"You ought to throw a viaduct across the valley," said Mr. Hamleigh—"something like Brunel's bridge at Saltash; but perhaps you have hardly traffic enough to make it pay."
They went winding up the new road to Trevena, avoiding the village street, and leaving the Church of the Silent Tower on its windy height on their right hand. The wide Atlantic lay far below them on the other side of those green fields which bordered the road; the air they breathed was keen with the soft breath of the sea. But autumn had hardly plucked a leaf from the low storm-beaten trees, or a flower from the tall hedgerows, where the red blossom of the Ragged Robin mixed with the pale gold of the hawk-weed, and the fainter yellow of the wild cistus. The ferns had hardly begun to wither, and Angus Hamleigh, whose last experiences had been among the stone walls of Aberdeenshire, wondered at the luxuriance of this western world, where the banks were built up and fortified with boulders of marble-veined spar.
They drove through the village of Trevalga, in which there is never an inn or public-house of any kind—not even a cottage licensed for the sale of beer. There was the wheelwright, carpenter, builder, Jack-of-all-trades, with his shed and his yard—the blacksmith, with his forge going merrily—village school—steam threshing-machine at work—church—chapel; but never a drop of beer—and yet the people at Trevalga are healthy, and industrious, and decently clad, and altogether comfortable looking.
"Some day we will take you to call at the Rectory," said Christabel, pointing skywards with her whip.
"Do you mean that the Rector has gone to Heaven?" asked Angus, looking up into the distant blue; "or is there any earthly habitation higher than the road on which we are driving."
"Didn't you see the end of the lane, just now?" asked Christabel, laughing; "it is rather steep—an uphill walk all the way; but the views are lovely."
"We will walk to the Rectory to-morrow," said Miss Bridgeman; "this lazy mode of transit must not be tolerated after to-day."
Even the drive to Trevena was not all idleness; for after they had passed the entrance to the path leading to the beautiful waterfall of St. Nectan's Kieve, hard by St. Piran's chapel and well—the former degraded to a barn, and the latter, once of holy repute, now chiefly useful as a cool repository for butter from the neighbouring dairy of Trethevy Farm—they came to a hill, which had to be walked down; to the lowest depth of the Rocky Valley, where a stone bridge spans the rapid brawling stream that leaps as a waterfall into the gorge at St. Nectan's Kieve, about a mile higher up the valley. And then they came to a corresponding hill, which had to be walked up—because in either case it was bad for the cob to have a weight behind him. Indeed, the cob was so accustomed to consideration in this matter, that he made a point of stopping politely for his people to alight at either end of anything exceptional in the way of a hill.
"I'm afraid you spoil your pony," said Mr. Hamleigh, throwing the reins over his arm, and resigning himself to a duty which made him feel very much like a sea-side flyman, earning his day's wages toilsomely, and saving his horse with a view to future fares.
"Better that than to spoil you," answered Miss Bridgeman, as she and Christabel walked briskly beside him. "But if you fasten the reins to the dashboard, you may trust Felix."