Even Derrick's old tin-case--lest, if found, it should lead to a trace or suspicion of where the papers had gone--he carefully, and with a legal caution worthy of his satellite the solicitor, beat out of all shape with his heel and threw into the fire, heaping the coals upon it. This was perhaps needless in Downie Trevelyan, that smooth, smug, closely shaven, and white-shirted lawyer-lord, that man of legal facts and stern truths, so abstemious, temperate, and regular in his habits and attendance at church, and to all the outward tokens of worldly rectitude. Do what he might, none could, would, or dare believe evil of him! Yet, after the excitement he had undergone, there were moments when he felt but partially satisfied with himself, till force of habit resumed its sway--moments when he remained sunk in thought, with his eyes fixed on that portion of the sea and sky where the sun had set, while the sombre twilight deepened around, and strange shadows were cast by the oriels across the library floor. "For what have I done this thing?" thought he; "for my children of course, rather than for myself. I would that I had not been tempted, for nothing on earth remains for ever--nothing!" And as he muttered thus, his eyes rested on the distant Isles of Scilly that loomed like dark purple spots in the golden sea, which yet weltered in the ruddy glory of the sun that had set, and he reflected, he knew not why, for it was not Downie's wont, on the mutability of all human things and wishes, of the change that inexorable Time for ever brought about, and of the futility of all that man might attempt to do in the hope of perpetuity; for did not even the mighty sea and firm land change places in the fulness of years! "Where now was all the land tradition named as Lyonesse of old--the vast tract which stretched from the eastern shore of Mount's Bay, even to what are now the Isles of Scilly, on which his dreamy eyes were fixed--the land where once, in story and in verse we are told, "That all day long the noise of battle rolled Among the mountains by the winter sea; Until king Arthur's Table, man by man, Had fall'n in Lyonesse about their lord." There, where now he saw the sea rolling between the rocky isles and the Land's End, were once green waving woods and verdant meadows, lands that were arable, mills whose busy wheels revolved in streams now passed away, and one hundred-and-forty parish churches, whose bells summoned the people to prayer, but which are all now--if we are to believe William of Worcester--submerged by the encroaching sea; yet whether gradually, or by one mighty throe of nature, on that day when the first of the line of Trevelyan swain his wonderful horse from the north-western isle, back to the rent and riven land, we know not, but so the story runs. From, these day-dreams, such as he was seldom used to indulge in, Downie's mind rapidly reverted to practical considerations.