g a deep blackish-purple pool in which the wash to and fro of pale
rose and deep magenta seaweed, flecked with trails of pale grassy green,
were like the colours of a stormy sunset reflected in a prism. The
sounds made here by the inflowing and outgoing of the waves were
curiously musical,--like the thudding of a great organ, with harp
melodies floating above the stronger bass, while every now and then a
sweet sonorous call, like that of a silver trumpet, swung from the
cavernous depths into clear space and echoed high up in the air, dying
lingeringly away across the hills. Near this split of the "coombe" stood
the very last house at the bottom of the village, built of white stone
and neatly thatched, with a garden running to the edge of the mountain
stream, which at this point rattled its way down to the sea with that
usual tendency to haste exhibited by everything in life and nature when
coming to an end. A small square board nailed above the door bore the
inscription legibly painted in plain black letters:--

ABEL TWITT,
Stone Mason,
N. B. Good Grave-Work Guaranteed.

The author of this device, and the owner of the dwelling, was a round,
rosy-faced little man, with shrewd sparkling grey eyes, a pleasant
smile, and a very sociable manner. He was the great "gossip" of the
place; no old woman at a wash-tub or behind a tea-tray ever wagged her
tongue more persistently over the concerns of he and she and you and
they, than Abel Twitt. He had a leisurely way of talking,--a "slow and
silly way" his wife called it,--but he managed to convey a good deal of
information concerning everybody and everything, whether right or wrong,
in a very few sentences. He was renowned in the village for his
wonderful ability in the composition of epitaphs, and by some of his
friends he was called "Weircombe's Pote Lorit." One of his most
celebrated couplets was the following:--

"_This Life while I lived it, was Painful and seldom Victorious,
I trust in the Lord that the next will be Pleasant and Glorious!_"

Everybody said that no one but Abel Twitt could have thought of such
grand words and good rhymes. Abel himself was not altogether without a
certain gentle consciousness that in this particular effort he had done
well. But he had no literary vanity.

"It comes nat'ral to me,"--he modestly declared--"It's a God's gift
which I takes thankful without pride."

Helmsley had become very intimate with