The Tree of Knowledge Part 85

Everything was changed.

Never, in all his solitary youth, in all the remote wanderings of the _Swan_, not even when he laid to rest his tutor, the one friend of his childhood, had he felt the terror of loneliness as he felt it now. It was grey dawn when he came down to the beach. Muller, who was on the look-out, saw the misty figure of his master standing upon the sh.o.r.e, and at once launched the gig and took him on board.

With the gradual dawn, a faint breeze sprang up and lifted the mist that hung over the sea.

It filled the _Swan's_ white wings as it rose and freshened, and just as the sun rose, she sailed out of the bay, her master, silent and pallid, standing on the deck, watching the dim roof which covered his perished hopes.

There lay the Lower House, snug in the valley. He sent an unspoken farewell to the good Henry, and to the happy husband and wife who were probably just awaking to a fresh day of love and hope and mutual help.

The warm sun-rays gilded Percivale's bright head, and glorified the still features as he stood. Old Muller looked anxiously at him.

Something was wrong, he guessed, and yet--oh, the joy to be putting to sea again as in old days, free and untrammelled by the fashionable wife or the sick maid!

The old man's spirit leaped up with the red sun. His blood rose, his eye kindled.

The bonnie yacht bounded over the freshening waves, the day laughed broadly over the sea, and the crew, animated by Muller's delight, sang their _Volkslieder_ as they went about their work.

That night, the last sultry heat of autumn burst in a storm more violent than Edge Combe had known for half a century. The first of the equinoctial gales raged from the south west, thundering against the battlemented crags of Cornwall, shrieking up the Devonshire valleys.

More than one large ship went to pieces on the wild coast; and fragments of wrecks were washed ash.o.r.e at Brent and in Edge Bay.

But no trace of the _Swan_ or of any of those on board of her was ever carried by the relentless ocean within reach of the hearts that ached and longed for tidings of her fate. She had vanished as she had first appeared, mysteriously, in a tempest.

To the fisher-folk there seemed to be something supernatural alike in her arrival and her disappearance.

For months they cherished among themselves the belief that she would return one day--that somewhere, in some distant port, or in far sunny seas she was gliding like a big white bird along her mysterious course.

They argued that some trace of her must have come ash.o.r.e somewhere--she was cruising so near the coast, some fragment of her must have been washed up at some point--some dead sailor have been floated in on the tide wearing the white _Swan_ worked on his jersey, to be a silent witness of the destruction of the yacht.

But no! No news, no sign, no trace of her end was ever forthcoming. She seemed to have melted away like a mythical ship into the regions of legend.

And it has now become a tradition in the Combe that if ever the day should come when some wrong done there shall cry aloud for justice, and there is none to help, that, on that day, will be seen the white _Swan_ sailing into the bay in the sunshine, and her owner standing on her deck like a hero of ancient story, as he stood when first he approached the Valley of Avilion ready to champion the Truth.

THE END.