Chapter I.

Heard At Midnight

The village, in which the first scenes of this history are laid, was called Trennach; and the land about it was bleak and bare and dreary enough, though situated in the grand old county of Cornwall. For mines lay around, with all the signs and features of miners' work about them; yawning pit mouths, leading down to rich beds of minerals—some of the mines in all the bustle of full operation, some worked out and abandoned. Again, in the neighbourhood of these, might be seen