Now, to adopt a metaphor of Sir Humphry Davy's, at length the great stream of the Arundells of Cornwall, like some mighty river losing itself among the sands as it approaches the ocean shore, becomes so divided that we can no longer easily trace its course. After the names and dates to which we have been referring, no Arundell of distinction seems to have arisen in Cornwall; and their places soon 'knew them no more.' They became scattered throughout the county,[44] and by the help of the Bishop of Exeter's transcripts, and the Parish Registers of Camborne, St. Erme, St. Ewe, Falmouth, Fowey, Gulval, Mawnan, Menheniot, Mevagissey, Sheviock, and Sithney, we find that down to the year 1725 there were still indeed Arundells in Cornwall being christened, dying, marrying,--but no longer 'great Arundells' as of yore: in fact, the entry in the year 1725, in the St. Erme Register, merely records the baptism of Charles, the son of Richard Arundell, 'a day labourer.' Yet, by a strange freak of fortune, not only did the female line continue, but one of the Arundells--William by name--married nearly two and a quarter centuries ago, Dorothy, a daughter of that Theodore Palæologus[45] who was buried in Landulph Church in 1636. She is described in the Parish Register as being 'ex stirpe Imperatorum.' So that there probably flows in the veins of many a rustic of the neighbourhood of Callington and Saltash the mingled blood of those Arundells who came over to England with the Conqueror, and that of the Byzantine Emperors of the East. [Illustration: (end of chapter vignette.)] FOOTNOTES: [19] Mr. H. S. Stokes has written a pleasant descriptive poem on 'The Vale of Lanherne,' illustrated by numerous excellent lithographic views after one of our best Cornish landscape-painters, J. G. Philp. [20] Little thinking, perhaps, that in the next reign its rays would shine upon the grave of one of his descendants, who was destined to fall in arms at the foot of the self-same mount. [21] There was a John Michell, Dean of Crantock, in 1455: he may have been the man. [22] The story runs that when the remains of St. Piran were discovered under the altar of his little chapel in the Sands, they were found to be headless.