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Updated: June 2, 2025
He had a thin face with a sharp nose that looked as if it would peck you, and grey eyes that could pierce a millstone if there was a guinea on the far side of it. His hair, for he wore his own, had been red, though it was now grizzled; and the colour of it was set down in Moonfleet to his being a Scotchman, for we thought all Scotchmen were red-headed.
It is heathenish rhyme that has come down out of other and worse times; for though I do not say but that a wreck on Moonfleet beach was looked upon sometimes as little short of a godsend, yet I hope none of us were so wicked as to wish a vessel to be wrecked that we might share in the plunder.
He had agreed more readily than I looked for, and so I pushed the matter, saying: 'Nay, master, grant me leave to go yet a little farther afield. You know that I was born in Moonfleet, and have been bred there all my life, and love the trees and stream and very stones of it. And I have set my heart on seeing it once more before we leave these parts for good and all.
This church is as large as any other I have seen, and divided into two parts with a stone screen across the middle. Perhaps Moonfleet was once a large place, and then likely enough there were people to fill such a church, but never since I knew it did anyone worship in that part called the nave.
The last time I could remember hearing that roar was when I lay, as a boy, one summer's night 'twixt sleep and waking, in the little whitewashed bedroom at my aunt's; and I wondered now if any sat before their inland hearths this night, and hearing that far distant roar, would throw another log on the fire, and thank God they were not fighting for their lives in Moonfleet Bay.
Whereas it hath been humbly represented to the King that on Friday, the night of the 16th of April last, THOMAS MASKEW, a Justice of the Peace, was most inhumanly murdered at Hoar Head, a lone place in the Parish of Chaldron, in the County of Dorset, by one ELZEVIR BLOCK and one JOHN TRENCHARD, both of the Parish of Moonfleet, in the aforesaid County: His Majesty, for the better discovering and bringing to Justice these Persons, is pleased to promise His Most Gracious PARDON to any of the Persons concerned therein, except the Persons who actually committed the said Murder; and, as a further Encouragement, a REWARD OF FIFTY POUNDS to any Person who shall furnish such INFORMATION as shall lead to the APPREHENSION of the said ELZEVIR BLOCK, and a REWARD of TWENTY POUNDS to any Person who shall furnish such INFORMATION as shall lead to the APPREHENSION of the said JOHN TRENCHARD. Such INFORMATION to be given to ME, or to the GOVERNOUR of His MAJESTY'S GAOL in Dorchester.
One evening in March, when the days were lengthening fast, there came a messenger from Dorchester, and brought printed notices for fixing to the shutters of the Why Not? and to the church door, which said that in a week's time the bailiff of the duchy of Cornwall would visit Moonfleet. This bailiff was an important person, and his visits stood as events in village history.
Thus as the land dried after the floods there began to open cracks in the heavy clay soil on which Moonfleet is built, such as are usually only seen with us in the height of summer. There were cracks by the side of the path in the sea-meadows between the village and the church, and cracks in the churchyard itself, and one running right up to this very tomb.
Then he took out a Common Prayer reading the Commendamus over the dead, and giving me spiritual comfort, and lastly, he fell to talking about the past. From him I learnt something of what had happened while I was away, though for that matter nothing had happened at all, except a few deaths, for that is the only sort of change for which we look in Moonfleet.
'What have you there? she said; but I did not tell her, fearing to call up bitter memories. We stood hand in hand again, as we had done in the morning, and she said: 'John, you will wander on the sea, and may perhaps put into Moonfleet. Though you have not been here of late, I have kept a candle burning at the window every night, as in the past.
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