There is a legend accounting for this petrified couple. It seems that the vicar of a neighbouring parish had business with his bishop at the Palace of Exeter. He set out late in the afternoon, on horseback, for the city, accompanied by the parish clerk, and, a storm coming on, they promptly lost their way in the mist and rain; the incessant flashes of lightning, brilliant as they were, would not have sufficed for them to regain their road, even had their horses been less terrified. The vicar was speedily drenched to the skin. “Damme,” says he, “there’s not a soul at hand of whom to inquire our way in this misbegotten wilderness. I’d take the devil himself for a guide if he were here.”

No sooner had the vicar uttered this profane sentiment, than they heard, above the howling of the storm, the clattering sound of a horse’s hoofs, and a prolonged flash of lightning showed them an old gentleman, clad in sombre garments, cantering past on his mare. The clerk hailed him, and he drew rein.

“I suspect, sir,” said he, addressing himself to the vicar, “you have lost your way. Can I be of any service to you? If so, pray command me, for it is ill wandering abroad on such a wild night.”

“Sir,” said the vicar, who was, indeed, no mealy-mouthed man, for all his holy office, “we have lost our road, and are wet through,” adding, “this is the most damnable night that ever I have had the ill fortune to travel in.”

“You may well say that,” rejoined the old gentleman briskly, with a complacent smile; “but allow me to put you in the right way.”

In scarcely five minutes from their encounter, the party drew rein before a cosy inn. The vicar, the clerk, and their guide dismounted, and sending their riding cloaks to the kitchen fire to dry, sat down to a bowl of punch. They caroused until a late hour, while the storm raged unceasingly without.

At length the vicar rose, saying, “Storm or no storm, he must be going, for he had important business that demanded his presence at Exeter early the following morning.”

“Well,” said the old gentleman, “if you are so resolved, I will accompany you, for I make no doubt that without my company you would soon go astray again. Fortunately my way runs with your own.”

The three set out again, and rode some distance, until they heard the roar of the sea even above the shrieking of the gale, and felt the flecks of sea-foam upon their cheeks.

“Man,” said the vicar, in a rage, as a more than usually vivid flash of lightning showed them to be upon the verge of a tall cliff, “do you know what you are doing—bringing us to these fearful rocks?”

“Yes,” replied the stranger, “this is my road,” and he laid his hand upon the vicar’s shoulder.

“Take your hand off,” yelled the vicar, “it’s devilish hot,” as indeed it must have been, for where the old man’s hand had been placed there rose up a thin curl of smoke from scorched cloth.

“Hot is it?” inquired the old gentleman mildly, “perhaps I am slightly feverish.”

But the vicar had perceived into what terrible company he had fallen, and shouting to the clerk, he lashed his horse furiously. But, no matter how hard he or the clerk plied their whips, not an inch would the horses budge. The winds changed into demoniacal shouts; troops of fiends, warlocks, and witches gathered round, shrieking, as the pair sank down into the face of the cliff, and a horrid peal of mocking laughter was the last thing they heard on earth.

The next morning, when the farmer’s men came down to the sands with their carts for the seaweed thrown up by the storm over night, they were astonished at beholding a face in the cliff’s overhead, and, standing out in the sea, crowned with screaming cormorants, and buffeted by the heavy waves, a tall pillar of rock which had not been there before.

I take this moving story as a warning to parish clubs to be careful in the selection of their vicars.