Quitting the cottage and turning to the left, she bent her steps towards a footbridge spanning a gap in the cliff side and, pausing at the bridge, let her eyes rest musingly on the great, mysterious opening picturesquely known as Merlin’s Cave.  The tide was coming in fast, and she could hear the waves boom hollowly as they slid over its stony floor, only to meet and fight the opposing rush of other waves from the further end—­since what had once been the magician’s cave was now a subterranean passage, piercing right through the base of the headland.

For a while Nan loitered on the bridge, gazing at the wild beauty of the scene—­the sombre cove where the inrushing waves broke in a smother of spume on the beach, and above, to the left, the wind-scarred, storm-beaten crag rising sheer and wonderful out of the turbulent sea and crowned by those ancient walls about which clung so much of legend and romance.

Perhaps the magic of old Merlin’s enchantments still lingered there, for as Nan stood silently absorbing the mysterious glamour of the place, the petty annoyances of the day, the fret of Lady Gertrude’s unwelcoming reception of her, seemed to dwindle into insignificance.  They were only external things, after all.  They could not mar the loveliness of this mystic, legend-haunted corner of the world.

At length, with a faint sigh of regret, she crossed the bridge and walked slowly up a path which appeared to be little more than a rough track hewn out of the rocky side of the cliff itself, uneven and strewn with loose stones.  Nan picked her steps gingerly.  At the top of the track her way turned sharply at right angles to where a narrow ridge—­so narrow that two people could not walk it abreast—­led to Tintagel Head.  It was the merest neck of land, very steep on either hand, like a slender bridge connecting what the Cornish folk generally speak of as “the Island” with the mainland.

Nan proceeded to cross the narrow ridge.  She was particularly surefooted as a rule, her supple body balancing itself instinctively.  But to-day, for the first time, she felt suddenly nervous as she neared the crag and, glancing downward, caught sight of the sullen billows thundering far below on either side.  Perhaps the events of the day had frayed her nerves more than she knew.  It was only by an effort that she dismissed the unaccustomed sensation of malaise which had assailed her and determinedly began the ascent to the castle by way of a series of primitively rough-hewn steps.  They were slippery and uneven, worn and polished by the tread of the many feet which had ascended and descended them, and guarded only by a light hand-rail that seemed almost to quiver in her grasp as, gripped by another unexpected rush of fear, Nan caught at it in feverish haste.

She stood quite still—­suddenly panic-stricken.  Here, half-way up the side of the steep promontory, the whole immensity of the surrounding height and depth came upon her in a terrifying flash of realisation.  From below rose the reiterated boom of the baulked waves, each thud against the base of the great crag seeming to shake her whole being, while, whichever way she looked, menacing headlands towered stark and pitiless above the sea.  She felt like a fly on the wall of some abysmal depth—­only without the fly’s powers of adhesion.