the fatal Pixies' Hole.

Slowly, as if each were an eternity of time, hour after hour passed now—periods filled up by agony and the pulsations of her heart; and ere long her watch told her that midnight was nigh.

Midnight, and her child still absent—her Sybil, the mistress of a thousand pretty, winning and affectionate ways!

Higher and more high rose the blustering wind, sweeping before its angry breath the last brown leaves of autumn; wildly the willows seemed to lash the stormy air, as their supple branches were tossed on the stormy blast; and from a distance up the valley came the roaring of the sea, whose waves at the horizon were brightened occasionally by a ghastly glare of lightning. Between the scudding clouds, the moon's pale crescent was visible for a time, above the ruins of King Arthur's castle on steep Tintagel Head, a tremendous bluff (which is cleft by a chasm from the mainland) adding thus to the weird and wild aspect of the night; and what served to increase the distraction of the wretched mother, was the strange circumstance that of the several messengers she sent forth, not one had yet returned with tidings of any kind. Suspense thus became as it were, a bodily agony; she was led to anticipate the worst; and Winny Braddon though her heart was a prey to the keenest alarm and anxiety, had to use almost affectionate force to prevent her mistress, a weak and delicate little woman as she was, from sallying forth in her despair to prosecute the search in person.

Winny had but slender hope, she knew every foot of her native shore, and was old enough to remember many a dark and terrible story of the Cornish wreckers, and when many a keg of French brandy, and many a bale of good tobacco were brought from the Scilly Isles, and without the knowledge of the Coast Guard, landed slyly in some quiet nook and cavern, where those to whom they were consigned knew well when to find them; she knew many who had perished in those secret places, when seeking for the hidden wares; and it was for being engaged in some of these little affairs, that her brother Derrick, had to "levant" from the duchy, and become a soldier in "the master's regiment"—the Cornish Light Infantry.

Alternately Constance lay in a species of stupor on a sofa, or started to the front door, where she listened with eager ears, the rain falling on her pale face, and the wind blowing about her hair, while she could see the lanterns of the searchers, glimmering like distant ignes fatui, as they proceeded to and fro along the heights that overhung the sea.

Denzil, she thought, was gone on life's highway, and might never return; their daughter drowned—their only child now it would seem, reft from them suddenly and cruelly! What would Richard say on his return, and how was she to meet his eye? What account was she to give of her maternal solicitude and of her stewardship? Yet in what way was she to blame?

Yes! she did accuse herself. The warnings and hints of Winny Braddon came to memory. She had been remiss; she had permitted Sybil to wander too much abroad with her sketch-book, and this was the end of it; yet who, without some divine prescience, could have foreseen a catastrophe so terrible? How often had Denzil filled her mind with fear and anxiety by his exploits among those very rocks, and by his explorations of that horrible Pixies Hole, where, too probably, his sister had perished miserably; yet her bold and handsome Denzil, always came back in safety to kiss and laugh away her fears and upbraidings.

"Oh why is this terrible calamity put upon me?" she moaned, as she lay with her face covered by her hands, and her damp dishevelled hair; "is it but the forerunner of a greater—if a greater there can be? Can I have loved my husband and our children so much that I have forgotten to love my God!"

And for a moment or two, she actually turned over in her mind this strange idea—the first proposition of the Mystics, which was, that the love of the Supreme Being must be pure and disinterested; that is, exempt from all views of interest, all care of those we love on earth, and all hope of reward—tenets defended by Madame de Guyon, and advocated by the eloquent Fénélon.

A sudden knocking at the front door, and a violent pealing of the house-bell, caused her to start as if with an electric shock.

Tidings had come at last—tidings that might fill her soul with joy, or cause it to die within her.

"General Trecarrel, would speak with you ma'am," said Winny Braddon, hurrying in with fresh excitement in her tone and manner.

CHAPTER XIV.

LOST.

The stranger who had called to Sybil by name, and who had recognised her from the summit of the cliff, was no other than General Trecarrel, the same whom her parents had so studiously avoided; but who nevertheless knew her well by sight, having seen her on many occasions when riding abroad, and on Sundays at church, whither she always drove in her little pony phaeton, and he had always admired her beauty greatly.

The General was not a very old man; he was still looking for another command in India, and though in affluent circumstances was yet an enthusiastic soldier, who believed that military rank and stars and ribbons, were the only things in this world worth living for. He was nearly six feet in height—erect as a pike, and well built; his features were handsome, his eyes dark and keen; his complexion was well bronzed and dark, his short shorn hair was becoming grey and grizzled, and his manner, by force of habit, and the air to command, was brief and authoritative.

He knew in a moment the great peril of the girl on the beach below him; he saw that already the tide was chafing in white surf at each horn of the bay, round either of which she could alone escape from the watery trap that enclosed her, unless taken off the shore by a boat. The General was on foot; that part of the coast was very lonely and no house or hut was, near; but intent upon her rescue, he hurried away as fast as a limp in a wounded leg (he had received a ball at Ghuznee) would permit him, from place to place, in search of a boat; but neither boat nor fisherman could be found in time to take her off that perilous beach, ere the tide covered it.

The evening darkened quickly, and the stormy wind brought faster in the stormy sea. Near the gate-lodge of his own residence, he met Audley Trevelyan strolling leisurely in the avenue with his hands in his pockets, accompanied by his huge dog, and enjoying a cigar before the bell should ring to dress for dinner; but the havannah fairly dropped from his lips in his surprise on beholding the excited state of the usually calm and collected General Trecarrel.

"What's the row, General—what the deuce is the matter?" he asked.

"A dreadful thing will occur—if it has not already occurred—a poor girl on a solitary part of the beach yonder, has been cut off by the tide, and unless we can save her in ten minutes at farthest, all will be over—yes, in ten minutes!" added Trecarrel, looking at his gold watch—the gift of Sir John Keane, with whom he had served in the conquest of Cabul.

"Good Heavens, let us get a boat at once!"

"There is not one to be had—the pilchard fishers hereabout are all at sea!"

"Lower someone over the cliffs by a rope; I have gone myself, thus, for a chough's egg, more than once."

"The rocks are nearly two hundred feet in height in some places, and the poor girl——"

"Is she a lady, General?"

"Yes, and a handsome one, too."

"You know her then—she is not a stranger?"

"To me only—a Miss Devereaux, who resides at Porthellick."

"Who do you say?" shouted Audley; "Sybil Devereaux?"

"The same."

"Merciful Heavens, let us do something at once!"

"True, but without a boat what can be done?"

"She cannot, she must not, she shall not be left to perish thus, if I can save her!" exclaimed Audley Trevelyan, with all the impetuosity of youth, and with sudden emotions of terror, pity, and tenderness combined. He, usually so calm, quiet, and apparently unimpressionable, to the surprise of the General, now rushed to the stable-yard, and loudly, even fiercely summoned grooms, gardeners, and lodge-keepers, and with these carrying poles and stable-lanterns, hurried towards the seashore, while two messengers were despatched to the hut of a fisherman, who lived about a mile distant, to get his boat, or at least a coil of stout ropes, and they succeeded in securing the latter; but his boat was at sea, and was the same which Constance had seen running round the headland for shelter at Portquin.

The alarm spread rapidly, and soon a dozen of men at least were searching along the verge of the cliffs in the dusk. The sea was seen rolling its waves round all the little bay now, and the base of the cliffs was marked by a curling line of snow-white foam alone. Every vestige of sandy beach had disappeared, and so had all trace of the poor loiterer whom the General had last seen there!

Many a "halloo" was uttered, but vainly, for no response came upwards from below.

Audley Trevelyan was very pale, and very silent, though deeply excited. He was not wont to indulge in self-examination, and consequently he never knew until now how dear this girl was to him—in fact, how much he had begun to love her.

The dusk deepened into darkness, and a weird effect was given to the wild rock scenery by the fitful gleams of the lanterns carried along the edges of those perilous cliffs by the searchers, who felt that they were literally doing nothing, yet in the spirit of humanity were loth to relinquish their task, in which they were now joined by the terrified and excited servants from the villa. The wind was rising fast, and its mournful voice, as it swept through the bare branches of the old groves above the bay, mingled with the booming of the waves upon the rocks below.

Audley felt almost thankful for the gloom, as it hid the workings of his features, and like a thorough Englishman, he detested alike a scene and to be a subject for speculation; but now the deep baying of his Thibet dog among a clump of bushes and gorse, attracted the marked attention of the searchers.

"The dog has found some track or trace; he never barks thus, save for some cogent reason!" exclaimed Audley, as he hastened to the spot.

"Plaise sur, the dog do hear or see summat," added Michael Treherne, an old and decrepit miner, who in his earlier years had been an "underground captain" in Botallack mine, and one of the best wrestlers in the duchy, and who had hobbled forth, staff in hand, to assist in the search; "if the dog be on the right road, we be on the wrang. But take 'ee care, surs; there's the shaft of a main old mine hereabouts; and out of it, in its time, there have come many a keenly lode o' tin and goodly bunch of copper."

"I know the place, Michael," cried Audley; "Heavens above! she must be in the Pixies' Hole, which, as you are all likely aware, opens into the shaft."

"Just so, Mr. Trevelyan; through that same hole, the water was pumped into the sea in my grandfeyther's time—and that warn't yesterday, sur."

"How old are you, Michael?" asked the General, lending the old man his hand.

"Seventy past; few miners live to my time, and 'tis ten years since I was underground," replied Treherne with a sigh; "I can mind o' 'ee a small booy, General, robbin' my garden o' apples."

Proceeding cautiously about a hundred yards back from the verge of the cliffs to the place where the dog was baying, they found amid the tangled gorse bushes, the mound of slag and other debris, now covered with rank grass and weeds, in the centre of which yawned the round mouth of the ancient mine; and as they drew near the dog continued to bay the louder, with its forefeet outstretched, and its nose in the air. Then it began to fawn and leap upon its master, with such ponderous gambols, that more than once he was nearly thrown to the ground.

"Down, Rajah—down, sir! keep quiet, dog," he exclaimed, and while he spoke, something like the cry of a female came to his ear; "oh, General, I see it all now! She has been driven by the tide into the Pixies' hole, and is even now on the verge of this shaft; should she be ignorant of its existence, she may fall into the mine and be dead ere she reaches the bottom!"

"It must all be over with the poor lass, Mr. Trevelyan," said the old miner, shaking his head; "hear ye that."

And, as they listened, they could hear above the moaning of the wind and the surging of the sea, the sound of water pouring within the shaft of the mine, and falling apparently to a vast depth below. A sense of the deep profundity that yawned before them, made all save Audley and the old miner, Treherne, shrink, with faces that seemed pale in the fitful gleams of the lanterns, and now the latter spoke again.

"Aw dear, aw dear! dost hear, sur? The tide has risen to upper mouth o' the Pixies' Hole, and is now pouring down into the lower level o' the mine, so if the poor lady beant drowned in one place, she will be at the bottom o' tother."

There seemed to be some probability of such being the case; and though Audley was horror-struck with the suggestion, he said with apparent calmness, the result of a great effort,—

"The upper mouth you speak of, Michael, is about fifty feet below where we stand; surely, the tide could never reach it, even at full flood?"

"But who will venture down to see?" asked Treherne, almost with a grin on his hard old visage.

"I shall!"

"You, Mr. Trevelyan—you, sur?"

"Yes."

"Dare you go down, Trevelyan, with that terrible sound in your ears?" asked the General, and all present murmured the same thing, save Sybil's servants, who moaned and wrung their hands.

"Dare I go down?" repeated Audley, "when a woman is in the case—a lady—Sybil Devereaux! To whom are you talking, General? Have I not for a joke taken a letter to the Devil's Post Office, and will I shrink for this?" he asked, referring to the deep and dangerous chasm at Kinance Cove, where the sea bellows for ever with a thundering sound, and from time to time hurls a column of water furiously through an aperture, when those who are adventurous enough to descend in the dark and deliver a letter, as if to the presiding Genius of the place, will find it rudely torn from their fingers by an inward current of air, accompanying the reflux of the sea. "We have blocks and tackle with us," continued Audley; "rig them to poles laid across the shaft, and by Jove, I'll go down with a lantern; quick, my lads, for God's sake lose no time!"

"Are you not afraid of gas—or foul air, Trevelyan?" asked the General.

"I don't mean to go to the bottom."

"Of course not; but if the rope should break?"

"In that case, it won't matter what I meet with," was the grimly significant reply; "but be careful, my good fellows, for I trust my life to you in this instance."

"If the tackle did break, thee'd soon be in jowds" (i.e., pieces), said Treherne, with a saturnine smile.

An oar and a stout pole, which two of the party carried, were laid across the mouth of the shaft.

A double-sheaved block was securely lashed to them; a strong rope was rove through the sheaves, and a species of cradle was formed for the adventurous Audley Trevelyan.

Long familiar with his native rocks, the latter when a bold boy, had clambered by Bodrigan's Leap at Portmellin,* when seeking for puffins' nests, and could look without shrinking from the steeps of Gurnard's Head, Tol Pedn Penwith, and the fantastic cliffs of Tintagel. He had been doted on by the miners, with whom he had often descended the deepest shafts, clad like themselves in flannel shirt and trousers. Thus attired, he had explored the vast levels and silent galleries by the dim light of a feeble candle, while, as Sybil told of Denzil, he could hear the roar of the Atlantic over his head, and the boulders dashed by its force on the bluffs of the Land's End; and thence beyond, in levels half a mile out at sea, where the passing ships glided like silent phantoms many a fathom far above where he wandered.

* So called from Sir Henry Bodrigan, who in the reign of Henry VII. sprang down the cliff, when flying from his neighbours Trevannion and Edgecumbe, who sought to capture or slay him. He was so little injured by the fall, that he reached a vessel sailing near the shore, and escaped to France. A mound, called the Castle Hill, and a farm-house, once part of a splendid mansion, are all that now remain of the abode of this fine old Cornish family.

Fearlessly he tied himself to the cradle which old Michael Treherne prepared for him; a lantern was hung at his neck, leaving his arms free, and now a dozen of strong and careful hands were laid on the ropes.

"Lower away, my lads," cried he, almost gaily; and with something like a gasp of anxiety in his throat, the General saw his young friend's face disappear as they lowered him into that awful orifice, the mouth of a shaft that went down a thousand feet and more.

"Steady, my booys!" cried old Treherne, in a species of glee.

Those who witnessed this descent were none of them, perhaps, very impressionable men; yet even to them, there was a gloomy horror in the idea of the vast profundity of the deserted mine, over which Trevelyan swung; and the wildness of the night, the storm at sea, the whistling and howling of the wind as it swept the rocky promontories, and rolled the waves in foam against them, were not without their due effects upon the mind.

CHAPTER XV.

THE SEARCH.

"He's a braave booy, sartainly!" said old Michael Treherne, admiringly, in his queer Cornish accent, "it is like him and like his family—the Trevelyans of Rhoscadzhel.

By Tre, Pol and Pen,
                We know the Cornish men.

He'd face Tregeagle himself—lower away gently, lads. His ancestors existed hundreds of years ago; and for the matter o' that, I spose so did mine; we be all old Cornish keth."*

* People.

Audley Trevelyan would freely have risked his life to save anyone—of course a woman more than all; but how glorious was this! The peril he risked—for no ordinary amount of nerve was requisite for him who swung thus over the profundity of the ancient mine—was for his lovely little friend of the sketch-book; the Naiad of the moorland tarn—she who seemed not indisposed to love him, and whose heart he might yet make his own.

"But Heaven!" thought he; "that impulsive little heart may be—alas—still enough by this time!"

And even as this disastrous fear occurred to him, the roar of the falling water was heard on the lower level of the empty mine, more than a thousand feet below him, while the lantern he carried cast strange gleams on the damp, slimy, and discoloured masonry of the shaft, after he left behind, or rather above him, the fringe of weeds and gorse, that grew about the mouth; yet in less than a minute he was assured that the water he heard falling, proceeded, not from the flow of the tide, as he and his companions foreboded, but from some subterranean spring falling into the shaft, far below the upper entrance of the Pixies' Hole; and anything more weird, dreary, and ghastly than that cavernous fissure which now opened off it on one side, and which he was preparing cautiously to explore, it would be difficult to conceive.

From its rocky and ragged mouth, which was covered with white and pendant stalactites and hideous fungi, on which the light of his lantern fell with fitful rays, its interior receded away into dark and gloomy blackness and uncertainty.

"Good Heaven!" muttered Audley, "the poor girl cannot be here. Should she have fallen down the shaft!"—was his next terrible thought.

"Are ee saafe, sur?" cried Treherne, peering down from above.

"All right, old fellow—stop lowering and make fast the rope; I am just at the place, and a horrid one it is."

Ere he entered it, and cast off the cradle by which he had descended, he could hear in the obscurity beyond the surging or gurgling sound of the tide, at the lower end; and a nervous chill that he might find Sybil drowned, came over his heart.

"Well, by Jove!" he muttered; "of all the places in this world, to search for a young lady, who would think of this—down the shaft of a devilish old copper mine! I have seen some queer things in India, but this out-herods them all!"

Carrying the lantern so that its light should precede and guide his steps, he had barely gone twenty paces, when he discerned something white amid the dense gloom. Within but a few feet of the still encroaching water, a female figure was lying on a shelf of rock, from which she started into a half sitting posture, and gazed upward at him, with a wild and startled expression, in which hope and fear, joy and wonder, were singularly mingled.

She was that Sybil Devereaux of whom he was in search; her dress, a white pique, all soiled, bedrabbled and wet, her fine dark hair dishevelled and sodden, her hat and veil gone, and her whole aspect forlorn and pitiable.

"I am saved!" she exclaimed in a wailing and excited voice; "I thank Heaven—I thank kind God that you are come to me; but how—and who are you that have had the courage——"

"Audley—Audley Trevelyan—don't you know me, Miss Devereaux?" said he, as he placed the lantern on a rock, and raised her tenderly in his arms.

"Oh Audley!" she exclaimed, and her head fell upon his shoulder, for she was weak as a child and past all exertion. She had never called him by his Christian name before, and while he felt his heart swell with a new emotion of pleasure, he ventured tenderly to kiss her cheek, and then he became aware how cold and chill it was. She seemed scarcely conscious of the act, though she said in a broken voice,

"Mamma—my poor mamma shall thank you, sir—I cannot speak my own thoughts—they are too terrible and my gratitude is too deep for words."

"From my soul, I thank Heaven, that I came in time to save you! A little longer here, my dearest girl, and you must have perished of cold!" said he as he perceived with genuine anxiety how pale she was and how the whole of her delicate frame shivered, but his words or manner seemed to recall her energies, for she tried to smile and said,

"I shall have a strange story to write of to Denzil, and tell my papa when he returns."

"Have ee found her zur—is the young lady saafe?" cried a voice there was no mistaking, down the shaft.

"Safe and sound, Treherne," replied Trevelyan, whose voice made strange echoes in the cavernous recesses of the place; "we shall come up together, so take care my friends, for there will be a heavier strain on the rope—a double weight now. Permit me to lead you, Miss Devereaux—or, may I not call you Sybil?" he added, as his voice trembled a little.

"You may call me what you please," replied Sybil with something of her usual frankness, "I owe my life to you," she added feebly, while clinging to his arm.

"To me, after Rajah who guided us here, no doubt on hearing you cry for aid—so with the permission you accord, I shall call you Sybil—yes dearest Sybil, permit me to blindfold you."

"Why?"

"You may become giddy—terrified."

"I submit myself to you," she answered, and he tied his handkerchief over her eyes, and while doing so, to resist touching her lovely little lips with his own, was impossible.

"Pardon me for this, Sybil," said he, as the action brought a little colour to her pale cheek, "but I love you, love you dearly. Elsewhere, we shall talk of this—come, allow me to be your guide."

"Shall we not wait till the tide ebbs, and escape by the sands?" she asked, and shrinking as his arm encircled her.

"Dearest girl, you would die of cold ere that took place."

Thus from terror and despair on Sybil's part, and from a proud and joyous sense of exultation, on that of Trevelyan, there came about abruptly, a dénouement which might have been long of developing itself, even with those who were so young and enthusiastic, a declaration of love upon one hand, and a tacit acceptance of it on the other, for gratitude mastered the regard already formed in the heart of the girl.

Audley was now in that delightful state of the tender passion, when to see even the skirt, to hear the voice or to breathe the same atmosphere, with its object, had a charm; then how much greater was the joy of having her all to himself, and to feel that too probably, she owed her life to him!

"You do not—do not—love—" she faltered and paused.

"Whom?"

"Rose Trecarrel?"

"I love but you, and I bless God for the opportunity given me for testifying that love, by serving and saving you—Sybil—dear Sybil for so let me call you now and for ever."

"What the deuce are you about, Trevelyan? Do you mean to stay down there all night—or is the lady ill? That dreary hole can be neither romantic nor pleasant, I should fancy."

It was the voice of the General hailing him now.

"Here we come, sir," replied Audley, as he fastened the rope cradle securely round his body and courageously took Sybil in his arms. It was no doubt delightful to hold her in an embrace so close, and to feel her clinging to him, but a thrill of intense anxiety passed over all his nerves, and it seemed as if the hair of his head bristled up, when he found himself swinging at the end of a rope over that dreadful abyss, down which the lantern, as it chanced to fall from his hand, vanished as if into the bowels of the earth, for the lower level of that old mine, was far below the sea. As for poor Sybil, she felt only a terror that amounted to a species of torpor—a numbness of all sense.

"Now pull together, my booys!" cried the cheerful voice of Michael Treherne, "one, two—one, two—ho and here they come out of the knacked bal!" for so the Cornish miners designate an abandoned mine, as it is among his class, and in the mines, that words of the old language linger.

And in less than a minute, Audley and Sybil were at the surface and in the grasp of strong hands that placed them safely on terra firma, when, overcome by all she had endured, the former immediately fainted.

"The poor child is as wet as a quilquin" (a frog), said Treherne with commiseration.

"She requires instant attention," said the General kindly; "let her own servants take her at once to your cottage, Treherne, as it is the nearest place in this stormy night. See to this, Audley, while I hurry down to Porthellick and relieve the anxiety of her mother. Give orders to have the carriage sent there for her. By the way, Audley, is not this the girl that Rose chaffs you about?"

"The same, sir," replied Trevelyan, whose heightened colour was unseen in the dark.

"How strange! Rose is such a quiz, you will never hear the end of this."

"She is the daughter of an officer—a Captain Devereaux."

"I have never met him—of what corps?"

"I don't know."

"To Mike's cottage with her, and lose no time. Here my lads, all of you go to Trevanion's Tavern, and score to me what you drink. The night is rough and wet."

"Thank'ee sir," replied Treherne, while the others all bowed and scraped and pulled their forelocks; "my old woman 'll keep the young lady safe, till her pony-kittereen or your carriage comes for her; and we'll drink your health, and Mr. Trevelyan's too—aye, and the old Cornish toast of 'Fish, tin, and copper,' in summat better than Devonshire cider."

So, while Sybil in Audley's care was taken to the cottage of the old miner, and the latter with those who had joined in the search departed to enjoy the bounty of the General, the latter limped off to visit Constance and relate the story of her daughter's escape and safety.

CHAPTER XVI.

INTELLIGENCE AT LAST.

On seeing Constance without her bonnet, and with her dark hair somewhat in disorder, the first impression of the General was, how extremely like her daughter she proved, and how very youthful too; for her figure, as we have elsewhere said, was petite; her features were minute, beautiful and full of animation at all times, but never more so than now, when she started forward on the entrance of the visitor, with her delicate hands uplifted, her fine eyes sparkling through their tears, full of hope and inquiry, and her lips parted, showing the whiteness and faultless regularity of her teeth.

"You have news for me, General?" she faltered.

"Happily, good news, madam," said he, bowing low; "your daughter is safe and well."

"Oh, sir—oh, General Trecarrel, how can I thank you?"

"By composing yourself, my dear madam," he replied, leading her to a chair; but Constance became almost hysterical; she clasped his hand in hers, and almost sought to kiss it, in expression of her deep gratitude, greatly to the confusion of the old soldier, who was Englishman enough to dislike a "scene."

"Under the circumstances, no apology is necessary for the abruptness of my visit," said he; "we are pretty near neighbours, and I hope shall ultimately be friends, though, singular to say, I have never had the pleasure of meeting Captain Devereaux."

These words recalled Constance to a sense—the ever-bitter sense—of the awkwardness of her position, and she faltered out—

"Captain Devereaux is absent at present—abroad indeed—but I hope he shall soon be home now. And our dear daughter—she escaped the rising tide——"

"By fortunately being able to find shelter in the Pixies' Hole, from which she was promptly rescued by a young friend—a brother-officer of mine."

"Oh, how I shall bless him and ever treasure his name."

"He is Mr. Audley Trevelyan, and has conveyed her, in the first place, to old Mike Treherne's cottage. She was drenched by rain and spray, suffering from chill, and overcome with terror."

"My poor little Sybil!"

The General did not add to the mother's alarm by adding that he had left Sybil insensible, but only said—

"She should not return till to-morrow, when perhaps the rain may cease, and the storm abate; but I have ordered my carriage, and she shall have the use of it with pleasure. It must be here in a few minutes now."

Constance could only murmur her heartfelt thanks; but now, more than ever, she felt the peculiarity of her position—its extreme awkwardness, and its doubtful aspect. It was but a few weeks since her husband, now known as Lord Lamorna, had stood by the General's side at the late lord's grave, amid a crowd of bareheaded tenantry, and here they were talking of him as "Captain Devereaux!"

Sybil's cousin-german had saved and protected her, thus cementing the acquaintance begun by chance at the little lake upon the moor, and was with her now too, probably; he was her husband's nephew, and while that husband was absent, with her own rank, name, and his concealed, she dared not avow the relationship that existed among them all! Poor Constance felt her cheek grow paler, with the sickly thoughts that oppressed her heart, as she muttered under her breath—

"Patience yet a while, and, with God's help, dear Richard shall see me through all this!"

In a few words the General, with military brevity, related the whole affair of the evening; the providential discovery of her daughter in the chasm, by her voice, as it was rightly conjectured, having reached the ears of Audley's Thibet mastiff; but for which circumstance she must have perished of cold and exhaustion, or perhaps fallen down the shaft of the old mine and never been heard of again, her fate remaining a mystery to all—contingencies, the contemplation of which appalled the heart of the poor mother, who said in a very faint voice—

"My daughter is long in returning to me. Oh, sir, can it be that you are kindly concealing something from me?"

"Nay, madam, the tempestuous state of the weather and the feeble condition of the young lady herself require——"

"Ah, that is it! my daughter is ill—dying perhaps, while I am idly talking here. Winny—Winny Braddon, my bonnet and cloak; I shall set forth this instant for Treherne's cottage!"

"I assure you, madame, that my carriage was at her disposal, and it shall bring your daughter home."

"Oh, General, the gratitude of my heart——"

"There—there, please don't thank me for a little common humanity," continued the kind old soldier, "but give my compliments—General Trecarrel's compliments—to Captain Devereaux when he returns, and say that I think he ought, in etiquette, to have waited upon me as his senior officer; for such was the fashion in my young days, when two brethren of the sword took up their quarters in a district so secluded as this; and I should like my girls to know your daughter."

"I have a son, too, General—my dear Denzil—who left us but lately to join his Regiment."

"Ah—indeed—you quite interest me. Where is it stationed?"

"In India—far, far from me."

"Of course, you could not have him always at your apron-strings. What, or which, is his corps?"

"The Cornish Light Infantry."

"My own Regiment! I am the full colonel of it: why did he not leave a card with me on appointment?—he must have known of my whereabouts."

A cloud came over the fair open countenance of Trecarrel, and Constance felt that, in the further prosecution of their systematic incognito, a breach of military etiquette and punctilio had taken place.

"My young friend Trevelyan is in the same corps," said the General, after a pause.

Constance knew that too, and that it had been the Regiment of her husband during their happiest days at Montreal; but when with it he had borne his family surname, and not that of Devereaux.

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
"When first we practise to deceive!"

So thought Constance, and who could not quite foresee the end of the web. Her present perplexities were increasing, and her usually pale cheeks began to blush scarlet.

But now, to her intense relief, the sound of wheels and hoofs at the door, followed by quick steps in the entrance, announced an arrival, and in a moment more mother and daughter were weeping joyfully in each other's arms.

"Dearest mamma—darling mamma! Oh the joy of being safe with you again! An age seems to have elapsed since I left you this evening!"

And old Winny Braddon came in for her share of caresses, while the General and Trevelyan, though they now began to feel themselves rather de trop, looked on with smiles of pleasure. So full of joy was Constance at the restoration of Sybil, that she never noticed the quaint and coarse (though comfortably dry) costume which the careful wife of Treherne had substituted for her wet and sodden habiliments.

Audley's quick and practised eye saw that Constance was a woman possessing more than an ordinary share of beauty and refinement. He took in the whole details of the drawing-room, and perceived by a glance that the occupants of this secluded villa "in the willow-glen—those peculiar Devereaux," as the Trecarrel girls called them, were evidently people of the best and most cultivated taste, for the buhl or marquetterie tables, consoles, and cabinets exhibited selections from the most chaste productions of Dresden and Sèvres; delicate Venetian bronzes, quaint Majolica vases and groups, some relics from Herculaneum; and other objects (more familiar to him) from India and Burmah were there—four-armed gods and other idols in silver or ivory.

Pausing for a moment in her caresses, Constance turned towards Audley Trevelyan with a pleading glance of irresolution, yet one of wonderful sweetness.

"My young friend, Mr. Trevelyan," said the General; "allow me to introduce him, Mrs. Devereaux."

"Oh, sir, to you I owe the gratitude of a lifetime?" she exclaimed in an accent of touching tenderness.

He seemed so like her absent Denzil, that all her heart yearned to him, and in a genuine transport of gratitude she embraced him with such empressement, that in a woman so young apparently for her maternal character, and so very handsome too, rather perplexed Trevelyan, who said,

"You owe me no thanks—indeed, indeed, you do not. I did but my duty—I obeyed only the dictates of humanity; and I assure you that you are quite as much indebted to Rajah as to me, Mrs. Devereaux."

The name he used recalled her to herself, and the peculiarity of her position as regarded him—the secret she could not yet reveal; and turning away as an expression of confusion come over her face, she stooped, and casting her arms round the great Thibet mastiff, caressed it with a grace and playfulness that partook of girlish glee.

By this time Sybil was reclining wearily, and with an air of utter exhaustion and languor, on a sofa. Her face was very pale, save when a kind of hectic flush passed over it, and her eyes seemed unnaturally bright. Even to the unpractised observation of the two gentlemen it was evident that they had better retire, and, after exchanging a glance suggestive of this, they both rose, hat in hand.

"You will, I hope, permit me to call to-morrow and make inquiries?" said Audley Trevelyan.

Constance bowed, and her tongue trembled: what she said she scarcely knew, but it was a muttered wish of some kind, with many thanks and reference to her husband's return, all oddly combined. That she laboured under some species of hidden restraint was quite apparent to the perception of him she addressed, and also to the General; and so, after the usual well-bred wishes that both ladies should soon recover from the effects of their recent terror, they withdrew together; and as the sound of their carriage wheels died away in the willow avenue, all other sounds, and the light too, seemed to pass away from Sybil, as she sank gradually back, became insensible, and was conveyed to bed by Winny Braddon and her startled mother, who summoned medical aid without delay.

The next day found her in a species of nervous fever. She had undergone too much of mental fear and bodily suffering for a nature so delicate as hers, and remained for a time unconscious of all around her. Slowly and gradually, like water filtering through a rock—as some one describes the struggles of returning sensibility—she became aware that she was in her own bed, with her mother on one side and Winny Braddon on the other in watchful attendance; then, with a shudder, she would recall the horrors she had escaped, and clasp her hands as she had done ten years before, when a little child in prayer.