incoming water; this little bridge of planks is soon
washed by the waves, and during some hours each day the Gannel cannot
be forded. In broad daylight, when visitors from Newquay are passing
and repassing, the spot may be cheerful enough; but at nightfall a
dusky solemnity possesses it. There is the rumour of immemorial
tradition in the air; it comes with the lap of the water and the low
sob that breathes from the sands; it speaks in the cry of the birds as
they wing their way restlessly from bank to bank. The countryfolk
whisper that these birds are the souls of those who have been drowned
at the ford--those who have dared to pass unwarily when the tide was
pouring in with the force of the ocean behind it. The moment of safety
had gone, but rather than drive many miles round to the bridge at
Trevemper, they risked the passage, their horses became confused by
the whirl of waters, and by the sands, that are always treacherous in
a rising tide; the flow was too strong for swimming; the waves soon
bubbled mockingly above the drowned heads of man and beast.

But there is another cry that suddenly resounds through the stillness,
a long-drawn, mysterious utterance, passing drearily, difficult to
locate, more difficult to name--one of those sounds by which Nature at
times reaches to the dark places of our spirit and terrifies us with
vague dread of the unknown. Is it the wail of an owl or other bird of
the night? It pervades the air wildly and lingeringly. Those who come
late to the ford and hear this sudden strange call draw rein and turn
backward; it is better to drive the weary distance to the bridge than
to brave a crossing when this warning is abroad. Those who are
familiar with this country-side, with its dim lingerings of Celtic
tradition, its strange borderland of myth and reality, know the
meaning of the cry in their hearts, though, perhaps, they decline to
give mention to it with their lips. They have been told in their
childhood of a man who once lived in these parts, whose life was
stained by many black deeds, and lightened by a single good one. He
had been a smuggler, a wrecker, a pirate; his hand was red with blood,
his soul dark with the soil of crime. One night a cottager lay dying,
and was praying that a priest might be fetched to his bedside. Moved
by a rare impulse of pity, the man of many sins set forth to cross the
Gannel and to bring the priest from a religious house beyond. But the
time for fording had