ys, even Fate's self, as it had seemed. None could overthrow
them, none could stand before their determination to attain that which
they chose to claim. Students of heredity knew that there were curious
instances of revival of type. There had been a certain Red Godwyn who
had ruled his piece of England before the Conqueror came, and who had
defied the interloper with such splendid arrogance and superhuman lack
of fear that he had won in the end, strangely enough, the admiration
and friendship of the royal savage himself, who saw, in his, a kindred
savagery, a power to be well ranged, through love, if not through fear,
upon his own side. This Godwyn had a deep attraction for his descendant,
who knew the whole story of his fierce life--as told in one yellow
manuscript and another--by heart. Why might not one fancy--Penzance was
drawn by the imagining--this strong thing reborn, even as the offspring
of a poorer effete type. Red Godwyn springing into being again, had been
stronger than all else, and had swept weakness before him as he had done
in other and far-off days.

In the old library it fell out in time that Penzance and the boy spent
the greater part of their days. The man was a bookworm and a scholar,
young Saltyre had a passion for knowledge. Among the old books and
manuscripts he gained a singular education. Without a guide he could not
have gathered and assimilated all he did gather and assimilate. Together
the two rummaged forgotten shelves and chests, and found forgotten
things. That which had drawn the boy from the first always drew and
absorbed him--the annals of his own people. Many a long winter evening
the pair turned over the pages of volumes and of parchment, and followed
with eager interest and curiosity the records of wild lives--stories of
warriors and abbots and bards, of feudal lords at ruthless war with
each other, of besiegings and battles and captives and torments. Legends
there were of small kingdoms torn asunder, of the slaughter of their
kings, the mad fightings of their barons, and the faith or unfaith of
their serfs. Here and there the eternal power revealed itself in some
story of lawful or unlawful love--for dame or damsel, royal lady,
abbess, or high-born nun--ending in the welding of two lives or in
rapine, violence, and death. There were annals of early England, and of
marauders, monks, and Danes. And, through all these, some thing, some
man or woman, place, or strife linked by some tie