a and land were equally treacherous. On the
sands the tide, and on the cliffs the landslip, imperilled the lives
of the unwary. Half, at least, of the churchyard had been condemned
as 'dangerous,' and this very same spot was the only one on the coast
where the pedestrian along the sands ran any serious risk of being
entrapped by the tide; for the peninsula on which the church stood
jutted out for a considerable distance into the sea, and then was
scooped out in the form of a boot-jack, and so caught the full force
of the waves. One corner, as already mentioned, was called Flinty
Point, the other Needle Point, and between these two points there was
no gangway within the semicircle up the wall of cliff. Indeed, within
the cove the cliff was perpendicular, or rather overhanging, as far
as such crumbling earth would admit of its overhanging. To reach a
gangway, a person inside the cove would have to leave the cliff wall
for the open sands, and pass round either Needle Point or Flinty
Point. Hence the cove was sometimes called Mousetrap Cove, because
when the tide reached so high as to touch these two points, a person
on the sands within the cove was caught as in a mousetrap, and the
only means of extrication was by boat from the sea. It was the
irresistible action of the sea upon the peninsula (called Church
Headland) that had doomed church and churchyard to certain
destruction.

Dangerous as was this cove, there was something peculiarly
fascinating about it. The black, smooth, undulating boulders that
dotted the sand here and there formed the most delightful seats upon
which to meditate or read. It was a favourite spot with my father's
first wife, who had been a Swiss governess. She was a great reader
and student, but it was not till after her death that my father
became one. The poor lady was fond of bringing her books to the cove,
and pursuing her studies or meditations with the sound of the sea's
chime in her ears. My father, at that time I believe a simple, happy
country squire, but showing strong signs of his Romany ancestry, had
often warned her of the risk she ran, and one day he had the agony of
seeing her from the cliff locked in the cove, and drowning before his
eyes ere a boat could be got, while he and the coastguard stood
powerless to reach her.

The effect of this shock demented my father for a time. How it was
that he came to marry again I could never understand. During my
childhood he had, as far as I co