don't you drop none over--when, just as you might loosen them pebbles
there with your foot, over came a shower o' small bits from the cliff
on top, and as sure as you're livin', hit the two on 'em right so,
sir. Mr. Trevennack himself, he wasn't much hurt--just bruised a bit
on the forehead, for he was wearing a Scotch cap; but Master Michael,
well, it caught him right on the top of the head, and afore they
knowed what it was, it smashed his skull in. Aye, that it did, sir,
just so; it smashed the boy's skull in. They carried him home, and cut
the bone out, and trepanned him; but bless you, it wa'n't no good; he
lingered on for a night, and then, afore morning, he died,
insensible."

"What a terrible story!" Le Neve exclaimed, with a face of horror,
recoiling instinctively from the edge of the cliff that had wrought
this evil. "Aye, you may well say so. It was rough on him," the
coastguard went on, with the calm criticism of his kind. "His only
son--and all in a minute like, as you may term it--such a promising
young gentleman! It was rough, terrible rough on him. So from that day
to this, whenever Trevennack has a holiday, down he comes here to
Gunwalloe, and walks about the cliffs, and looks across upon the rocks
by Penmorgan Point, or stands on the top of Michael's Crag, just over
against the spot where his boy was hurted. An' he never wants to go
nowhere else in all England, but just to stand like that on the very
edge of the cliff, and look over from atop, and brood, and think about
it."

As the man spoke, it flashed across Le Neve's mind at once that
Trevennack's voice had quivered with a strange thrill of emotion as he
uttered that line, no doubt pregnant with meaning for him. "Look
homeward, Angel, now, and melt with ruth." He was thinking of his own