rds on the grass. Some of the
small veins were cut through, and the blood gushed freely from the
wound. As he was tying it up he pointed out to Joshua that the wedding
ring was severed by the steel.

They carried her fainting to the house. When, after a while, she came
out, with her arm in a sling, she was peaceful in her mind and happy.
She said to her husband:

'The gipsy was wonderfully near the truth; too near for the real thing
ever to occur now, dear.'

Joshua bent over and kissed the wounded hand.

The Coming of Abel Behenna

The little Cornish port of Pencastle was bright in the early April,
when the sun had seemingly come to stay after a long and bitter
winter. Boldly and blackly the rock stood out against a background of
shaded blue, where the sky fading into mist met the far horizon. The
sea was of true Cornish hue--sapphire, save where it became deep
emerald green in the fathomless depths under the cliffs, where the
seal caves opened their grim jaws. On the slopes the grass was parched
and brown. The spikes of furze bushes were ashy grey, but the golden
yellow of their flowers streamed along the hillside, dipping out in
lines as the rock cropped up, and lessening into patches and dots till
finally it died away all together where the sea winds swept round the
jutting cliffs and cut short the vegetation as though with an
ever-working aerial shears. The whole hillside, with its body of brown
and flashes of yellow, was just like a colossal yellow-hammer.

The little harbour opened from the sea between towering cliffs, and
behind a lonely rock, pierced with many caves and blow-holes through
which the sea in storm time sent its thunderous voice, together with a
fountain of drifting spume. Hence, it wound westwards in a serpentine
course, guarded at its entrance by two little curving piers to left
and right. These were roughly built of dark slates placed endways and
held together with great beams bound with iron bands. Thence, it
flowed up the rocky bed of the stream whose winter torrents had of old
cut out its way amongst the hills. This stream was deep at first, with
here and there, where it widened, patches of broken rock exposed at
low water, full of holes where crabs and lobsters were to be found at
the ebb of the tide. From amongst the rocks rose sturdy posts, used
for warping in the little coasting vessels which frequented the port.
Higher up, the stream still flowed deeply, for the tide ran f