construction and
random additions.

Part of its beauty is undoubtedly owing to its superb position. It
rises from the rock, over the grey town at its feet, like a protecting
deity, its two towers to west and east, raised like giant hands, its
grey walls rising sheer from the steep, shelving rock; behind it the
gentle rise of hills, bending towards the inland valleys; in front of
it an unbroken stretch of sea.

It strikes the exact note that is in harmony with its colour and
surroundings: the emblem of some wild survival from dark ages when that
spot had been one of the most uncivilised in the whole of Britain--a
land of wild, uncouth people, living in a state of perpetual watch and
guard, fearing the sea, fearing the land, cringingly superstitious
because of their crying need of supernatural defence; and, indeed,
there is nothing more curious in the Cornwall of to-day than this
perpetual reminder of past superstitions, dead gods, strange pathetic
survival of heathen ancestry.

The town of Pendragon, lying at the foot of the "House of the Flutes,"
had little of this survival of former custom about it; it was rapidly
developing into that temple of British middle-class mediocrity, a
modern watering-place. It had, in the months of June, July, and
August, nigger minstrels, a cafe chantant, and a promenade, with six
bathing-machines and two donkeys; two new hotels had sprung up within
the last two years, a sufficient sign of its prosperity. No, Pendragon
was doing its best to forget its ancient superstitions, and even seemed
to regard the "House of the Flutes" a little resentfully because of its
reminder of a time when men scaled the rocks and stormed the walls, and
fell back dying and cursing into their ships riding at anchor in the
little bay.

Very different was Cullin's Cove, the little fishing-village that lay
slightly to the right of the town. Here traditions were carefully
guarded; a strict watch was kept on the outside world, and strangers
were none too cheerfully received. Here, "down-along," was the old,
the true Cornwall--a land that had changed scarcely at all since those
early heathen days that to the rest of the world are dim, mysterious,
mythological, but to a Cornishman are as the events of yesterday. High
on the moor behind the Cove stand four great rocks--wild, wind-beaten,
grimly permanent. It is under their guardianship that the Cove lies,
and it is something more than a mere superstitious rev