with gold and polished steel. Her stables,
where she kept the sea-horses whom she had
tamed, one for every soul in Ker-is, were of
marble, red, white, or black, according to the
colour of the horses. On these the townspeople
rode out to trade with distant ports, or to
practise the piracy so fashionable in those
times; and so rich had the Ker-is folks become,
that they used to measure out their corn with
silver quart measures. I think—don't you?—
that the picture will suit many a Norse town of
the old time, when the sea was the great highway,
connected the scattered parts of that
maritime empire, and the Vikings (not kings at
all, but sons of the wics or creeks) used to
make their ships look as much like dragons as
possible. Well, riches were too much for these
Ker-is men, just as they were for Sir Balaam.
They drove out all the poor, without even
building a workhouse for them on the shore.
If Christ had come among them dressed in
sackcloth, they would have ordered him off.
Their only church was so neglected that the
very beadle had lost the keys, and the swallows
built safely all round the opening of the door.
Balls, feasts, and stage plays, from morning to
morning again—those were what they spent
their time in. The wonder was, how the good
King Grallon could live in such a place; indeed,
he wouldn't have done so, but that he
happened, after the fashion of the day, to have
given up his own palace to a wonder-working
hermit, who one evening made him and all his
suite a grand feast all out of an inch of fish and
a cup of spring water, when they got to the
hermitage after a hard day's hunting. Let us
hope that Grallon didn't hear all about his
daughter's goings on; for, the story goes, that
when among the lords and gallants, drawn by
the renown of Ker-is as a " place of pleasaunce,"
she saw any one who took her fancy, she would
give him, while they were dancing, a magic
mask, by putting on which he could pass unseen
to her bower built on the very edge of the
sea-dyke. At dawn she would hand him once
again the magic mask; but, this time, as soon
as he had got to the foot of her tower, the
springs would grow tight and choke him, and
then would come out a man in black and throw
him into a dark gulf, whence even now-a-days
the belated peasant hears a wailing which is
the cry of the souls of these unfortunates. One
night there was a grand feast, so full of guests
that their noise roused even poor Grallon in
his neglected corner of the palace. There had
come a strange lord, tall and splendidly dressed,
and with such a thick red beard all over his
face, that little could be seen of him but the
eyes, which flashed like two stars. He paid
his compliments to Dahut in such well-turned
triplets, that not a bard of them all could cope
verses with him; and when he began to talk to
the company, oh! how clever he was in all
kinds of wickedness. The Ker-is people fancied
they had got a good way ahead in that sort of
thing, but it seemed he knew all the bad that
ever had been or ever would be invented on the
earth. At last he taught them a new kind of
dance, which was, in fact, just what the seven
deadly sins are always dancing down in hell.
To set them going, he brought in a dwarf
dressed in goat-skin and playing the bagpipes.
Scarcely had he blown up his chanter, than
Dahut and the rest went off dancing like mad
people; and Red Beard easily managed to steal
from the princess's girdle the silver key of the
sluice in the sea-dyke. King Grallon was
musing over a dying fire, listening to the strange
far-off sounds of merriment, when the door
opened, and, with a glory round his head, a
crosier in his hand, and a cloud of incense
round him, appeared the hermit, to whom he
had given his palace and his capital city.

"Rise, Sir King," said he. " The iniquity of
Dahut is at the full; this night Ker-is shall be
delivered over to perdition."

The king, terrified, called an old servant or
two who were still about him, took his treasure,
mounted his black charger, and galloped
after the saint, who was going through the air
like a feather. At the dyke they saw Red Beard
opening all the sluices, and letting in the sea.
The waves were already licking the sides of the
houses like flames, and the poor sea-horses,
shut up in their stalls, were roaring with fright.
Grallon wanted to rouse the town.

"No," said the saint; "you must be
content to save yourself."

But the father could not leave his daughter.
He rode back, and saw her standing wild with
terror on the palace stairs. She jumped up
behind him, and they dashed along. But soon
the water rose up to the saddle-girths—up, up
above the king's knees.

"Help, help, thou holy man!"

"Throw down that weight of wickedness
which is behind thee, and, by God's grace,
there may yet be time."

But no; Grallon could not cast aside his
daughter. The water still rose, when the saint
touched the fainting girl's shoulder with his
crosier, and off she slid at once into the whelming
waters. On dashed the charger, and just
reached the ground in time; and there, to this
very day, they show you his hoof-marks on the
cliff by Garrec. More than one oak-wood (as
the man who told the story said) has had time to
grow up and to die off since these things were.
But the story lives in the mouths of the peasants
of Cornouailles, and up to the Revolution
a fleet of fishing-boats used to go out once a
year with a priest to say mass over the ruined
city; for there are ruins here sure enough.
French antiquaries talk of their being Roman,
and some enthusiasts even describe more than
one very beautiful tesselated pavement.