"H'm! Well, the original version of the tradition is to be found in Surinn's `Legends and Myths of Baronial Europe,' a very scarce and bulky book, which came out between forty and fifty years ago, and the incident occurred, if I remember rightly, in the middle of the last century. The narrative is entitled `The Ban of Craunston.' It was a wild and lawless period in out-of-the-way parts, and this corner of the world came in no wise behind the spirit of the age, for the coast was the happy hunting ground of wreckers and smugglers, and the roads of highwaymen and other freebooters. At that time, one Richard Dorrien was Squire of Cranston. He was a bachelor, and his younger brother lived at the Hall with him. The latter, Hubert by name, was an open-hearted, bright-spirited youngster, immensely popular with both sexes; whereas Richard, the Squire, seems to have been a gloomy, violent-tempered man, disliked and feared on all sides. Well, the brothers got on rather well together-- possibly on account of the total dissimilarity of their characters-- until the apple of discord was thrown into their midst in the shape of a young lady who came to take up her abode in Wandsborough, then a straggling little place, consisting of a score of houses. She was a foreigner--though of what nationality the chronicle omits to state--of extraordinary beauty, and lived alone with a _duenna_ of regulation age and hideosity. It is said that this young woman was a Jacobite emissary, and it was in that capacity that she and Richard Dorrien became acquainted, for he was an ardent Jacobite, and over head and ears involved in the plots of the day. But be this as it may, it was a case of love at first sight. The churlish and misanthropical Squire became violently enslaved; unfortunately, however, the lady declined his addresses. More unfortunately still, she did not decline those of his brother--quite the reverse. Well, now, this position of affairs could but have one ending, in a state of society wherein men ran each other through on far less provocation than would induce you in these days to knock a fellow down. But there was no open quarrel. On the contrary, the Squire was so studiously cordial to his brother that the latter was thrown quite off his guard. Not so one or two of his intimates, who went so far as to warn him--and nearly got run through for their pains. Matters went on in this way till the day before Hubert was to wed the fair unknown. On the afternoon of that day the two brothers put off in their sailing cutter to tack about the bay. They were alone together, and seemed on the best of terms. The afternoon closed in squally and rough, and the boat and its occupants were lost to view in the mist. Darkness came on, and still the Dorriens did not return. The seafaring people at Minchkil began to get anxious, and talked of going in search, but there was a high sea running and every sign of a rising gale;