"devour No-man the last." Materials for the
pavement and for closing up the inner walls
were scattered abundantly around; nay, the
very furniture for that mountain-home was at
once readv for his hand; for, as Agag, king of
the Amalekites, had his vaunted iron bed, so did
Gumb frame and hew for himself and Florence,
his wife, table and seat and a bedstead of native
stone. Then he smoothed and shot into a
groove a thick and heavy door, so that, closed
like an eastern sepulchre, it demanded no
common strength to roll away the stone. When
all had been prepared, the bridegroom and the
bride met at a distant church; the simple
wedding feast was held at her father's house;
and that night the husband led the maiden of
his vows, the bride of his youth, to their wedding
rock! If he had known the ode, he might have
chanted, in Horatian verse, that day, "Nune
scio quid sit amor, duris in cotibus ilium."
"Now know I what true love is; in rugged dens
he dwells."

Here the wedded pair dwelt in peace long
and happy years, mingling the imagery of old
romance with the sterner duties of practical
life. As a far-famed hewer of stone, the skill
and energy of this singular man never lacked
employ, nor failed to supply the necessities of
his moorland abode. Like a patriarch in his
tent amid the solitudes of Syria, he was his
own king, prophet, and priest. He paid neither
rent, nor taxes, nor tithe. When children were
born to him, he exercised unwittingly the power
of lay-baptism which was granted in the primitive
church to the inhabitants of a wilderness,
afar from the ministry of the priesthood, and
his wife was content to be "churched" by her
own cherished husband, among the altars of
unhewn stone that surrounded their solitary
cell. Who shall say that this simple worship
of the father and the mother, with their household,
amid their paradise of hills, was not as
sweet, with the balsam of the soul, as the
incense-breathing psalm of the cathedral choir?
Rightly or wrongly, it is known that Daniel
entertained an infinite contempt for "the
parsons," whose territories bordered on the
moor. Not one of them, it was his wont to
aver, could cross the asses' bridge of his favourite
Euclid, a feat he had himself accomplished
in very early youth; nor could the
most learned among them all unravel the
mysteries of his chosen companions, the wandering
stars, that travelled over Carradon every night.
Long and frequent were his vigils for astronomical
researches and delight. To this day the
traveller will encounter on the face of some
solitary rock a mathematical diagram, carefully
carved by some chisel and hand unknown; and
while speculation has often been rife as to the
Druidical origin of the mystic figure, or the
scientific knowledge of the early Kelts, the
local antiquary is aware that these are the
simple records of the patient studies of Daniel
Gumb.

When the writer of this article visited that
neighbourhood in 183- , there still survived
reliques and remembrances of the singular
man. There were a few written fragments of
his thoughts and studies still treasured up in
the existing families of himself and his wife.
Here is a transcript: "Mr. Cookworthy told
me, when I saw him last, that astronomers in
foreign parts, and our great man Sir Isaac here
at home, had thought that the planets were so
vast, and so like our earth in their ways, that
they might have been inhabited by men; but
he said, "their elements and atmosphere are
thought to be unfit for human life and breath.
But surely God would not have so wasted his
worlds as to have made such great bright
masses of his creation to roll along all barren,
as it were, like desert places of light in the
sky. There must be people of some kind there:
how I should like to see them, and to go there
when I die!" Another entry on the same leaf:
"Florence asked me to-day if I thought that
our souls, after we are dead, would know the
stars and other wise things better than we can
now. And I answered her, Yes; and if I
could, that is, if I was allowed to, the first thing
I would try should be to square the circle true,
and then, if I could, I would mark it and work
it out somewhere hereabouts on a flat rock, that
my son might find it there, and so make his
fortune and be a great man. N.B. Florence
asked me to write this down." On a thick
sheet of pasteboard, with a ground-plan of a
building on the other side, he had written:
"January 16, 1756. A terrible storm last
night. Thunder and lightning and hail, with
a tempest of wind. Saw several dead sheep on
the moor. Shipwrecks, no doubt, at sea. A
thought came into my mind, why should such
harm be allowed to be done? I read some
reasons once in a book that Mr. Cookworthy
lent me, called The Origin of Evil; but I could
not understand a word of it. My notion is,
that when evil somehow came into the world,
God did not destroy it at once, because He is
so almighty that He let it go on, to make manifest
His power and majesty; and so He rules
over all evil things, and turns them into good
at the last. N.B. The devil is called in the
Bible the Prince of the Powers of the Air: so
he may be, but he must obey his Master. The
poor wretch is but a slave after all!" On the
fly leaves of an old account book the following
strange statement appears: "June 23, 1764.
Today, at bright noon, as I was at my work
upon the moor, I looked up, and saw all at
once a stranger standing on the turf, just above
my block. He was dressed like an old picture
that I remember in the windows of St. Neot's
church, in a long brown garment, with a girdle;
and his head was uncovered and grizzled with
long hair. He spoke to me, and he said, in a low,
clear voice, 'Daniel, that work is hard!' I
wondered that he should know my name, and I
answered, ' Yes, sir; but I am used to it, and don't
mind it, for the sake of the faces at home.' Then
he said, sounding his words like a psalm, 'Man
goeth forth to his work and to his labour until
the evening; when will it be night with Daniel