“Sauce and imprence! I do knaw thee and the crooked ways of ee, though thee dost skulk behind a honest man,” and with that she banged-to the window.
A few minutes before the village clock chimed the hour, the huntsman, hounds, and whippers-in passed through the gate and along the approach to the inner court, and drew up on the far side of the keep near the old culverin. By ones and twos, gentlemen from the country round, tenant farmers and crofters, rode up to the Castle.
This venerable building in the hundred of Penwith in the parish of Madron had been the seat of the Tresillians from the time of Henry the Second. The Castle is quaintly described in an old survey of Cornwall as “very ancient, strong and fayre and appurtenanced with the necessaries of wood, water, parkes, moors, with the devotion of a rich-furnished chapelle and charitie of almshouses.”
The terrace is still haunted by the squire who fell on the memorable day when the place was held for the King against the Roundheads. The painting in the hall shows the assault on the outer wall, where a lurid glare lights up helm and pike at the narrow breach; for above battlement and turret, clearly outlined, leap tongues of fire from the beacon on the Cairn.
Dents in the granite walls still mark where the cannon-balls struck the building; and it was at that time—I know there are some who dispute the date—that one of the quarterings of the family arms above the entrance was effaced.
Sir Bevil and Lady Tresillian, who were standing on the steps below, gave their guests a hearty welcome. Breakfast was laid in the wainscotted hall, bright with log fires.
Cornish worthies in their gold frames wink at the merry gathering round the table.
Sir Bevil, despite his grey hairs, looks young for his sixty years. Life’s work is stamped on his high-bred features. He looks every inch a soldier. The tanned face and parched skin suggest frontier fighting: the scar on the brow confirms it.
Facing the mullioned window, on Sir Bevil’s right is Squire Tremenheere of Lanover, the hardest rider of the hunt; next him is the Major of the C.C. battery, whose neighbour is the popular member for the Land’s End Division; next him is a shipowner whose vessels are on every sea; the veteran with silvery hair and twinkling eyes has been purser of a tin-mine for nearly half a century; the man with the long black beard is the village doctor, and a kind friend to the poor; below him sit half a score farmers, and a good time they are having.