fruitless toil, there came a terrific
storm, with thunder and earthquake. In sheer horror and despair
Tregeagle fled. Immediately the demons were on his track, chasing him
so closely that he could not stay to dip his limpet-shell in the
foaming water. Feeling that they were upon him, he rose with a cry of
anguish, and fled across the pool, thus gaining a temporary advantage,
for spirits of evil cannot cross water. He made for the hermitage on
Roche Rock, the yelling pursuers at his heels. Just as they were about
to seize him he thrust his head within the small window of the
hermit's chapel, and thus was safe. There was still a difficulty about
his position. He could not get further into the church, nor does it
appear that the hermit desired it; and he could not withdraw his head
lest the fiends should seize him. He had to stay and listen to the
good man's prayers and liturgies, which only added to the terrors of
his guilty conscience, so that his remorseful screams were heard above
all the psalms and prayings. The hermit found it a great affliction,
for the population of the district was kept away by the unpleasantness
of Tregeagle's presence. At last two other clergy came to his
assistance, and Tregeagle was led away to the coast at Padstow. His
new task was to make ropes of sand--one of the familiar penances of
such traditions. He could not do it; it was worse than draining
Dosmare. Night and day he rendered the place hideous with his frantic
cries, and the Padstow folk did not like it at all. It was making the
neighbourhood unbearable. At their earnest request another effort was
made by the priests to dispose of poor Tregeagle. He was ruining the
harbour by his attempts to make the ropes of sand; every rising sea
scattered these ropes, however carefully formed, and the sand was
accumulating in a bar of Doom. It is said that St. Petrock himself,
the spiritual founder of Padstow, forged a chain of which every link
was a prayer, and thus led away the unhappy ghost to Helston. In the
estuary of the Hel River he spoiled the harbourage also, for a devil
tripped him one day, when toiling across with a sack of sand, and the
sand was spilt right across the mouth of the river. At last he was
cast out from Helston also, and dismissed to Land's End, where he
remains labouring to this day, endeavouring to sweep the sands from
Porthcurno Cove into Nanjisal. Of course, it cannot be done; the full
force of the Atlantic drives around