there must be some good reason for his friend's dislike of his
ancestral home, and forebore (like a man) to question him further.
Perhaps, he thought, it was connected in Tyrrel's mind with some
painful memory, some episode in his history he would gladly forget;
though, to be sure, when one comes to think of it, at thirteen such
episodes are rare and improbable. A man doesn't, as a rule, get
crossed in love at that early age; nor does he generally form lasting
and abiding antipathies. And indeed, for the matter of that, Penmorgan
was quite gloomy enough in itself, in all conscience, to account for
his dislike--a lonely and gaunt-looking granite-built house, standing
bare and square on the edge of a black moor, under shelter of a rocky
dip, in a treeless country. It must have been a terrible change for a
bachelor about town, like Walter Tyrrel, to come down at twenty-eight
from his luxurious club and his snug chambers in St. James' to the
isolation and desolation of that wild Cornish manor-house. But the
Tyrrels, he knew, were all built like that; Le Neve had been with
three of the family at Rugby; and conscience was their stumbling-
block. When once a Tyrrel was convinced his duty lay anywhere, no
consideration on earth would keep him from doing it.

"Let's take a stroll down by the shore," Le Neve suggested,
carelessly, after a short pause, slipping his arm through his
friend's.

"Your cliffs, at least, must be fine; they look grand and massive; and
after three years of broiling on a South American line, this fresh
sou'wester's just the thing, to my mind, to blow the cobwebs out of
one."

He was a breezy-looking young man, this new-comer from beyond the sea