"Oh!" I rejoined, "the deuce it is, and you have! Who does it belong to, then?"
"To me; but don't you trouble about that. Go just where you like."
I told him, as nicely as possible, that this was precisely what I intended to do; and then this apparently contradictory but not unamiable person began to dilate upon the want of respect the Cornish had for antiquity. The text for this was the cantankerous nature of two old maiden ladies, who jointly owned an old wayside smithy on the high road between Ashtown and Germoe. When one had agreed to sell it to my informant, if he could obtain her sister's consent, he went to the other sister with the proposition.
"What does my sister say?" she asked.
"She agrees."
"Then I won't!"
And as neither would agree upon anything concerning it, the building was unsold and went tenantless. Thenceforward, it fell into disrepair, and eventually fell down altogether.
Laughing at this ridiculous, but true, story, I went my way. I discovered afterwards that the narrator of it was the locally famous Mr. Behrens, who has purchased the land in and about Prussia Cove and has figured in some bitterly fought right-of-access cases here.
The headland beyond Prussia Cove, forming the eastern horn of Mount's Bay, is Cuddan Point. The meaning of "Cuddan" is said to be dark, or gloomy, but there is nothing exceptionally so in this not very striking point, and the autumn corn-fields render the approach to it even cheerful. But there is nothing gained by toiling to its extremity. The embattled granite house looking over Mount's Bay from hence is known as Acton Castle. From it the coastline can be plainly seen for miles.
Whichever way you go, by cliffs or by the high road, to Perranuthnoe, the way is extremely dull, and Perranuthnoe—now called locally merely "Perran"—is a dull little village. According to a wild legend, it was to the shore by Perranuthnoe that an ancestor of the Trevelyans came on horseback from the submerged land of Lyonesse between Land's End and Scilly. The roaring waters that had engulfed that fabled land and its 140 churches could not keep pace with his marvellous steed.