There was a dreadful silence after Tristram Bird had spoken, and the men and women of Padstow Town gazed at each other, troubled and sad, knowing that what the youth, who had been bewitched by the Mermaid's face, had said was true, for there below them was the great bar of sand dividing the outer harbour from the inner, and on it lay the masts and spars of broken ships and the lifeless bodies of the drowned. The wind was quiet, but the sea was still breaking and roaring on the back of the Doombar, and as the waves thundered and broke, a wailing cry sounded forth, like the wail that Tristram heard when the Mermaid disappeared under the water; it sounded like the distressful cry of a woman bewailing her dead, and all who heard shivered and shook, and both old and young looked down on the Doombar with dread in their eyes, but they saw nothing but the dead bodies of the sailors and their broken ships. 'It is the Mermaid's wraith,' cried an old Granfer man, leaning against the grey walls of the ancient chapel, 'and she is wailing the wail of the drowned; and, mark my words, everyone,' letting his eyes wander from one face to another, 'each time a ship is caught on this dreadful bar and lives are lost--as lost they will be--the Mermaid's wraith will bewail the drowned.' And it came to pass as the old man said, and whenever vessels are wrecked on that fateful bar of sand lying across the mouth of Padstow Harbour and men are drowned, it is told that the Mermaid's distressful cry is still heard bewailing the poor dead sailors. THE LITTLE CAKE-BIRD On the Tregoss Moors, where in the long-ago King Arthur and his Noble Knights went a-hunting, was a quaint old thatched cottage built of moorstone, and in it lived an old woman called Tamsin Tredinnick and her little grand-daughter Phillida; it stood between Castle-an-Dinas--a great camp-crowned hill--and the far-famed Roche Rocks. It possessed only one room, which, fortunately, was fairly large, for it had to contain most of old Tamsin's possessions, including a low wooden bedstead, an old oak dresser, a hutch for the grail--a coarse flour of which she made bread for herself and little Phillida--and her spinning-wheel. At the side of the cottage was a small linhey, or outhouse, the door of which the old woman always kept open in inclement weather that the wild creatures of the moors might take shelter from the cold and from the storms that swept over the great exposed moorland spaces.