The fact was that Harry's conscience smote her for her wish to be of service to this handsome young fellow, since she had just refused to accompany Solomon to Dunloppel, on the score of fatigue. It was level walking, or nearly so, to the pit-mouth, and it was a climb of many hundreds of feet to the ruin. Still, she felt no longer tired, if she had done so a while ago, and the stranger might come to harm without a guide.
"But you're not coming without a bonnet?" exclaimed Richard.
"Nay, Sir; I should come home without one if I went up yonder in such a wind as this," answered she, laughing; "and I recommend you to fasten on your hat, if you wish to see it again."
"But you'll catch cold," urged Richard.
"We don't mind air at Gethin, Sir; and this shawl will cover my head, if that's all."
It really was Harry Trevethick's custom to go bareheaded in fine weather about her own home, though, perhaps, the consciousness that she never looked so well in even her Sunday head-gear, as with her own ample tresses for a covering, may have influenced her resolve. Chignons were unknown at that time, and never had the young man beheld such wealth of gold-tinged locks as that which blew about his fair companion's brow, and presently streamed out behind her, as they neared the cliffs, and met the full force of that Atlantic breeze. It blew freshly and shrilly enough up the winding gorge through which they had to descend to the foot of the castled rock; but by the time they reached the beach the wind had risen to a gale. They stopped a minute within shelter of a hollowed cliff to view the place. It was a noble spectacle. The great waves came roaring in, and dashed themselves against the walls of slate in sheets of foam, to fall back baffled and groaning. They had eaten the cliff away in two dark frowning spots, which his guide said were caverns, approachable at low-water; but the rock itself on which the castle stood defied them; they had only succeeded in insulating it, except for a narrow tongue of land, which now formed the sole access to it from the shore. Even without any historical or poetic association, the object before them—rising bare and sheer into the air to such a height—on which a swarm of gulls, shrunk to the size of bees, were clanging faintly, was grand and striking; but the place had been the hold of knights and kings a thousand years ago and more. The young girl pointed out to Richard where the main-land cliff had once projected so as to meet the rock, and showed him on the former's brow some fragments of rude masonry. "That was the ancient barbacan," she said, "once joined to the castle by a draw-bridge, as was supposed, which, when drawn up, left Gethin so that neither man nor beast could approach it without permission of its defenders. Even now, with none to hinder one, it is a steep and perilous way, especially in a wind like this. Perhaps it would be better not to venture."
"But you shall take my arm, Harry," said Richard; "only let me pin your shawl about your head first, lest those long locks of yours blind us both."
"I can do that myself, Sir, thank you," said Harry, austerely; then added, with a smile, to reassure him—for why should she be angry?—"you would only have pricked your fingers, as Solomon does. No man is clever with his hands, excepting father."
"And you say that to a painter, do you, Miss Harry—a man who lives by his handiwork?"
"I forgot that," said Harry, penitently; "besides, I was only saying what Solomon says."