" Merle and I always
call it 'The Inchcape Bell.' Oh, you know the story?
'The worthy abbot of Aberbrothock
Had fixed that bell on the Inchcape rock.
On a buoy in the storm it floated and swung,
And over the waves its warning rung.'
Then the pirate, Sir Ralph the Rover, goes and cuts it off, just out of
spite, and sails away. Years afterwards his ship comes back to Scotland,
and there's a thick fog, and he's wrecked on the very Inchcape rock from
which he stole the warning bell.
'Sir Ralph the Rover tore his hair;
He cursed himself in his wild despair.
The waves poured in on every side,
And the vessel sank beneath the tide.'"
"Serve him right too! It was a sneaking rag to play!" commented Merle.
"The bell makes me think of an old hermitage," said Romola. "I expect to
see a monk walking along, telling his beads. Who was St. Morval? Didn't
he have a little chapel on the cliffs here?"
"Romola always thinks of the Middle Ages," laughed Beata. "That's because
she poses so much for Dad's pictures.
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