For some minutes he could only stand with open eyes and gaze delighted
at the glorious prospect. Cliffs, sea, and rocks all blended with one
another in solemn harmony. Even the blackness of the great crags and
the scorched air of the brown and water-logged moorland in the rear
now ceased to oppress him. They fell into their proper place in one
consistent and well-blended picture. But, after awhile, impelled by a
desire to look down upon the next little bay beyond--for the coast is
indented with endless coves and headlands--the engineer walked on
along the top by a coastguard's path that threaded its way, marked by
whitened stones, round the points and gullies. As he did so, he
happened to notice on the very crest of the ridge that overlooked the
rock they called St. Michael's Crag a tall figure of a man silhouetted
in dark outline against the pale gray skyline. From the very first
moment Eustace Le Neve set eyes upon that striking figure this man
exerted upon him some nameless attraction. Even at this distance the
engineer could see he had a certain indefinite air of dignity and
distinction; and he poised himself lightly on the very edge of the
cliff in a way that would no doubt have made Walter Tyrrel shudder
with fear and alarm. Yet there was something about that poise quite
unearthly and uncanny; the man stood so airily on his high rocky perch
that he reminded Le Neve at once of nothing so much as of Giovanni da
Bologna's Mercury in the Bargello at Florence; he seemed to spurn the
earth as if about to spring from it with a bound; his feet were as if
freed from the common bond of gravity.

It was a figure that belonged naturally to the Cornish moorland.

Le Neve advanced along the path till he nearly reached the summit
where the man was standing. The point itself was a rugged tor, or
little group of bare and weather-worn rocks, overlooking the sea and