There is a bedstead of carved oak still in existence at Trevotter--a farm among the midland hills--whereon for long years an unknown stranger slept. None ever knew his nation or name. He occupied a solitary room, and only emerged now and then for a walk in the evening air. An oaken chest of small size contained his personal possessions and gold of foreign coinage, which he paid into the hands of his host with the solemn charge to conceal it until he was gone thence or dead--a request which the simple-hearted people faithfully fulfilled. His linen was beautifully fine, and his garments richly embroidered. After some time he sickened and died, refusing firmly the visits of the local clergyman, and bequeathing to the farmer the contents of his chest. He wrote some words, they said, for his own tombstone, which, however, were not allowed to be engraved, but they were simply these--“H. De R. Equees & Ecsul.” The same sentence was found, after his death, carved on the ledge of his bed, and the letters are, or lately were, still traceable on the mouldering wood. But among the legends of local renown a prominent place has always been allotted to a personage whose name has descended to our times linked to a weird and graphic epithet--“Cruel Coppinger.” There was a ballad in existence within human memory which was founded on the history of this singular man, but of which the first verse[91] only can now be recovered. It runs-- “Will you hear of the Cruel Coppinger? He came from a foreign kind; He was brought to us by the salt-water, He was carried away by the wind.” His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was signalised by a terrific hurricane. The storm came up Channel from the south-west. The shore and the heights were dotted with watchers for wreck--those daring gleaners of the harvest of the sea. It was just such a scene as is sought for in the proverb of the West-- “A savage sea and a shattering wind, The cliffs before, and the gale behind.”