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                             NEVERMORE

                        BY ROLF BOLDREWOOD

AUTHOR OF 'ROBBERY UNDER ARMS,' 'THE SQUATTER'S DREAM,' 'THE MINER'S
RIGHT,' ETC.

    London
    MACMILLAN AND CO.
    AND NEW YORK
    1892

    _All rights reserved_

    _First Edition 1892
    Second Edition July and December 1892_




CHAPTER I


'Then, by Heaven! I'll leave the country. I won't stop here to be
bullied for doing what scores of other fellows have done and nothing
thought about it. It's unjust, it's intolerable--'

Thus spoke impetuous Youth.

'I should say something would depend upon the family tradition of the
"other fellows" to whom you refer. In ours gambling debts and shady
transactions with turf-robbers happen to be forbidden luxuries.'

Thus spoke philosophic Age, calm, cynical, unsparing.

No power of divination was needed to decide that the speakers were
father and son; no prophet to discover, on one side, sullen defiance
following a course of reckless folly; on the other, wounded family pride
and long-nursed consuming wrath.

As the rebellious son stood up and faced his sire, it was curious to
mark the similarity of the inherited lineaments brought out more clearly
in his moments of rage and defiance.

Both men were strong and sinewy, dark in complexion, and bearing the
ineffaceable impress of gentle nurture, leisure, and assured position.
The younger man was the taller, and of a frame which, when fully
developed, promised unusual strength and activity. More often than the
converse, does it obtain that the son, in outward appearance or mental
constitution, reproduces his mother's attributes or those of her male
relatives; the daughter, in complemental ratio, inheriting the paternal
traits. But in this case Nature had strongly adhered to the
old-established formula 'like father like son,' for whoso looked on
Mervyn Trevanion, of Wychwood--the head of one of the oldest families in
Cornwall--could not doubt for one moment that Launcelot Trevanion was
his son.

If all other features had been amissing or impaired, the eyes alone,
which contributed the most striking and peculiar features in both faces,
would have been sufficient to establish the relationship, not only
because they were, in both faces, identical in colour and form, but
because of the strange, almost unnatural lustre which glowed in them in
that moment of excitement; neither large nor especially bright, they
were scarcely remarkable under ordinary circumstances--of the darkest
gray in colour and deeply-set under thick and overhanging eyebrows. A
stranger might well overlook them, but, when turned suddenly in anger or
surprise, a steady searching light commenced to glow in them which was
discomposing, if not alarming. Even in a quick glance such as mere
badinage might provoke, they were strange and weird of regard. Lighted
up by the deeper passions, those who had been in the position to witness
their effect spoke of it as unearthly and, in a sense, appalling.

In the family portraits, which for centuries had adorned the walls of
the long gallery in Wychwood, the same feature could be distinctly
traced. There was a legend, indeed, of the 'wicked' squire--one of the
hard-drinking, duelling, dicing, dare-devils of the second Charles'
day--who had so terrified his young wife--a gentle girl whose wealth had
been the fatal attraction in the alliance--that she had fallen down
before him in a fit, and never afterwards recovered health or reason.

All through Cornwall and the neighbouring counties they were known as
the 'Trevanion eyes.' There was a hint of demoniacal possession in the
first ancestor, who had brought them into the family from abroad, and a
legendary compact with the Enemy of mankind, from whom the fiendish
glare had been derived. Since the birth of the first Mervyn, 'the wicked
squire,' the eldest son had inherited the same peculiar regard as
regularly as to him had come the estate and most enviable rent-roll.

A saying had long been current among the county people that when the
lands went to a younger son, this remarkable and, as they held, unlucky
feature would be removed from the family of Trevanion as suddenly as it
had entered it. But up to this time, no break in the succession, _de
male en male_, had ever occurred.

Launcelot Trevanion (mostly called Lance) was the eldest son
of this ancient house. There were two younger boys--Arthur and
