murdered Thomas a Becket, are numerous
up and down the coast; for the Tracys owned a considerable amount of
property here--Lynton, Crinton, Countisbury, and Parracombe--and, in
spite of historical evidence of the family's continued prosperity,
tradition asserts that the curse brought down by sacrilege was
fulfilled, and that Henry de Tracy wanders up and down these desolate
coves, condemned to weave ropes of sand that can never draw his
wretched soul out of torment till the last trump shall sound. He has
become, indeed, a figure of legend, merged with such strange persons as
the Wandering Jew and all those restless and unreleased spirits who,
like Sisyphus of Greek legend or Tregeagle of Cornish, for ever toil at
a for ever unaccomplished task.

The legends which have sprung up round the name of Coppinger have been
of quick growth, for "Cruel Coppinger" was a Danish sea-captain who was
wrecked off Hartland at the end of the eighteenth century. He came
naked ashore, the only survivor from the ship, having swum through the
stormy waves. He staggered up the beach, seized the red cloak from an
old woman's shoulders, wrapped himself in it, and leapt on the horse of
a young girl who stood by, urged the horse into a gallop, and
disappeared from the beach. That was a sufficiently striking entrance
to the stage of Devon, and he filled his part adequately. The young
girl with whom he had ridden off was Dinah Hamlyn; he was taken by her
to her father's farm, where he was fed and clothed. He married Dinah,
and after her father's death, within a year, he ill-treated shamefully
her and her mother, though it was to them that he practically owed his
life, ship-wrecked strangers in the eighteenth century being apt to
disappear among an inhospitable people. Coppinger lived by smuggling
and wrecking; he was brave, violent, and of great physical strength,
and he terrorized the population of these little villages by acts of
savagery and cruelty. A ganger who had had the boldness to interfere
with him he seized, and beheaded on the gunnel of his own boat, and
even for this no one dared to bring him to justice. He played violent
practical jokes, by inviting to dinner with him unfortunate people who
dared not refuse, and serving them up cats or offal for their meal.

He was in every way a scoundrel and a blackguard, and became such a
pest that at last he earned retribution; and after many local attempts
to convict him of smuggling o