the most part, on the bridge, or causeway leading to the Castle, into which they were capable of sending salvos of round-shot, as in fact they had often done a few years before. The rest of the cemetery was strongly walled, though without guns. To the north of the Church ran narrow streets, sloping gently upward from the seaside. The houses of these streets were built of the local granite, hewn and hammered flat and without projection or decoration, and with no other relief but what was afforded by small rectangular lattice-windows. They were usually of two storeys, crowned by high-pitched thatched roofs, with here and there a tiny dormer window. Some were shops or taverns, among which were interspersed the residences of the burgesses and the town houses of the rural gentry. Fronted by miry roadway, or at best an occasional strip of rough boulder pavement, over which wheeled carriages could rarely pass, these lines of houses had no form or comeliness, save what might be due to an occasional bit of small flower-garden before the few that were large and inhabited by persons in comparatively easy circumstances. Farther back the ground rose more rapidly and showed some scattered suburban houses. The "Town Hill" to the east, the "Gallows Hill" to the west, completed the amphitheatre. Up the main hollow ran a road leading due north to the Manor and Church of Trinity parish in the interior of the island, and terminating on the north coast in Boulay Bay, a fine natural harbour, which was the nearest point of embarkation for England. The whole island, scarcely less than the town, bore an appearance of defence, almost of inaccessibility; the manors, farm houses, and even many of the fields, being surrounded by granite walls, and capable of arresting the progress of an invader, unless in great force. Each of the twelve parish churches contained the arsenal of the local militia; and all things betokened a hardy population, ready to do battle against all intruders. The titular Governor, Lord Jermyn, was an absentee, following the fortunes of the widowed Queen, Henrietta Maria, in France. The actual administration, both civil and military, was in the hands of a naval officer of experience, Sir George Carteret, or de Carteret, cousin and brother-in-law to the Seigneur of S. Owen, a large manor on the western side of the island. This family, distinguished in island history ever since it abandoned its fief of Carteret on the coast of Normandy to follow the fortunes of John Lackland, when the Duchy was confiscated by Philip Augustus, was by far the most powerful in the island. Its only possible rival, the house of Lempriere, of Maufant, had espoused warmly the cause of the Parliament, and had consequently met with reverses when the Carterets, who were royalist, effected the revolution mentioned in our Prologue.