Lying Prophets

Lying Prophets, by Eden
Phillpotts

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Title: Lying Prophets
Author: Eden Phillpotts

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LYING PROPHETS
A NOVEL
BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS
Author of "Down Dartmoor Way," "Some Everyday Folks" "The End of
a Life," etc.
"'Tis like this: your man did take plain Nature for God, an' he did talk
fulishness 'bout finding Him in the scent o' flowers, the hum o' bees an'
sichlike. Mayhap Nature's a gude working God for a selfish man but
she ed'n wan for a maid, as you knaws by now. Then your faither--his
God do sit everlastingly alongside hell-mouth, an' do laugh an' girn to
see all the world a walkin' in, same as the beasts walked in the Ark.
Theer's another picksher of a God for 'e; but mark this, gal, they be
lying prophets--lying prophets both!"--Book II., Chapter XI.

BOOK ONE

ART
CHAPTER ONE
NEWLYN
Away beyond the village stands a white cottage with the sea lapping at
low cliffs beneath it. Plum and apple orchards slope upward behind this
building, and already, upon the former trees, there trembles a snowy
gauze where blossom buds are breaking. Higher yet, dark plowed fields,
with hedges whereon grow straight elms, cover the undulations of a
great hill even to its windy crest, and below, at the water line, lies
Newlyn--a village of gray stone and blue, with slate roofs now shining
silver-bright under morning sunlight and easterly wind. Smoke softens
every outline; red-brick walls and tanned sails bring warmth and color
through the blue vapor of many chimneys; a sun-flash glitters at this
point and that, denoting here a conservatory, there a studio. Enter this
hive and you shall find a network of narrow stone streets; a flutter of
flannel underwear, or blue stockings, and tawny garments drying upon
lines; little windows, some with rows of oranges and ginger-beer
bottles in them; little shops; little doors, at which cluster little children
and many cats, the latter mostly tortoise-shell and white. Infants watch
their elders playing marbles in the roadway, and the cats stretch lazy
bodies on the mats, made of old fishing-net, which lie at every cottage
door. Newlyn stands on slight elevations above the sea level, and at one
point the road bends downward, breaks and fringes the tide, leading
among broken iron, rusty anchors, and dismantled fishing-boats, past
an ancient buoy whose sides now serve the purposes of advertisement
and tell of prayer-meetings, cheap tea, and so forth. Hard by, the
mighty blocks of the old breakwater stand, their fabric dating from the
reign of James I., and taking the place of one still older. But the old
breakwater is no more than a rialto for ancient gossips now; and far
beyond it new piers stretch encircling arms of granite round a new
harbor, southward of which the lighthouse stands and winks his
sleepless golden eye from dusk to dawn. Within this harbor, when the
fishing fleet is at home, lie jungles of stout masts, row upon row, with
here and there a sail, carrying on the color of the plowed fields above

the village, and elsewhere, scraps of flaming bunting flashing like
flowers in a reed bed. Behind the masts, along the barbican, the
cottages stand close and thick, then clamber and straggle up the
acclivities behind, decreasing in their numbers as they ascend. Smoke
trails inland on the wind--black as a thin crepe veil, from the funnel of a
coal "tramp" about to leave the harbor, blue from the dry wood burning
on a