"And have had your labor for your pains," was her reply.
"Not entirely. I feel as though I have happened upon something which will lead to interesting developments."
"If ever there was a false tradition, it is the tradition that Cornwall is romantic. I have lived here all my life, and there is no more romance in the county than in that mine-heap," and she nodded towards a discarded mine which lay in the distance.
"The Cornish people," she went on, "have no sense of the mysterious, no sense of the romantic. If ever they had it, it has all died. I suppose that years ago, when the people were entirely ignorant, they believed in all sorts of superstitions, but now that they are better educated they have discarded everything but what they can see, and feel with their own hands. I am inclined to think they are right, too."
"I am not so sure," was my answer. And then I told her of the conversation that had taken place a few moments before.
"And do you imagine, Mr. Erskine, that any romance surrounds the old man who built the house you live in, and lived like a hermit away there by the cliff? Do you think that any romance is associated with the idiot lad who ran his errands and did his bidding?"
"Pardon me if I do not agree with you. After all, there is something romantic in the thought of that old man coming there alone and building his hut in a lonely place, and spending years of his life there."
"Yes, it may seem so; but, pardon me, is there anything romantic in your coming there, Mr. Erskine?"
"And I dare say the reason why he came there was just as unromantic. As for Fever Lurgy, every village has its idiot who is a butt for rustic jokes."
"And what about old Father Abraham's mysterious disappearance?" I asked.
"What you call a mysterious disappearance," was her reply, "I regard as a sordid crime. I expect the old man had a little money hoarded up, some tramps heard of it, and, for the sake of that money, murdered him and threw his body over the cliff."
"At any rate," I said, "it is more pleasant to think that some mystery surrounded his life, and that he left the neighborhood from some romantic cause. Do you know, I am inclined to think that he is still alive, that he will turn up some day, and that the whole thing will be the talk of the countryside."