hinted that we had contracted bad habits
of sleeping between two sheets, and left the rest to chance; reckless
how we slept, or where we slept, whether we passed the night on the top
of one of the six dissecting-tables, or with a blanket at bottom, as
other people passed it. Soon the servant returned to tell us that we had
got our two sheets each, and to send us to bed--snatching up the
landlady's mourning garments, while she spoke, with a scared, suspicious
look, as if she thought that the next outrageous luxury we should
require would be a nightgown apiece of crape and bombazine.

Reflecting on our lamentable situation the last thing at night, we
derived some consolation from remembering that we should leave our
quarters early the next morning. It was not Liskeard that we had come to
see, but the country around Liskeard--the famous curiosities of Nature
and Art that are to be found some six or eight miles away from the town.
Accordingly, we were astir betimes on the morrow. The sky was fair; the
breeze was exhilarating. Once past the doleful doorway of the inn, we
found ourselves departing under the fairest auspices for a pilgrimage to
the ruins of St. Cleer's Well, and to the granite piles and Druid
remains, now entitled the "Cheese-Wring" and "Hurler" rocks.

On leaving the town, our way lay to the northward, up rising ground. For
the first two miles, the scenery differed little from what we had
already beheld in Cornwall. The lanes were still sunk down between high
banks, like dry ditches; all varieties of ferns grew in exquisite beauty
and luxuriance on either side of us; the trees were small in size, and
thickly clothed with leaves; and the views were generally narrowed to a
few well-cultivated fields, with sturdy little granite-built cottages
now and then rising beyond. It was only when we had reached what must
have been a considerable elevation, that any change appeared in the face
of the country. Five minutes more of walking, and a single turn in the
road, brought us suddenly to the limits of trees, meadows, and cottages;
and displayed before us, with almost startling abruptness, the
magnificent prospect of a Cornish Moor.

The expanse of open plain that we now beheld stretched away
uninterruptedly on the right hand, as far as the distant hills. Towards
the left, the view was broken and varied by some rough stone walls, a
narrow road, and a dip in the earth beyond. Wherever we looked, far or
near, we saw ma