They were driving along the avenue by this time, the stout chestnut cob going gaily in the fresh morning air--Mr. Hamleigh sitting face to face with Christabel as she drove. What a fair face it was in the clear light of day! How pure and delicate every tone, from the whiteness of the lily to the bloom of the wild rose! How innocent the expression of the large liquid eyes, which seemed to smile at him as he talked! He had known so many pretty women--his memory was like a gallery of beautiful faces; but he could recall no face so completely innocent, so divinely young. "It is the youthfulness of an unsullied mind," he said to himself; "I have known plenty of girls as young in years, but not one perfectly pure from the taint of worldliness and vanity. The trail of the serpent was over them all!" They drove down hill into Boscastle, and then straightway began to ascend still steeper hills upon the other side of the harbour. "You ought to throw a viaduct across the valley," said Mr. Hamleigh--"something like Brunel's bridge at Saltash; but perhaps you have hardly traffic enough to make it pay." They went winding up the new road to Trevena, avoiding the village street, and leaving the Church of the Silent Tower on its windy height on their right hand. The wide Atlantic lay far below them on the other side of those green fields which bordered the road; the air they breathed was keen with the soft breath of the sea. But autumn had hardly plucked a leaf from the low storm-beaten trees, or a flower from the tall hedgerows, where the red blossom of the Ragged Robin mixed with the pale gold of the hawk-weed, and the fainter yellow of the wild cistus. The ferns had hardly begun to wither, and Angus Hamleigh, whose last experiences had been among the stone walls of Aberdeenshire, wondered at the luxuriance of this western world, where the banks were built up and fortified with boulders of marble-veined spar. They drove through the village of Trevalga, in which there is never an inn or public-house of any kind--not even a cottage licensed for the sale of beer. There was the wheelwright, carpenter, builder, Jack-of-all-trades, with his shed and his yard--the blacksmith, with his forge going merrily--village school--steam threshing-machine at work--church--chapel; but never a drop of beer--and yet the people at Trevalga are healthy, and industrious, and decently clad, and altogether comfortable looking. "Some day we will take you to call at the Rectory," said Christabel, pointing skywards with her whip. "Do you mean that the Rector has gone to Heaven?" asked Angus, looking up into the distant blue; "or is there any earthly habitation higher than the road on which we are driving." "Didn't you see the end of the lane, just now?" asked Christabel, laughing; "it is rather steep--an uphill walk all the way; but the views are lovely."