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In those days Dosmare was supposed to be bottomless a reputation which it has since destroyed by drying in hot summers. For long years Tregeagle toiled at his hopeless task. If he ceased from his labour for a moment he would be at the mercy of the devils. One night, after many years of fruitless toil, there came a terrific storm, with thunder and earthquake.

Built into the rocks is a little chapel, and beneath it is the hermit's cell. This seems to have been occupied continuously down to the Reformation, and various stories are told of the tenants. There was once a steward under the Duchy named Tregeagle. He was a peculiarly nefarious agent, and very hard upon the tenants.

Porthcurnow, with its fine shore and grand seas, and its memories of Tregeagle, whose doom is to sweep the sands from Porthcurnow to the farther side of Land's End, has in some sense had its romance knocked out of it by the establishment of the Eastern Telegraph Company, and the presence of about a hundred keen, sport-loving telegraphists.

A harbour of refuge would be a great blessing, but not all the Government commissions in the world could keep the sand out, or make the harbour deep enough to swim a frigate, unless the parsons can find out the way to take up the merry-maid's curse." But there is another tradition attaching to the Bar. This is the country of Tregeagle he lies buried at St.

Of course, it cannot be done; the full force of the Atlantic drives around Land's End, and the sands are driven backward again and again. But he is safe from the immediate attack of the fiends, and he is out of the way of the countryfolk. His cries are lost in the crash of the seas that dominate that desolate shore, and the fishermen have given up thinking about Tregeagle.

Breock is distant nearly a mile from Wadebridge, on the western side of the river, and is perhaps still more delightful in its position; it is noteworthy for its monuments, which, however, have been much displaced. It is here that the remains of Tregeagle lie entombed; his spirit, if we may credit tradition, is otherwise engaged. St.

The hermit found it a great affliction, for the population of the district was kept away by the unpleasantness of Tregeagle's presence. At last two other clergy came to his assistance, and Tregeagle was led away to the coast at Padstow. His new task was to make ropes of sand one of the familiar penances of such traditions. He could not do it; it was worse than draining Dosmare.

In sheer horror and despair Tregeagle fled. Immediately the demons were on his track, chasing him so closely that he could not stay to dip his limpet-shell in the foaming water. Feeling that they were upon him, he rose with a cry of anguish, and fled across the pool, thus gaining a temporary advantage, for spirits of evil cannot cross water.

It would seem that Tregeagle was a landowner in the neighbourhood of Bodmin, holding the Trevorder estate; but he won his chief notoriety as steward on the lands of the Robartes family, at Lanhydrock. There is still a room in the Lanhydrock mansion known as Tregeagle's.

There was a heritage of trouble in connection with the Lanhydrock estate, and the defendant in one particular case sorely needed the witness of Tregeagle himself, to settle a disputed point. By some means he managed to procure it; the clergy provided a safe-conduct, and the figure of the dead Tregeagle was led into the witness-box.