The Eastern bride of the lord of Pengersick was kind and gentle to all with whom she had to do, and the lord himself, it was said, was generous and helpful to all around; but he made no friendships nor held intercourse with those of his own degree. The returned lord was, in fact, a lonely and solitary man, riding forth alone and spending long hours poring over strange books. His chamber, it is said, was full of strange instruments, liquids and retorts, and as he laboured with these in solitude the castle would be filled with strange odours, which suggested the bottomless pit. At times as the night wind howled round the turrets of the castle his voice might be heard in the intervals of the blast summoning spirits from the unseen world, and as they came in clouds obedient to his bidding their voices were heard above the beating of the waves on the rocks beneath and the howling of the blast in the turrets. He was regarded by the people as a white witch, whilst the witch of Fraddam was a black witch and his antithesis. His spells were more powerful than hers, and he at last drove her to sea in a coffin from Germoe Churchyard, in which, as in a canoe, she could be seen on stormy nights riding over the waves round Pengersick Head, her wild, shrill shrieks of unholy laughter being carried on the storm-wind. The beautiful lady of Pengersick rarely ventured from the castle; and in summer time, it was said, she would sit for hours with her casement open to the sea, like a true Eastern lady, singing to the accompaniment of her harp the softest, sweetest songs. At times fits of unutterable gloom would settle down on the soul of her lord, and as David with his harp lifted the darkness from the soul of Saul, so this fair lady would soothe to rest the weary spirit of her lord. Years drifted on, bringing but little change, till one day there came a swarthy stranger of gloomy and forbidding mien to Marazion, where he took up his abode. The fishermen would see him sometimes as the night closed in sitting on the rocks overhanging the sea round Pengersick; or cottars would see him in the twilight wandering over the uplands. The lord of Pengersick went no more forth abroad, and a nameless dread seemed to have settled down on him and his lady. At last in the blackness of one awful night, in the midst of a terrible tempest that had risen up out of the Atlantic, a blaze of light shot up from the turrets of Pengersick Castle; and in the morning a blackened heap of ruins alone marked the spot where it had stood, and the lord of Pengersick and his lady, and their Eastern servants and his beautiful steed, and the mysterious stranger of dark and awful mien were never heard of more.