"And settle down to our reading party," he replied, with a sudden gleam in his narrow eyes. "I have the Greek texts of Plato's 'Republic' and the 'Meno' in my portmanteau; it is wise to pay attention to details! We shall, then, meet at dinner this evening, and I expect that your news will be of great importance. With your permission, I shall take honourable Thumbwood with me. He will be useful." After breakfast, with some sandwiches and a flask, I set out, passing down the main street of the far western town, and by the last station in England, till I found myself mounting a winding road which led upwards through a suburb towards the moorlands. The air was heavy with the perfume of innumerable flowers. Tall palm-trees grew in the gardens of old granite houses, a sub-tropical flora flourished everywhere, and it was difficult to believe that one was in England. The hedges were luxuriant with ferns that grow in hot-houses elsewhere, Royal Osmunda and Maidenhair, and every moment the road grew steeper. If you look at the map of Cornwall you will see that the extremity of the county forms a sort of peninsula. Penzance is on the south, and faces the English Channel on the south. My back was now turned to this, and I was walking due north, towards my objective, the vast and little known "Hinterland" of mountainous moor and savage coast which lies between the Channel and the Atlantic. As I went, the warmth and colour, the riot of Nature all round, seemed as unreal as a dream. It brought no ease or healing to my soul. Deep, deep down, though controlled and prisoned by the will, an unending agony was lying. I'm not going to insist upon this, or often obtrude it in my story. But you must not think that, until the very end, I knew a moment's peace. My dear love and her awful fate were ever before me, and all the sights and sounds of Nature in this western paradise breathed nothing but her name. ... At last the habitations of man grew fewer. Gardens gave place to sloping fields enclosed by "hedges" of stone, and at length a long, level sky-line above and in front showed me that the moors were close. I reached the top at last, and took in a great breath of the sweetest, most exhilarating air that I have ever known. The unfenced road stretched away ahead of me for miles, a long, white ribbon laid upon the heath and yellow gorse. I was on a vast plateau of gold and brown and purple. To the left great hills crowned with rock granite tors cut into the sky, and to the right was the jagged summit of Carne Zerran, three miles away as the crow flies. At its foot, on the edge of mighty cliffs that fell away a sheer three hundred feet to the ocean, I knew lay the little village that I sought.