grateful to him, for though I love to have some people laugh at me
she isn't one of those people. She laughs in that sniffy way cats have.

The real castle I can see from my own feudal, castellated balcony. It is
beautifully ruined; but you can go into it, and I have been. Only I want
to tell you about other things first.

In my short note from Launceston, did I mention the old Norman house
which belongs to cousins of Sir Lionel's? He used to visit there, and
poke about in the castle, which was Godwin's and Harold's before the
Conquest. But the nicest cousins are dead and the rest are away, so we
could only see the outside of the house. However, we went to call at an
ancient stone cottage of the colour of petrified wallflowers, to see a
servant who took care of Sir Lionel when he was a child. A wonderful old
wisp of a thing, with the reputation of being a witch, which wins her
great respect; and she used quaint Cornish words that have come down
from generation to generation, ever since the early Celts, without
changing. When Sir Lionel sympathized with her about her husband's
death, she said it was a grief, but he'd been a sad invalid, and a "good
bit in the way of the oven" for several years.

[Illustration: _In Sir Lionel's county, Cornwall_]

On the way to Tintagel from Launceston we passed Slaughter Bridge, one
of the many places where legend says King Arthur fought his last battle.
So that was a good entrance to Arthurian country, wasn't it? Our road
cut huge, rolling downs in two, and they surged up on either side, so it
was rather like the passage through the Red Sea. And under a sky that
hung over us like an illimitable bluebell, we saw our first Cornish
mountains, Rough Tor and Brown Willy. Names of that sort make you feel
at home with mountains at once, as if you'd known them all your life,
and might lead them about with a string. But they are only corruptions
of old Celtic names that nobody could possibly pronounce; and nearly
everything seems more or less Celtic in Cornwall, especially eyes. They
are beautiful gray-blue, with their black lashes as long on the lower as
on the upper lid, and look as if they had been "rubbed in with a dirty
finger." Now I see that Sir Lionel's eyes are Celtic. I didn't know
quite how to account for them at first. _He_ has a temper, I think, and
could be severe; but he says the Cornish people are so good-hearted that
if you ask them the way anywhere, they tell you the one they