"Well, it's like this, sir," he answered at last, with the shamefaced
air of the intelligent laboring man who confesses to a superstition.
"We Cornish are old-fashioned, and we has our ideas. The Tyrrels are
new people like, in Cornwall, as we say; they came in only with
Cromwell's folk, when he fought the Grenvilles; but it's well beknown
in the county bad luck goes with them. You see, they're descended from
that Sir Walter Tyrrel you'll read about in the history books, him as
killed King William Rufious in the New Forest. You'll hear all about
it at Rufious' Stone, where the king was killed; Sir Walter, he drew,
and he aimed at a deer, and the king was standing by; and the bullet,
it glanced aside--or maybe it was afore bullets, and then it'd be an
arrow; but anyhow, one or t'other, it hit the king, and he fell, and
died there. The stone's standing to this day on the place where he
fell, and I've seen it, and read of it when I was in hospital at
Netley. But Sir Walter, he got clear away, and ran across to France;
and ever since that time they've called the eldest son of the Tyrrels
Walter, same as they've called the eldest son of the Trevennacks
Michael. But they say every Walter Tyrrel that's born into the world
is bound, sooner or later, to kill his man unintentional. So he do
right to avoid going too near the cliffs, I say. We shouldn't tempt
Providence. And the Tyrrels is all a conscientious people."




CHAPTER III.

FACE TO FACE.