in it to pay all their debts, and after that there would be some left for himself.  The sight of the gold and jewels excited the woman’s cupidity, and when the sailor was fast asleep she woke her husband, told him what had happened, and suggested that they should murder the sailor and bury his body next day in the garden.  The farmer was very unwilling, but his wife at length persuaded him to go with her.  Finding the sailor still fast asleep, they cut his throat and killed him, and covered him up with the bedclothes till they should have an opportunity of burying him.  In the morning their daughter came and asked where the sailor was who called on them the previous night, but they said no sailor had been there.  “But,” she said, “he must be here, for he is my brother, and your long-lost son; I saw the scar on his arm.”  The mother turning deadly pale sank in a chair, while with an oath the father ran upstairs, saw the scar, and then killed himself with the knife with which he had killed his son.  The mother followed, and, finding her husband dead, plunged the knife in her own breast.  The daughter, wondering why they were away so long, went upstairs, and was so overcome with horror at seeing the awful sight that she fell down on the floor in a fit from which she never recovered!

The first difficulty we had to contend with on continuing our journey was the inlet of the River Helford, but after a rough walk through a rather lonely country we found a crossing-place at a place named Gweek, at the head of the river, which we afterwards learned was the scene of Hereward’s Cornish adventures, described by Charles Kingsley in Hereward the last of the English, published in 1866.

Here we again turned towards the sea, and presently arrived at Helston, an ancient and decaying town supposed to have received its name from a huge boulder which once formed the gate to the infernal regions, and was dropped by Lucifer after a terrible conflict with the Archangel St. Michael, in which the fiend was worsted by the saint.  This stone was still supposed to be seen by credulous visitors at the “Angel Inn,” but as we were not particularly interested in that angel, who, we inferred, might have been an angel of darkness, or in a stone of such a doubtful character, we did not go to the inn.

Helston was one of the Stannary Towns, and it was said that vessels could at one time come quite near it.  Daniel Defoe has described it as being “large and populous, with four spacious streets, a handsome church, and a good trade.”  The good trade was, however, disappearing, owing to the discovery of tin in foreign countries, notably in the Straits Settlements and Bolivia; the church which Defoe saw had disappeared, having since been destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1763.  We did not go inside, but in walking through the churchyard we casually came upon an ordinary headstone on which was an inscription to the effect that the stone marked the resting-place of Henry Trengrouse (1772-1854), who, being “profoundly impressed by the great loss of life by shipwreck, had devoted the greater portion of his life and means to the invention and design of the rocket apparatus for connecting stranded ships to the shore, whereby many thousands of lives have been saved.”