FullReads

One day towards the end of my visit I walked over to a coastguard station some miles along the shore for the sake of taking a last survey of the beautiful coast. When I reached it I found, to my pleasure, one of the W– fishing-boats just preparing to put out and sail round the headland back to the village. One of the coastguardsmen was on board, and I was glad to accept the invitation of my honest friend to form another of the party.

I found the coastguardsman a most intelligent fellow–well informed on many subjects, and even professing to be something of an art critic. I showed him one or two of my pictures, and he was graciously pleased to approve of them, especially a sketch of the ruined castle from the south, with the Lady Tower in the foreground.

The examination of this picture naturally turned the conversation on to the ruin, and I was delighted to find my companion seemed almost as interested in the subject as I was.

“It’s a strange thing,” said I, “that the one thing wanting seems to be a story.”

“Ah! that was burnt out by the fire, sir.”

I was rude enough to laugh. He fancied I was lamenting the absence of the top storey!

“I don’t mean that,” I said. “What I mean is, no one seems to know anything about the place or its history.”

“Not they! What should they bother their heads about it for?”

“But it must have a history of some sort,” said I.

“Of course it has.”

“Do you know it?”

“Of course I do.”

It was quite a shock to me to find any one knew anything about my ruin, and it was some time before I ventured to ask–

“Would you tell it to me?”

Instead of saying “Yes,” the coastguardsman laid down his telescope, pulled a plug of tobacco out of his pocket, and, cutting off a small quid, put it into his mouth, looked up at the sail, shifted himself once or twice in his seat, and then, looking to see if I was ready, began–

“It’s not such a wonderful yarn after all, sir. You see, something like two hundred and fifty years ago, when our Civil Wars were going on– you’ve heard of them, I suppose?–yonder castle belonged to a stout Charles the First’s man called Fulke. He owned a good bit about this coast, I’m told, and the folk at the New Manor are sort of descendants. But direct descendants they can’t be, for Fulke only had one daughter, sir, and she never married. If it hadn’t been for those cruel wars she would have been married, though, for she was betrothed to a neighbour, young Morgan, who lived beyond that hill there, and mightily they loved one another too! Fulke, whose lands joined on Morgan’s, was pleased enough to have the two families united, and united they would have been to this day but for the Civil Wars. I’m no great hand at dates, sir, but it was somewheres about 1642 that things began to get unpleasant.

“One day, not long before the wedding was to be, Fulke and his daughter went over to Morgan Hall; and while the young folk spent the day love- making in the garden the two old folk sat and discussed the affairs of the nation in the house. And it’s safe to say the two out of doors agreed far better than the two indoors. For Morgan went with the Parliament, and told Fulke the King had no right to try and arrest the five members, and that the Parliament had done a fine thing in protecting them, and that if he’d been there he’d have called out against the King as loud as any of them. At that Fulke–who was a hot- headed man at best of times, and who went mad to hear any one say a word against the King–got up in a rage, and, taking his hat, stalked out into the garden, and taking his daughter by the arm marched away from Morgan Hall with never a word.