n, is held to be reached on the day of marriage! There
is often, of course, more than one true passion of love in a man's
life; and even if the second does not really kill the memory of the
first, their course (should they be worth the telling) may well be
told separately. But if, in the story of a man's love for two women,
the past and the present are so closely interwoven as were the reality
and the "might-have-been" in the mind of Adrian Landale, any
separation of the two phases, youth and maturity, would surely have
stultified the whole scheme of the story._

_I have also been taken to task by some critics for having, the tale
once opened at a given time and place, harked back to other days and
other scenes: an inartistic and confusing method, I was told. I am
still of contrary opinion. There are certain stories which_ belong,
_by their very essence, to certain places. All ancient buildings have,
if we only knew them, their human dramas: this is the very soul of the
hidden but irresistible attraction they retain for us even when
deserted and dismantled as now the Peel of Scarthey. For the sake of
harmonious proportions, and in order to give it its proper atmosphere,
it was imperative that in this drama--wherever the intermediate scenes
might be placed, whether on the banks of the Vilaine, on the open sea,
or in Lancaster Castle--the Prologue should be witnessed on the green
islet in the wilderness of sands, even as the Crisis and the Closing
Scene of rest and tenderness._

_E. C.,
49, Sloane Gardens,
London, S. W.

October 1899._

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

SIR ADRIAN LANDALE, LIGHT-KEEPER OF SCARTHEY

CHAP. PAGE

I. The Peel of Scarthey 1
II. The Light-Keeper 6
III. Day Dreams: A Philosopher's Fate 16
IV. Day Dreams: A Fair Emissary 32
V. The Awakening 43
VI. The Wheel of Time 53
VII. Forebodings of Gladness 63
VIII. The Path of Wasted Years 70
IX. A Genealogical Epistle 85

PART II

"MURTHERING MOLL THE SECOND"

X. The Threshold of Womanhood