The Adventures of Dick Trevanion: A Story of Eighteen Hundred and Four

Produced by Al Haines.

[Illustration: Cover]

[Illustration: "THERE LOOMED OUT OF THE MIST A THREE-MASTED VESSEL." (_See page_ 175.)]

The Adventures Of Dick Trevanion

_A Story Of Eighteen Hundred And Four_

By Herbert Strang

_Illustrated By W. Rainey, R.I._

London Henry Frowde Hodder & Stoughton 1911

Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., LD., Printers, London And Tonbridge.

Contents

Chapter The First The Village And The Towers

Chapter The Second John Trevanion Returns Home

Chapter The Third The Blow Falls

Chapter The Fourth The Cave Of Seals

Chapter The Fifth St. Cuby'S Well

Chapter The Sixth Penwarden Does His Duty

Chapter The Seventh The Breach Widens

Chapter The Eighth A Light On The Moor

Chapter The Ninth Doubledick'S Midnight Guests

Chapter The Tenth The Fire Bell At The Towers

Chapter The Eleventh Sir Bevil Intervenes

Chapter The Twelfth Penwarden Disappears

Chapter The Thirteenth Cross-Currents

Chapter The Fourteenth Doubledick On Duty

Chapter The Fifteenth Across The Pit

Chapter The Sixteenth A Packet For Rusco

Chapter The Seventeenth Petherick Makes A Discovery

Chapter The Eighteenth A High Dive

Chapter The Nineteenth A Bargain With The Revenue

Chapter The Twentieth The Last Deal

Chapter The Twenty-First The Attack On The Towers

Chapter The Twenty-Second John Trevanion In The Toils

Chapter The Twenty-Third The Price Of Treachery

Chapter The Twenty-Fourth Peace And Goodwill

List Of Illustrations

"THERE LOOMED OUT OF THE MIST A THREE-MASTED VESSEL" . . . . . . _Frontispiece, see page_ 175

"'Halt, In The King'S Name!' Cried Mr. Mildmay"

"'Stand!' Cried Dick, Dashing Forward. 'Leave Him, Or We'LL Fire'"

"As The Seal Plunged Into The Sea, Sam Brought His Hammer Down"

"THERE WAS NO ONE TO HEAR THE SHORT DIALOGUE THAT ENSUED AT THE HEAD OF THE WELL"

"Dick Rushed Like A Whirlwind On The Man"

"Petherick'S Head Appeared Through The Hatch"

"Delarousse Rushed Headlong Towards The Approaching Group"

Chapter The First

The Village and the Towers

The village of Polkerran lies snugly in a hollow between cliffs facing the Atlantic, at the head of a little bay that forms a natural harbour. The grey stone cottages rise from the sea-level in tiers, as in an amphitheatre, huddled together, with the narrowest and most tortuous of lanes between them. Through the midst a stream flows from the high ground behind, in summer a mere brook, in winter a swollen torrent that colours the sea far out with the soil it carries down. The bay is shaped like a horseshoe; at low tide its mouth is closed by a reef except at the northern end, where there is always a narrow fairway between the reef and the sharp point of land known as the Beal. Northward of this is another little inlet called Trevanion Bay, whence the coast winds north-east, a line of rugged, precipitous, and overhanging cliffs, unbroken until you come to St. Cuby's Cove, where they reach a height of three hundred feet, and bulge out over the sea like a penthouse roof.

One August evening, in the year 1804, a wide tubby boat lay in twelve feet of water, just outside the line of breakers beneath the cliffs, about a mile and a half from the village. The sun had been down some two hours, but there was enough of twilight to show to any one out at sea--the boat being invisible from the land--that it contained two lads, one a tall, slight, but muscular youth of seventeen or thereabouts, the other a thicker, sturdier boy, who looked older, but was, in fact, a year or more younger than his companion.

"Well, Maister Dick," said the younger boy, "I reckon we'd better go home-along; it do seem as if the water be too clear to-night."

"They're not on the feed, Sam, that's certain," replied Dick Trevanion. "But I don't like going empty-handed. I'm thinking of supper."

"It do be queer, sure enough. 'Tis a hot night, and they mostly comes in close when 'tis hot, and the biggest comes the closest. I 'spect what us do want is a bit of a tumble, to stir up the bottom and muddy the water."

Dick Trevanion had come out at sunset with his companion Sam Pollex to fish for salmon bass, which at this time of year were usually plentiful along the coast. For two hours they had had no luck. Every now and then a ripple and spirt on the smooth surface showed that fish were sporting beneath; but though they changed the bait, trying squid, pilchard, spider-crab in turn; varied the length of line and the weight of the lead; trailed the bait where they last saw the surface disturbed--though they tried every device known to them to lure the fish, they had not as yet been rewarded with a single bite. It was exasperating. Dick knew that the larder at home was bare, and had set his heart on carrying back two or three fish for supper and next morning's breakfast.

"It will be high-water in half-an-hour," he said. "We'll wait till then, and no longer."

Baiting his hook with cuttle-fish, he got Sam to row slowly up the shore towards a spot where the sea broke gently over a yard or two of half-submerged rocks. The air was very still; there was no sound save the light rustle of the waves washing the foot of the cliff. As the sky darkened and the last faint radiance vanished from the west, the stars appeared and the shade beneath the cliff became deeper. Sam rowed up and down for some minutes, Dick hauling in his line once or twice to see that the hook was not fouled with sea-weed; but still there was no sign of fish.

All at once, when he was on the point of giving up, he felt a slight tug at the line, which began immediately to slip through his fingers.

"At last!" he whispered, jumping to his feet so hastily as to set the boat rocking.

He held the line loosely until a dozen yards had run out, then tightened his grasp with a jerk. Meanwhile Sam had thrown the anchor overboard.

"He's a whopper," said Dick, letting his line run again. "See; there he goes!"

He pointed to a slight phosphorescent glow on the water about twenty yards away. The line was running out fast. It was only a hundred yards long, and he must check the rush of the fish, or he would lose line and all. Grasping the twine with both hands, he exerted a steady strain, at one moment being almost jerked out of the boat by the violent struggles of the fish. He set his feet against the gunwale and pulled again. With a suddenness that threw him backwards the tension relaxed.

"He's gone, Sam! He's torn away the hook," he cried.

"Scrounch un for a rebel!" said Sam indignantly. "Why couldn't he bide quiet!"

Dick wound up his line rapidly, feeling no resistance until he had recovered about thirty yards of it. Then once more it began to slip away.

"He's not gone yet, Sam, after all. I'll have him, sure as I'm alive."

Steadily he worked the fish in. For a few moments he would draw in the line without resistance; then there was a jerk; it swerved to right, to left; and he could merely hold his own in the desperate struggle. But gradually, fight as the fish might, it was drawn nearer and nearer to the boat. At the broken water it spent its last energies; phosphorescent flashes showed where it was dashing to and fro in the vain effort to regain its liberty. Then, its strength exhausted, it suffered itself to be dragged slowly towards the boat.

Sam was eagerly on the watch, bending over the gunwale to seize the fish as soon as it came alongside. Suddenly he flung out his hands, only to draw them back with a cry. He had pricked them against the fish's sharp dorsal fin. Once more he stooped, and as Dick hauled hard on the line, Sam got his arms beneath the fish, and with a mighty heave cast it into the bottom, where it struggled for a moment and then lay still.

"A beauty, sure enough," said Sam.

"Worth waiting for," remarked Dick. "'Tis getting late, and Mother will have given me up, so we'll go now. He's big enough to give us two meals at least."

They bent down to disengage the hook and wind up the line. So intent had they been on the capture of the bass that neither had noticed, until that moment, a smack about three-quarters of a mile out at sea, sailing rapidly across the bay towards St. Cuby's Cove. The moon was rising, faintly illuminating the vessel, but casting a deep shadow on the water immediately beneath the cliff, so that the boys were invisible from the smack. Familiar as they were with all the small craft belonging to Polkerran, they knew at the first glance, in spite of the dim light, that the smack was a stranger.

"She's not Cornish," said Dick, taking a long look at her.

"Nor even English," added Sam. "Maybe a Frenchman from Rusco, though 'tis early for the running to begin."

"They won't run a cargo at the Cove, surely. The path up the cliff is too steep, and Joe Penwarden's cottage too near. I think she's a stranger that doesn't know the coast."

They watched the smack until she rounded the headland between them and the Cove, and then began to row in the opposite direction. They had just reached the end of the promontory bounding Trevanion Bay on the north, and had swung round landward, when, their faces now being toward the open sea, they saw something that caused them to pause in mid-stroke. Perhaps a mile in the offing like a phantom barque in the quivering radiance of the moonlight, lay a large three-masted vessel with sails aback. Through the still air came the sound of creaking tackle, and the boys, resting on their oars, saw a boat lowered, and then another, which pulled off in the same direction as the smack.

"This be some jiggery, Maister Dick," said Sam. "Do 'ee think, now, it be Boney come spying for a place to land?"

Those were the days when the imminence of a French invasion kept the people of the southern counties in a constant state of alarm.

"Boney wouldn't come to this coast," replied Dick. "He wouldn't risk his flat boats round the Lizard. No; he'll make some lonely quiet spot on the south coast; Boney won't trouble us."

"Well, daze me if I can make head or tail o't," said Sam.

"Pull in a bit, so that we can see without being seen."

From the shadowed headland they watched in silence. The boats had scarcely gone a third of a mile across the bay when a shrill whistle cleft the air. They at once put about, returned to the larger vessel, and were hoisted in, whereupon the ship made sail, and in the course of ten or fifteen minutes disappeared into the darkness.

"There be queer things a-doing, I b'lieve," said Sam, while the vessel was still in sight.

"Maybe," rejoined Dick, "but we don't know. Don't speak a word of it till I give you leave, Sam. 'Tis a matter for Mr. Mildmay if any one."

"Zackly. I can keep a still tongue with any man; and now seems to I we'd best go home-along."

He dipped the oars, and pulled, not towards the Beal, beyond which lay the village, but towards the head of Trevanion Bay. It was now high-water. Below the cliff only a narrow stretch of white sand was visible. Within ten yards of this beach Sam shipped oars, and the boat was carried along until its nose stuck in the sand. Both the boys then sprang out, and dragged their craft up to the base of the cliff beyond high-water mark.

"'Tis lucky tide be high," said Sam, wiping his brow with the back of his hand, "for 'tis a hot night, and old boat be desp'rate heavy."

"True, she's both heavy and old," said Dick, as he secured her to a post driven deep into the sand. "She's a good deal older than you or I, Sam."

"Ay, true, and Feyther have give her more knocks than he've give me. You can see his marks on her, but you can't see 'em on me--hee! hee!"

Dick laughed. Many a time had the planks been repaired by old Reuben Pollex, the signs of whose rough and ready handiwork were easily discoverable.

Carrying his tackle, Dick ordered Sam to bring the bass, and led the way along a steep path that zigzagged up the face of the cliff, being soon hidden from the sea by knobs and corners of rock. It was a toilsome climb; the cliff was two hundred feet high, but the windings made the path three times as long. When they reached the top, Sam found it necessary once more to wipe his brow; then followed his young master across a stretch of coarse bent towards a large building, mistily lit by the moonbeams, about a hundred yards distant.

The Towers, at one time a manor house of no little importance, was now in the stage of decrepitude. It had been for centuries in the possession of the Trevanions, who, in the time of King Charles I., had been a family of great wealth and influence, owning estates, it was said, in three counties. But the squire of that time had sold part of his property to provide money for the King, whose cause he espoused with unselfish loyalty, and from that time the family fortunes had gradually declined, partly through the recklessness of certain of the owners, partly through sheer ill-luck. For many years wealth had been drawn from tin and copper mines beneath the surface, parts of whose apparatus, in the shape of ruined sheds, scaffoldings, pipes, conduits, broken chains, strewed the ground in desolate abandonment. In the early manhood of the present squire, Dick's father, the lodes had shown signs of exhaustion, and Mr. Trevanion, wishing to keep the mines going as much for the sake of the miners as for his own interest, had spent large sums on opening up new workings, which proved unprofitable. He had mortgaged acre after acre in this fierce struggle with misfortune, having more than his share of the doggedness of his race; but all his efforts were fruitless; the mines were closed and the men dismissed; and the Squire himself at last had no property unencumbered except the land on which the Towers stood, and the barren cliff between the house and the end of the promontory, almost worthless save for the little grazing it afforded.

To this he had clung with grim tenacity. He was often hard put to it to pay the interest on his mortgages as it became due; his little household, consisting now only of himself, his wife and son, and the two Pollexes, often had barely enough to eat; many a time he was tempted to raise money on the little remnant of his property; but for long years, as often as the temptation came, he had resisted it. Though he would not admit the fact, even to himself, superstition had a good deal to do with his determination. He scoffed at the country folks' belief in omens and witches, and professed to think nothing of an old motto which had attached to his family for near a hundred and fifty years. In the reign of Charles II., when the Trevanions owned estates not only in Cornwall, but the adjoining counties, the spendthrift whose extravagance had been a partial cause of their ruin had, at some crisis in his affairs, consulted a wise woman who lived alone in a little cottage on the moor. He brought nothing from his interview with her but the couplet:

Trevanion, whate'er thy fortune be, Hold fast the rock by the western sea.

Like his forefathers, Roger Trevanion derided the witch's counsel, but, like them, too, he had "held fast" until, a year before the opening of our story, he had been forced to relax his grip. Now every rood of the land, to the uttermost extremity of the Beal, was in the hands of mortgagees, and the dread of foreclosure weighed on the Squire like a nightmare.

The Towers had been allowed to fall into decay. Only one wing was now inhabited; the remainder was ruinous, and for the most part roofless. In the south wing lived the Squire, now past fifty years of age, his wife, a few years younger, and Dick, their only son. Their sole attendants were Reuben Pollex, a widower, who had grown up from boyhood with the Squire, and steadily refused to leave him, and his boy Sam. These two did all the household work, grew vegetables, bred poultry and pigs, the sale of which, together with the small sums obtained by letting to neighbouring farmers the grazing rights of the cliff, was all that kept the family from abject poverty. Dick himself was, to a large extent, the family provider. With Sam's help he snared rabbits, shot wild fowl, and fished along the coast. His bronzed skin and hard flesh bespoke an active life in the open air, and as he went about in his jersey, rough breeches, and long boots, he would scarcely have been distinguishable from the fisher lads of the village but for a certain springiness of gait and a look of refinement and thoughtfulness.

Dick and his companion hastened towards the south wing, where an unusually bright light in one of the lower rooms proclaimed that the Squire had company. While Sam took the fish, which turned out to be a fine fourteen-pounder, into the kitchen, Dick changed his boots, washed his hands, and entered the living-room. His father sat at the head of the table, his mother at the foot; between them was a man of about the Squire's age, dressed in a blue coat with brass buttons, with "seaman" written on every inch of him. The table was covered with a spotless but much-darned cloth; the only viands were a loaf of bread and half a cheese. A large brown jug contained ale brewed in the family brew-house by old Pollex.

"Why, Dick, how late you are!" said his mother. "We are just going to begin supper."

"Better put it off for a few minutes, Mother. I've brought home a fine bass. How d'ye do, Mr. Mildmay?"

"Ah, Dick, glad to see you, my boy! Good fishing to-night, eh?"

"One catch after two hours, sir," replied Dick. "The weather's too fine, I suppose."

"Shall we wait, Mr. Mildmay?" asked his hostess.

"As you please, ma'am."

Mr. Mildmay, a naval lieutenant, now in command of a revenue cutter, knew very well by the expression of the lady's face that the postponement of the meal was welcome to her. He was an old friend of the Squire's--a messmate indeed, for Mr. Trevanion had served for a few years in the Navy; and his acquaintance with the penury of the household had neither diminished his friendship nor damped the cordiality of the Squire's welcome. In these days there were few visitors to the Towers, and those who came knew what they had to expect in the way of entertainment. Such as might have looked merely for the satisfaction of the inner man had long since ceased to call. Mr. Mildmay could have supped contentedly on bread and cheese. The meagreness of the fare would have troubled Mrs. Trevanion the most, and the look upon her face told Dick how welcome was his addition to it.

Dick went into the kitchen to see how Sam was getting on, and soon returned with a portion of the fish broiled and garnished with herbs.

"As fine a bit of fish as I've tasted," said Mr. Mildmay, "and well cooked, upon my word."

"I am glad you like it," said Mrs. Trevanion, giving Dick privately an approving smile.

"You'll soon be hard at work, I suppose, sir," said Dick to the lieutenant.

"Yes, no doubt I shall have a merry winter. But I wish the Commissioners would make better arrangements on land. What can I do, with miles of coast to keep an eye on? One riding-officer and a few old excisemen here and there! I can't be everywhere."

"Why don't they, sir?" asked Dick.

"Because every man of muscle is snapped up by the press-gang or the recruiters. Upon my word, I wish Boney would come, if he is coming. When he has had his walloping there'll be a little time to attend to our proper concerns. As it is, with this eternal war going on, the free-traders play ducks and drakes with law and ordinances."

The Squire said nothing. His attitude to smuggling was one of neutrality. His training in the Navy made him in general adverse to the contraband trade; but there was a time, not very long since, when the owners of the Towers were actively engaged in it, or at least accessory to it, and the landowners along the coast regarded it with sympathy, open or secret. Indeed, it is probable that the cask of brandy in Mr. Trevanion's own cellar had never paid duty to the Crown, and old Reuben Pollex, who loved his "dish of tay," would certainly not have been able to enjoy it in that time of high prices unless he had known a little back room in Polkerran where it was easy to slip in and out secretly, and without the knowledge of the exciseman.

"The smugglers are getting bolder and bolder, confound 'em," Mr. Mildmay went on. "With the land force so weak, what's the result? If I'm called to a spot, ten to one by a trick, I must leave the rest of the coast unguarded. As you know, the only man permanently in this neighbourhood is old Penwarden, who is zealous enough, but not so active as a younger man would be."

"No, poor man," said Mrs. Trevanion. "He has often said to me that he fears the Government will replace him. He will cling to his duty as long as he can for the sake of his old sister. You know he supports her, in Truro, Mr. Mildmay."

"I know it, and I'm not the man to put him out of a job, though one of these days a Commissioner of Customs will make his appearance, and then I'll get a wigging."

All this while Dick had been considering whether he ought to tell the lieutenant about the strange vessels he had seen. He knew that smuggling was the only matter on which there was a certain constraint between his father and Mr. Mildmay. It was tacitly understood between them that the Squire would not round on the smugglers. On the other hand, the revenue officer knew that anything he told the Squire would be perfectly safe with him. He therefore discussed the subject quite openly with his old messmate, though, like a wise general, he never spoke about any plans that he had in view.

Dick made up his mind to say nothing. The lieutenant's cutter was lying in the little harbour, and if he mentioned what he had seen, Mr. Mildmay would certainly hurry away and sail in chase of the stranger. What the Squire would not do, his son could not. But he had scarcely come to this decision when matters took an unexpected turn.

"By the way, Squire," said the lieutenant, "I've just heard from Plymouth that the _Aimable Vertu_--precious fine name for a rascally privateer--is showing herself very active in the Channel. She made two captures last week, and was sighted two days ago off Falmouth, where a barque only just managed to escape her. She's said to be a vessel of extraordinary speed. The Government would give a good deal to catch her and hang her captain, that daredevil Frenchman, Delarousse; but it's with privateers as it is with smugglers: we can't be everywhere at once, and while we're fighting the French on the high seas, I suppose our home waters must be left to the enemy."

This led to an exchange of reminiscences of privateer-hunting during the American war, when both were young in the service. Meanwhile Dick felt uncomfortable. What if the larger vessel he had lately seen was this very privateer, the _Aimable Vertu_? In that case it was no question of smuggling, but of piracy. He felt that he ought at least to mention the matter, yet hesitated to speak without consulting his father. By-and-by there came an opportunity of speaking to him privately. While Mr. Mildmay was conversing with Mrs. Trevanion, Dick slipped to the Squire's side and told him in a sentence or two what he had seen.

"Mildmay," cried the Squire, "hark to this. Dick tells me that an hour or more ago he saw a strange three-master in the bay. She lowered a couple of boats, but recalled 'em, and sailed away westward. D'ye think she's the privateer?"

"Dash my bones, Dick," cried the lieutenant, starting up, "why on earth didn't you speak before? Oh! I see--I see; I won't reproach you; but I'll be as mad as a hatter if 'tis the rascal and she gets away. Good night to you all; you'll excuse me, Mrs. Trevanion. Oh, you young dog!"

He shook his fist at Dick, and hurried from the room.

Chapter The Second

John Trevanion Returns Home

About half-an-hour before Mr. Mildmay left the Squire's supper-table so hurriedly, a man laboured up the last few feet of the winding path leading from the beach of St. Cuby's Cove to the cliff-top, which he gained at a point rather more than half-a-mile from the spot where Dick and Sam had previously ascended. He was a tall man, his build and figure indicating a capacity for lithe and rapid movement, so that the heaviness of his gait was probably due solely to the size and weight of the leathern trunk he carried. Like Sam Pollex, he paused for a moment on reaching the top to recover his breath and mop his brow; then, shouldering his trunk, he struck into a narrow footpath that led over the cliff. It branched into two after a few yards, the right-hand branch going direct to the Towers, the left-hand running away from the sea to join a rough, ill-made road which led past the gate of the Towers to the village.

On reaching the fork the pedestrian did not hesitate, as a stranger might have done, but took the left-hand path. After proceeding a few steps along it, however, he made a sudden half-turn, and stopped, looking across the open ground towards the Towers, where one room on the ground floor made a patch of light against the dark background of sky and sea. The man stood but a moment, then resumed his march along the path in the same direction as before. A smile wreathed his lips, and he muttered to himself. He went on at a smart pace over the level ground, turned to the right when he came to the road, passed the Towers' gates, which he observed were broken, and walked for another quarter of a mile before he again halted. Then he set his burden down by the roadside, sat upon it, and wiped his heated face, where the smile had been replaced by a frown.

"I daresay I'm a fool," he muttered in a growling undertone. "Why did I chafe and gall myself with carrying this plaguey trunk? However, maybe 'tis best."

While he was still resting, he heard footsteps upon his right hand, and looked round quickly. The moon was up, and he saw a young fisherman rolling along a path that ran into the road a few paces distant.

"Ahoy, there!" cried the traveller in a deep and mellow voice.

The fisherman, who had not as yet perceived him, came to a sudden stop as the silence of the night was broken thus unexpectedly and so near at hand; then, catching sight of the figure on the trunk, he slipped off the path on to the grass and began to run.

"Ahoy, there! What ails you?" cried the man. "D'you want to earn a groat?"

Reassured, apparently, at the mention of so material a thing as a groat, the fisherman turned and came slowly towards the speaker.

"Did you think I was a ghost?" the stranger went on with a laugh. "I want you to carry this trunk to the village, and I'll give you a groat for your pains."

"I'll do it, maister," replied the fisher, shouldering the trunk. "But ye give me a fright, that ye did."

"Why, you never saw a ghost with a brown face, and a black hat, and a blue coat, not to speak of brown breeches and long boots, did you?"

"I won't say I did, but the neighbours do say there be ghosteses up-along by St. Cuby's Well. Maybe yer a furriner, maister?"

"No, no; I'm good Cornish like yourself," replied the man, who knew that to Cornishmen all who lived beyond the borders of the duchy were accounted foreigners.

"Well, I can see plain ye be a high person, and jown me if I know why ye carry yer own bag and traipse afoot, instead o' coming a-horseback, or in a po'chay."

The traveller shot a glance at the lad. He saw a rugged profile, a brow on which thought had carved no furrows, a half-open mouth: the physiognomy of a simple countryman. Then, after a scarcely perceptible pause, he said:

"Well, I hate close folks who make a secret of everything, so I'll tell you. I got a lift in a travelling wagon from Newquay, but the wretch that drove it was bound for Truro, and point-blank refused to bring me farther than the cross-roads a couple of miles back. So now you know, my man, and I daresay you could tell a stranger what I've told you."

"Sure and sartin. You be come from Newquay in a wagon, and when ye got to cross-roads driver said he'd be jowned if he'd carr' 'ee a step furder."

"You have it pat; and now step out; 'tis getting latish."

They proceeded along the silent road at a good pace toward the village, the traveller dropping a remark now and then from which the fisherman understood that he was not a complete stranger to the district. Just as they reached a spot where the road dipped somewhat steeply, there were sounds of rapid footsteps behind them, and in a few moments two men came up, one Mr. Mildmay, the revenue officer, the other an old weather-beaten fellow in seaman's clothes. He wore a black shade over his right eye, and the unnaturally short distance between his nose and the tip of his chin showed that he had lost his teeth. This was Joe Penwarden, the veteran exciseman who had been mentioned at Squire Trevanion's supper-table. On leaving the Towers, Mr. Mildmay had gone first to the right, and fetched Penwarden from his little cottage on the cliff, and then retraced his steps through the Squire's grounds. Had he been a few minutes earlier, he could hardly have failed to see the pedestrian trudging with his trunk on his shoulder along the path that ran a score of yards from Penwarden's cottage.

"Halt, in the King's name!" cried Mr. Mildmay, as he overtook the two men who had preceded him along the road.

[Illustration: "'HALT, IN THE KING'S NAME!' CRIED MR. MILDMAY"]

"I'll halt if 'ee bid me in the King's name," said the fisher, recognising the revenue officer, whom he, like the population of Polkerran generally, held in detestation mingled with unwilling respect, "but I bean't doin' nowt agen the law, I tell 'ee, carr'in' a genel'um's traps for a groat."

"A gentleman, is it?" said Mr. Mildmay, turning to the traveller. "I must ask you to tell me your business."

"And you shall have an answer. I come from Newquay, and am going to seek a night's lodging at the Five Pilchards, if you have no objection, captain."

Mr. Mildmay looked suspiciously at the speaker, whose accent was that of an educated man. He was not the type of person to meet afoot with his trunk on the high road. Old Penwarden's single eye also was fixed on the stranger's swarthy, bearded face.

"No more objection, my dear sir, than you will have to my taking a look at the inside of that trunk of yours. In the King's name!"

"With all the pleasure in life. Amos, or whatever your name is, set down the trunk for the inspection of this exceedingly zealous officer of His Majesty's."

The trunk was opened, and Penwarden turned over its contents, Mr. Mildmay looking on. He found articles of apparel, a sword, some bundles of papers, a bag of money, a large leather-bound book, a brace of pistols, and sundry insignificant articles, none of which was chargeable with duty.

"Thank you, sir," said Mr. Mildmay, when the inspection was concluded. "I am sorry to have detained you, but in these times----"

"Quite so, captain," interrupted the other. "In these times one cannot be too particular. I bid you good-night, and better luck at your next examination."

Mr. Mildmay hurried on with Penwarden, and was soon lost to sight.

"Who's that popinjay?" said the traveller, when the lieutenant was out of hearing.

"That be Maister Mildmay, the preventive officer, and a dratted furriner," replied the fisher. "He've been in these parts two years now, and a meddlesome feller he be too. Hee! hee! He got nowt for his pains this time, maister, and if there's one thing I do like to see, 'tis the preventives fooled. Hee! hee!"

"Old Penwarden looks the same as ever, except for the shade over his eye."

"Do 'ee know him, maister?"

"I used to, years ago."

"Iss, old Joe be a decent good soul of his trade, and we was vexed, trewly, when 'a got his eye put out in a fight by Lunnan Cove. But there, he shouldn' meddle with honest free-traders. Lawk-a-massy! I be speakin' free."

"Oh, you're quite safe with me. I'm a bit of a free-trader myself, in my way."

They went on, and in a few minutes came to an inn at the lower end of the village near the beach. This was the Five Pilchards. The village boasted another inn, a hundred yards away, called the Three Jolly Mariners; but it belied its name, being frequented mainly by farm labourers.

The traveller paid and dismissed the fisher, and rapped at the closed door. It was opened by the innkeeper himself, a podgy, red-nosed, blear-eyed fellow, with an underhung lip, and a chin like a dewlap. A small candle-lamp hung above in the doorway, showing a dim yellow ray upon the smiling face of the visitor. The innkeeper started back.

"I startled you, eh?" said the visitor. "Yes, it is I myself--John Trevanion come home again. I am getting on in years, Doubledick, and I felt I should like to die among my friends."

"Ha, ha! Ho, ho!" laughed the innkeeper. "'Tis Maister John, for sure, come home with his little jokes. Come along in, maister, come in; daze me if I bean't as pleased as pigs to see 'ee."

"Take me to a room, Doubledick, and get some clean sheets, will you? And send me up something passable to eat and drink; I'll sup alone."

"Iss, sure. I'll give 'ee the best I've got in the house. What do 'ee say, now, to collops and fried taties, or a nice bit o' bass, or a dish o' pickled pilchurs, and some real old--you know what, Maister John? Hee, hee!"

"Whatever you like, Doubledick, only be quick about it."

The innkeeper led his visitor along a passage past the open door of the bar-parlour. John Trevanion glanced in as he went by. A number of rough fishermen in various garments sat drinking on settles along the wall. The most noticeable among them was a man of vast breadth, brawny and muscular, his strong features tanned copper-colour by years of sea-faring, his thick hair and beard the hue of ebony. The sleeves of his scarlet jersey were turned up, revealing brown and hairy forearms that would have befitted a Hercules.

"Tonkin is still flourishing, I see," said Trevanion in an undertone to the innkeeper as he passed.

"Iss, Zacky Tonkin be as great a man as ever he wer, and a tarrible plague o' life to the preventives. Mr. Curgenven--ye mind of him, Maister John?--died two year back, and they sent a furrin feller, Mildmay by name, to look arter us mortals--hee! hee! He be a good feller at his job, a sight better than Curgenven, who loved an easy life, as 'ee could remember; but Zacky do know how to deal wi' un, he do so. Oh, 'tis a rare deceivin' game he plays wi' un. He's up-along and down-along, and this Mildmay feller atraipsin' arter un, by sea and land, 'tis all one to Zacky. Here's yer room, Maister John. Do 'ee set yerself down and I'll bring 'ee up a supper fit for a lord in no time."

He looked at his visitor doubtfully for a moment.

"I'd axe 'ee one thing," he said. "Be I to let 'em know down below as you be in house?"

"To be sure, Doubledick, there's nothing to conceal. You might remember to say that I've come from London--no, hang me, I am forgetting; from Newquay directly, from London ultimately. You understand?"

"Iss, I understand. No matter where 'ee come from, if 'twere from old Nick hisself, they'll be glad to see 'ee, that they will."

John Trevanion kept to his room until the morning. At nine o'clock he left the inn and made his way through the village by back lanes, to escape the notice of such fishermen as might remember him, and proceeded at a quick pace along the road to the Towers. He was dressed this morning in a black hat turned up at one side with a rosette, a bottle-green frock coat, white kerseymere breeches, and long boots. "He looks summat older and nearer graveyard, as must we all," remarked Doubledick to a crony as he watched him depart, "but he's a fine figure of a man still."

Arriving at the Towers, John Trevanion lifted the latch of the door leading to the inhabited portion, and entered with the freedom of one of the family. The Squire was at breakfast with his wife and son.

"Come in," he shouted, in answer to a tap on the door, and rose from his chair as the well-dressed visitor entered, thinking, as might have been gathered from his manner, that it was one of the few friends who had the freedom of the house. But at a second glance his demeanour altered.

"You have made a mistake, I think," he said stiffly, resting both hands on the table. His fine face was flushed, and Dick, looking on in wonderment, noticed that the riband that bound his queue of grey hair was quivering.

"Surely, Cousin Roger, you'll let bygones be bygones," said John Trevanion suavely. "'Tis now--I don't know how many years ago."

"When I last saw you, sir, I bade you never enter my door again. I do not call back my words, and see no reason to do so. You will oblige me by relieving me of your presence."

The words came sternly from his trembling lips. Dick felt himself go hot and cold.

"Is there no word repentance in your dictionary, Roger Trevanion?" said his cousin bitterly. "You're a good Christian, I suppose--go to church and say the Commandments, 'love your neighbour,' and all that; but you'll harden your heart against one of your own kin that had the ill-luck to offend you----"

"Stop!" thundered the Squire. "The offence to me I make nothing of; you have shamed your name and put yourself beyond the pale of honest men. 'Ill-luck,' you call it! 'Twas no ill-luck--though we Trevanions have enough of that, God knows!--but the act and nature of a scoundrel. I am ashamed you bear my name. I disown you. Take yourself out of my sight."

His wife laid a gentle hand on his arm.

"A pretty welcome, on my soul, for a man who has lived down the faults of his youth," said John Trevanion. "I tell you, Roger Trevanion, I will not put up with such usage--I will not! I don't want your forgiveness; a fig for your friendship! But I demand decent treatment from you, and----"

"By the Lord that made me," cried the Squire, "if you do not instantly remove yourself from this house I will have you thrown out. Do you hear me, sir?"

John Trevanion's eyes glittered as he returned his cousin's wrathful look. He half opened his mouth, closed it with a snap; then an inscrutable smile stole upon his face. He shrugged, turned on his heel, and went silently from the room.

The Squire sank into his chair. The flush had vanished from his face, leaving it ashy pale. His hands trembled with excess of indignation.

"My dear, calm yourself," said his wife soothingly. "He is gone."

He made no reply. Dick sat silent, every nerve tingling with excitement. In a minute his father rose, leaving his coffee half finished, and strode heavily from the room.

"Mother, what does it mean?" asked Dick breathlessly. "Was that cousin John?"

"Yes, my dear. Do not name him to your father. I will go to him; I fear he will be ill. Finish your breakfast, Dick, and go to the Parsonage. You had better stay there all day; Mr. Carlyon will give you some dinner."

She followed her husband, leaving Dick to his breakfast and his wondering thoughts. He faintly remembered his cousin John Trevanion, who ten years before had lived in the now empty Dower House, between the Towers and the village, as his father had done before him. John Trevanion had then been a gay, careless, happy-go-lucky young man of thirty, who lived on the Squire's bounty, riding his horse among the county yeomanry, hunting with his neighbours, roistering it with the most rakish young blades of the adjacent manors, joining in daredevil escapades with the smugglers. His antics and riotings became a byword in the country-side, and Dick remembered how, when a young boy, he had witnessed several violent scenes between his father and John after some particularly outrageous exploit. Old Pollex had told him that the Squire had threatened many times that unless John reformed he would no longer be allowed to occupy the Dower House, and had forgiven him over and over again. At last a day came when John disappeared. Dick had never learnt the true reason; the Squire never mentioned his cousin; Pollex, when questioned, shook his head and pursed up his lips, and said that John Trevanion was a villain; and Dick had formed the conclusion from stray hints that the ne'er-do-well cousin had been driven out of the country by some criminal act. For ten years he had not been heard of, and he had wholly slipped from Dick's thoughts.

Having finished his breakfast, Dick took his cap and set off for his two-mile walk to the Parsonage, where he went daily to receive lessons in classics and literature from Mr. Carlyon, the vicar. He had never been to school, his father's resources being incapable of bearing the expense. A few years before this time the Squire had been seriously disturbed about his son's education. He was himself a sufficiently competent tutor in mathematics, but what classics he ever had had wholly left him, and he was miserable in the thought that the boy was growing up without the elements of the education of a gentleman. At this point the vicar stepped in with a proposal. He was a liberal-minded, genial man, a fellow of his college, a student of his county's antiquities, and in his 'varsity days had been a notable athlete. Now, though well on in years, he would often, on a Sunday afternoon after church, lend his countenance to wrestling bouts and games of baseball among the village youths. He rode to hounds, and judged at coursing matches, these and similar avocations probably accounting for the fact that a history of the parish, which he had commenced twenty years before, was still unfinished. One day he suggested to the Squire that he should give Dick lessons in Latin and Greek, to keep himself from rusting, as the worthy man delicately put it, but really to make good the deficiency due to his friend's straitened means. Mr. Trevanion gladly accepted the offer, and Dick had now been for five years under the parson's capable tuition.

When Dick returned home in the evening he was met by Sam Pollex in a state of considerable excitement.

"I say, Maister Dick," he said, "this be a fine mossel o' news. Yer cousin John--a rare bad 'un he be--have come home-along."

"I know," replied Dick. "I've seen him."

"Have 'ee, for sure? I hain't seed un, but I heerd tell on un in village. Ike Pendry were goin' along road last night when up comes my genel'um and axed un to carr' his bundle for a groat. He wer traipsin' along from St. Cuby's Cove way, about an hour, it do seem, arter we come up from fishin'."

"Where had he come from?"

"Newquay, 'a said; but 'tis my belief he come out o' the smack we seed, and clomb the cliff, same as we."

"That's nonsense. He wouldn't come in a smack, and if he did he wouldn't land at the Cove. He has made no secret of his return, and there's no reason why he shouldn't land at the jetty."

"Ah, well, things be as they be; but I reckon he come in the smack, all the same."

"What is he doing in the village?"

"He bean't there no longer. This arternoon he packed up his traps and rid off on one of Doubledick's hosses to Trura. Feyther seed un go. 'A called to un as he rid by. 'Hoy, Reuben!' says he, ''tis a cold country, this!' That just 'mazed Feyther, 'cos it was a frizzlin' day. 'Spect he've been in furrin parts, wheer what's bilin' to we is nawthin' but chill-off to they. So 'tis, to be sure."

At this piece of news Dick felt much relieved. He hoped that Polkerran had seen the last of John Trevanion. But it turned out that the return of the native was only the first scene in a series of strange happenings that were to be long remembered in the village, and were vitally to affect the fortunes of the family at the Towers.

Chapter The Third

The Blow Falls

For some days after the event just related, life at Polkerran and the neighbourhood flowed on its customary sluggish tide. The fishermen were idle, waiting for pilchards to appear off the coast. The harvest had been gathered in from the fields. There was little for the village folk to do except to gossip. Men gathered in knots on the jetty and at the inn-doors, chatting about the return of John Trevanion, the strange vessels that had been seen, and the revenue cutter's failure to catch them, the appearance of a ghost at St. Cuby's Well, the prospects of the fishing season, the chances of making good "runs," and besting Mr. Mildmay and the excisemen. At the Towers there was nothing to show that anything had happened to disturb the placid surface of existence, except that the Squire was more silent than usual, and went about with a pale face and a preoccupied and troubled look.

One afternoon, after the lapse of about a week, Dick, leaving the Parsonage after his daily lessons, was surprised to see his father approaching across the glebe. The Squire was on foot: his last horse had been sold long ago.

"Ha, Dick!" he said, as he met his son, "you have finished with Greeks and Romans for the day, then. I have come for a word with the parson. Shall be home to supper."

Dick went on, and his father entered the house.

"Ah, Trevanion, I am glad to see you," said Mr. Carlyon, cordially, his keen eyes not failing to note a certain gravity in his old friend's expression.

"I want your advice, Carlyon," said Mr. Trevanion abruptly.

"And you shall have the best I can give, as you know well. Come into the garden and smoke a pipe with me. Good, honest tobacco, even if 'tis contraband--and I can't swear to that--will do no harm to you or me."

When they were seated side by side in wide wicker chairs beneath the shade of an elm-tree, the Squire drew from his pocket a folded paper which had been sealed at the edges.

"Read that," he said, handing it to the vicar.

Mr. Carlyon carefully rubbed his spectacles, set them on his nose with deliberation, and slowly opened the paper.

"H'm! God bless my soul! Poor old Trevanion!" he murmured, as he read, unconscious that his words were audible. "This is bad news, Trevanion," he said, aloud, looking over the rims of his spectacles with grave concern.

"It is. It is the very worst," said the Squire, gloomily. "It is the end of things for me."

"No, no; don't say that. Every cloud has a silver lining."

"A musty proverb, Carlyon. You don't see the silver lining in a thunderstorm, and it doesn't keep your skin dry. This spells ruin, ruin irretrievable."

The parson pressed his lips together, and read the document again. It was a brief intimation from a Truro attorney of his client's intention to foreclose on the mortgages he held upon certain parcels of land, if the sums advanced on them were not repaid within a month from that date.

"This is not your own man?" said the parson.

"No. I never heard of him before."

"What is the extent of the obligation?"

"Two thousand pounds. I can't muster as many shillings. I am in arrear with the interest. Within a month we shall be in the poor-house--a noble end for Trevanion of the Towers!"

"Tut, tut! You take too black a view of things. 'I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.'"

"But I have, and so have you, Carlyon. I see things as they are. 'Tis no surprise to me; these many months I have felt the blow might fall at any moment; but the condemned man hopes to the last for a reprieve, and I have gone from day to day, like a weakling and simpleton, refusing to face the facts. Not that I could have done anything; I am bankrupt; there's no way out of it."

"Who holds the mortgages?"

"Sir Bevil Portharvan. I have nothing to say against him. He has been very patient. A man of business would have foreclosed long ago, though he would have got little by it, for the mines are worked out, the Towers is a ruin, and the land will grow next to nothing but thistles and burdock. 'Twas to be."

"But he can't take the Towers from you. Do you not hold fast to that?"

"I did till a year ago, but there's a small bond on that now--a paltry hundred pounds; I could raise no more on it and the cliff. Sir Bevil does not hold that, however; 'tis my own lawyer."

The parson sawed the air with his hand, a trick of his when perplexed.

"Well, old friend," he said, "I am sorry for you, from the bottom of my heart. If I had the money, I would gladly lend it you, but 'passing rich on forty pound a year,' you know----"

"I know well. 'Tis not for that I come to you. Give me your advice. What can I do? I must leave the Towers; what can I do for a livelihood? Like the man in the Book, 'I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.' What a miserable fool I was to throw up the sea when I came into the property! And yet I don't know. Look at Mildmay; a year or two younger, 'tis true, but still a lieutenant, and thought fit for nothing better than to chase luggers and circumvent the trade. I've no interest with the Admiralty; they've enough to do to provide for the seamen invalided from the wars. What can an old fool past fifty do to earn his salt? Years ago I had my dreams of paying off the burdens and reviving the Trevanion fortunes; but they have long since vanished into thin air; the task needed a better head than mine. And what little chance I might have had was doomed by the misdeeds of that scoundrel cousin of mine----"

"I heard that he reappeared the other day. I hoped it was not true."

"'Twas true. He had the boldness, the effrontery, to come to me with his 'let bygones be bygones,' and sneering at my Christianity. You know the facts, Carlyon. You know how, but that I impoverished myself, he would to this day be in the hulks or slaving in the plantations. I was too tender, I was indeed. I ought to have let the law take its course, and put my pride in my pocket. 'Twas a weakness, I own it; and now 'tis time to take my payment."

"No, my good friend, you did right to keep your name unstained. But I wonder, indeed I do, that John Trevanion has dared to show his face here again."

"Oh, 'tis no wonder," said the Squire bitterly. "No one knew of his crime but three, you and I and John Hammond; only Hammond had proof of it, and he is dead. My worthless cousin learnt of his death, I warrant you; the Devil has quick couriers for such as he; and he comes back, relying on my weakness and your holiness. But I'll speak no more of him; he is gone, and I hope I shall never see him again. There's my boy Dick: what is to become of him? He is seventeen; he ought to be making his way in the world. I can't put him to a profession; I keep him at home drudging for us; and but for your kindness, Carlyon, he would be as ignorant and raw as the meanest farm-hind. 'Tis not right; 'tis cruelty to the lad; and he will live to curse the day he was born a Trevanion."

"Come, come, this is not like you, Squire," said Mr. Carlyon warmly. "The lad is doing very well. He lives an open, honest life, and a useful one. What if his hands are horny? He makes good progress with his books, too, and will be fit in a year or two to win a sizarship at Oxford, and he will do well there, take orders, or maybe become secretary to some great person. You need fear nothing for Dick. No; 'tis for yourself and your good wife we must think. And now let us put our heads together. What say you to visiting Sir Bevil, and seeking further grace? I will myself undertake the office."

"Never!" cried the Squire firmly. "I will have no man supplicating and beseeching on my behalf. No; let what must come, come; never will I whine and grovel for mercy."

"You are an obstinate old fool, Roger Trevanion," said the parson, laying a friendly hand on the other's arm. "But I own I sympathise with your feeling. Well, then, my counsel is--and you may scorn it--do nothing."

"Nothing!"

"Simply wait. The foreclosure must come, I see that; but the other mortgagee has not moved; you will still have a roof above you; you make no profit of the mortgaged lands, and so will be not a whit worse off than you are now, save in the one point of pride. That pride of yours has been your snare, Trevanion."

"Well I know it!"

"I don't preach, except on Sundays, but I believe in my heart that this trouble will turn out for your good. Hold fast your rock, old friend; 'twas sound advice, even though it came from a witch. No man can give you better, and I am superstitious enough to believe that while you follow it the Trevanions will not come to beggary."

The two friends sat talking for some time longer. When the Squire rose to go away, he said--

"I thank you, Carlyon. You have done me good. I see nothing but darkness ahead, but I'll take your advice; I'll stick to the ship, and keep my colours flying, and who knows?--perhaps I shall weather it out after all."

They shook hands and parted, and the parson returned to his study to read over an ode of Horace in readiness for Dick's lesson next day.

After his conversation with Mr. Carlyon the Squire recovered his wonted serenity. So cheerful was he when he told his wife and son what was going to happen, that they refrained from giving utterance in his presence to their own feelings on the matter, for fear of bringing back his gloom. He rode over one day in the carrier's cart to Truro to pay the interest on the Towers mortgage with the proceeds of a fine litter of pigs, and showed his lawyer the letter he had received from his professional brother.

"An excellent practitioner, sharp as a needle," said the lawyer. "He came to me a while ago wanting to purchase the little bond I myself hold; but I refused him point-blank, and went so far as to express my surprise at Sir Bevil. He grinned at me, Mr. Trevanion--yes, grinned at me in the most unseemly way. 'Twas not Sir Bevil's doing: that is one comfort."

"Who bought up the bonds, then?"

"That I cannot tell you: I do not know. No doubt a stranger, who has more money than judgment. I am sorry for this; I am indeed; and if there were any chance of getting metal out of the earth I could have transferred your mortgages with the greatest ease. As it is--but there, I won't talk of it. As for my own little bond on the Towers, that may remain till Doomsday so far as I am concerned. It would cut me to the heart to see the old place in the hands of any one but a Trevanion."

"You're a good fellow, Trevenick," said the Squire, "and I'm grateful to you."

"Not at all, not at all, my dear sir. I am perfectly satisfied with my investment."

And the Squire returned home more cheerful than ever, convinced that lawyers were not all as dry as their parchments.

The allotted month sped away. One afternoon, when Dick was at the parson's, Sam Pollex ran at headlong speed up the road from the village, dashed into the house, and forgetting his manners, burst into the Squire's room without knocking or wiping his boots, as he had been strictly enjoined always to do.

"If 'ee please, sir," he panted, "there be a wagon full of females pulled up at the door o' the Dower House yonder."

"Indeed!" said the Squire. "Have you never seen females before, Sam?"

"Iss I have, sometimes, in the village; but these be furriners, sir."

"Well, maybe they'll buy your eggs, and that'll save you three-quarters of your walk to the village."

Sam went out, looking very much puzzled. What had brought foreign females to his master's house, he wondered? Within half an hour he was back again, this time a little less eager, though equally excited. He rapped on the door, and being bidden to enter, said, less breathlessly than before:

"If 'ee please, sir, I seed a man on a hoss ride up to Dower House, and he went inside, sir, and 'twas Maister John."

"Who? John who?" The questions came like pistol-shots.

"His other name be Trevanion, it do seem," said the boy.

The Squire got up in great agitation.

"Are you sure, boy?" he asked.

"No, sir, I bean't sure, 'cos I never seed un afore; but I axed Tom Penny, who was standing by, who 'twas, and he said, 'Why, ninny-watch, doan't 'ee know yer own maister's born cousin? 'Tis the same fine genel'um that give Ike Pendry a groat for carr'n his portmantel.'"

Then something happened that scared Sam out of his wits and sent him scampering to the kitchen for his father.

"Feyther, Feyther," he cried, "come quick! Squire's took bad. 'A went all gashly white and wambled about, sighin' and groanin' that terrible! He's dyin', I b'lieve."

Old Reuben was lame, but he caught up a jug of water and hobbled with it as fast as he could to the Squire's room, sending Sam to fetch the mistress. He found the Squire seated in his chair, with a stony look upon his ashen face.

"What ails thee, maister?" cried the terrified servant.

"Nothing, nothing, Reuben," replied Mr. Trevanion. "Don't be afraid, and don't alarm your mistress."

Here Mrs. Trevanion came hastily in, Sam hanging behind as if afraid to approach too near.

"I am sorry they called you, my dear," said the Squire. "There is nothing wrong. Leave us, Reuben."

The old man hobbled away. Mrs. Trevanion stood by her husband's chair.

"I was overcome for a moment, but it has passed," said the Squire. "John Trevanion is the master of my lands."

"It cannot be, Roger!"

"It is, it is. Sam saw a party of servants drive to the Dower House, and John himself ride up a while after."

"But, Roger, I do not understand."

"'Tis very simple. He has bought up the mortgages from Sir Bevil's attorney--'twas hard to believe that the foreclosure was Sir Bevil's doing--and has come to mock me and flout me at my own doors; ay, and to drive me away, if he can!"

"A penniless man, Roger! You told me he left here a beggar."

"Yes, a beggar, and worse--a thousand times worse. But that was ten years ago, and in ten years beggars may become rich, and scoundrels may tread down many an honest man. But he shall not tread me down. He may own my land, and fence me in, and do what he will; but the Towers is mine, and by heaven I will hold it!"

Discretion was one of Mrs. Trevanion's qualities. Being relieved to find that Sam's alarming report of the Squire's illness was exaggerated, if not wholly imaginary, she sought with her wonted tact to divert her husband's thoughts into a calmer channel, and soon had him interested in purely domestic matters.

The re-opening of the Dower House was already the all-engrossing topic of conversation among the old wives and young wives, fishers, farmers, tradesmen, loafers and small fry of Polkerran and the neighbourhood. The "wagon-full of females" of Sam's kindling eye turned out to be one plump woman of forty and one slim maid of half that age, the cook and housemaid whom John Trevanion had engaged, as afterwards appeared, in a Devonshire village. On the same day two heavy wagons, each drawn by four enormous horses, arrived from Truro with furniture, kitchen utensils, and other things needed in setting up house, and on the next appeared a couple of riding-horses in charge of a lively young groom.

These important events were retailed and freely commented on in the tap-room of the Five Pilchards.

"We shall see brave doings up at the old house, neighbours," said Doubledick, the innkeeper, to the group of fishermen idling there. "Maister John is a fine feller, that he be. He were allers the chap for a randy, and 'twill be a rare change for we to have some one as will have feastings and merry-makings arter the miserable cold time we've had wi' Squire."

"'A must have a heap o' gold and silver in his purse to pay for all they fine-lookin' things we seed goin' in," said one of the men. "Wheer 'd he get it all from, can 'ee tell us that, neighbour Doubledick?"

"I might if I put my mind to it," said Doubledick sententiously. "But it don't matter a mossel wheer it do come from; there 'tis, and we shall have the good o't. The lord-lieutenant 'll make un a magistrate, if I know the ways o' providence, and I do know summat about 'em, neighbours all; and if any of 'ee are brought up afore un for a innocent bit o' free-tradin', he'll not be the man to stretch the law against 'ee, not he."

"'Tis a terrible affliction for Squire, to be sure," said another. "There be no loving-kindness 'twixt 'em, if all's true as folks tell, and a dog can't abide seein' another run off with his bone, that bein' my simple way of speech."

"Squire be goin' down, that's the truth o't," said Doubledick. "Well, some goes up and some goes down, and all gets level in churchyard."

Sam Pollex lost no time in making acquaintance with the new household. On the day after their arrival he carried a basket of eggs to the back-door of the Dower House, and blushed to the roots of his hair when it was opened by a pretty Devonshire lass, who smiled sweetly on him, asked him the price, and said she would speak to Cook.

"She will take them," said the girl on her return, "and bids me say you must come to-morrow and she'll let 'ee know if any is addled. What be the name of 'ee, boy?"

"Sam Pollex, ma'am," said Sam sheepishly.

"And where do 'ee live?"

"Up at Towers, yonder."

"Well I never! Bean't that where Maister's cousin the Squire lives?"

"Iss, him and me lives there, and the mistress, and Feyther, and Maister Dick."

"Only think of it, now! Squire selling eggs like a common dairyman!"

"Squire don't sell 'em; 'tis me, and I take Mistress the money. Sometimes it come to two or three shilling a week, but the hens don't lay in winter, and then I sell sides o' pork and chitterlings."

"Well, run away now, boy--Sam Pollex, did you say? What a funny name! And mind you don't lose the money."

Sam went away all aglow with admiration of the sweet looks of the maid-servant, and told Mrs. Trevanion how kindly she had spoken to him. He was seized with a terrible depression of spirits when he left his mistress's presence.

"Never go there again to sell eggs, or anything else, Sam," she said firmly. "Your master will be very angry with you if he hears of it. Here is the money. Take it to your father, and mind you never do such a thing again."

Sam, with a rueful face, told Dick what had happened.

"I should think not, indeed," said Dick indignantly. "If I catch you going inside the gates of the Dower House grounds again I'll break your head, young Sam; you remember it."

For several days the Squire scarcely left the house. Then he happened to meet John Trevanion riding along the road. The supplanter swept off his hat with a mocking salutation, but the Squire passed him without a sign of recognition.

A day or two later Sir Bevil Portharvan, owner of an estate some miles distant, rode over to the Towers.

"Ah, Trevanion," he said to the Squire, "how d'ye do? 'Tis only yesterday I heard that your cousin was the purchaser of the bonds I held. It must be a great comfort to you that the property has not gone out of the family."

"Let me tell you, once for all, Sir Bevil," cried the Squire, his cheeks red with anger, "that the owner of the Dower House is a stranger to me. I will not speak to him, nor look at him, and I don't care who knows it."

"Dear me, I am sorry," said the astonished visitor. "I had no idea of it, or, believe me, Trevanion, I would never----"

"Enough, Sir Bevil. I have no grudge against you. You have been very long-suffering; I thank you for it; but I would have given you my property rather than it should fall into the hands of its present owner. I say no more."

And Sir Bevil told his friends that old Trevanion was growing very crusty, and it was a pity to see such paltry envy in a man of his years.

Chapter The Fourth

The Cave of Seals

Some few days afterwards, Mr. Mildmay, visiting the Towers once more, chanced to mention that as he passed St. Cuby's Cove in his cutter he had seen a couple of seals disporting themselves in the shallow water under the cliff. The conversation passed at once to other matters, but next morning Dick told Sam what the lieutenant had said, and suggested that they should go seal-hunting. Sam was nothing loth, and promised to accompany his young master as soon as he had fed the poultry and cleaned out the sties.

Seals were not often seen on the coast; indeed, Dick had only once before heard of their appearance, so that the proposed expedition had all the charm of novelty. While waiting for Sam, he went to the kitchen, where Reuben Pollex was washing the dishes, and asked him if he could tell him how to tackle a seal.

"That's more than I can do, Maister Dick," said the old man. "I never caught nawthin' but fish and rabbits, and maybe a stoat now and again; never seed a seal in my life."

"They're valuable, Reuben," said Dick. "The skins are worth a good deal. They are made into coats and tippets and such things for ladies, you know."

"The mistress wants a new coat, so 'twould come handy, and I wish 'ee luck. I've heerd tell that the critters sometimes hide in the cave yonder, though as no man, 's far 's I know, ever did see 'em there, it may be only guesswork."

The cave mentioned was at the head of St. Cuby's Cove. Its entrance was exposed only at low tide, and Dick had more than once visited it at such times, exploring its recesses by the light of a torch or one of the house lanterns. He had never made any interesting discovery there, and had for some years ceased to visit it.

"Didn't you tell me once that there is an entrance to the cave from the land side, Reuben?" he asked.

"Ay, folks used to say so when I was a boy, but I don't know as there be any truth in it. Once upon a time, long afore my day, there was a mine thereabouts, and maybe one of the adits ran down to the cave; but 'tis sixty year or more since the mine give out--in yer grandfer's time--and not a soul have been down in the workings ever since, 's far 's I know."

Here Sam appeared and announced that he was ready. The two lads, provided with a gun, a cutlass, a lantern, and a few candle-ends, proceeded to the spot on the beach of Trevanion Bay where their boat was moored, launched her, and rowed round the promontory to St. Cuby's Cove. The tide was running out, and as the interval during which the cave was free from water was very short, Dick and his companion worked the boat through the entrance with their hands as soon as there was room for them to pass between the roof and the surface of the sea.

The opening was at first a narrow tunnel in the cliff, but after some yards it began to widen gradually, and at length enlarged itself into a spacious vault, in which there was a continuous murmur, such as is heard on putting a shell to one's ear. By the time the boys reached it the tide had completely left the cave, and the boat stranded on a sandy beach, littered with rocks of all shapes and sizes, which had apparently fallen at various times from the roof. They lit their lantern, whose yellow rays fell on jagged granite walls, glistening shells, and slimy seaweed covering the rocks on the floor. Here and there were small pools which the tide never left dry, and where the light of the lantern revealed innumerable little marine creatures darting this way and that with extraordinary rapidity.

The boys made the boat fast by looping the painter round a jagged boulder. They moved warily, for the seal was a beast unknown to either of them, though Dick, in his total ignorance of these creatures of the deep, hardly expected to find them in the cave now that the sea had receded. Presently, however, they heard above the hollow murmur another sound, like the feeble bleat of a very young lamb. They peered about, moving the lantern to and fro, and at length discovered, lying on a rocky ledge at the inmost end of the cave, two small cream-coloured objects, scarcely more than a foot long, whose soft eyes blinked in the light, and from whose mouths issued plaintive cries of alarm.

"Bean't they proper little mites!" said Sam, putting out his hand to touch them.

"Don't do that!" cried Dick hastily; "the old ones may be about, and if they're like other beasts, they'll attack us if they think we'll hurt their young."

"Shan't we take 'em, then?" asked Sam.

"Of course not; they're too young."

"And shan't we look for the old uns?"

"No; the young ones would die if we killed the parents. We must come again later on, when they're old enough to take care of themselves. But our day shan't be wasted. We'll see if we can find the other entrance to the cave."

"What other entrance?"

"Your father says 'tis thought that at one time there was a way in from an adit above."

"I can't believe it. The free-traders would have found it long afore this if so 'twere."

"I don't know. The adit wouldn't be an easy passage for them with their bales and kegs. But don't let us waste time; the tide will be running back soon."

They followed the irregular circuit of the cave, thrusting the lantern into every recess and hollow, holding it high and low, but discovering nothing except the same rugged and apparently impenetrable wall.

"There bean't no opening," said Sam at length. "'Twas fiddle-faddle to say there be."

"Perhaps it is high above us, out of reach," suggested Dick.

"Where's the sense o' that?" replied Sam, disappointed of the anticipated sport. "What mortal good would it be to any soul alive to make an opening where 'ee'd break yer neck if you come to it?"

Dick did not answer, craning his neck to scan the heights above him. The light of the lantern failed to penetrate the overarching gloom. The roof of the cave was invisible, and the walls appeared to rise perpendicularly, with projections here and there that looked, in the spectral glimmer, like the grotesque gargoyles on a church-tower.

"I'd like to climb up there," said Dick at length.

"Lawk-a-massy, you'd break yer neck for sure. 'Tis a 'mazing hard job to climb the cliff arter gulls' eggs, but this be death and burial."

"We could do it with a ladder."

"Our ladder bean't long enough by half; the only ladders long enough be they in church-tower, and they be too heavy to lug here, and sexton wouldn't let us take 'em. Scrounch it all, Maister Dick, I do think 'ee be muddled in yer head to think o' sech daring doings. See now, tide's comin' in, and we don't want to be drownded."

"That's the most sensible thing you've said for a while, Sam. We'll go now, but I won't give it up. We'll get a ladder, or make one, and come back another day. I'm determined to find out if there really is an opening."

"Well, Feyther says most heads do have a magget in 'em, like turmits, and this be yours; 'tis indeed."

They loosed the boat, and paddled out as they had come, Dick resolving, in spite of his follower's damping attitude, to return before long, and make a thorough exploration of the place.

Later in the day, as he walked home from the Parsonage, he was struck with an idea of a contrivance for serving his purpose. He consulted old Reuben about it when he got home, and Sam, on returning from an errand in the village, found his father and Dick hard at work in an outhouse, splicing short lengths of rope, and fixing them at regular intervals between two thin but strong poles about six feet long.

"What be doin', Feyther?" asked Sam.

"Use yer eyes, sonny, and put a name to 't yerself," replied Reuben.

"Well, if I was to speak my thought, I'd say 'ee was makin' a ladder that 'ud let a man down as soon as he put a foot on it."

"Then 'tis for you to make it stronger, my son, babe and sucklin' as 'ee be. T'ud be a sin to let so much cleverness run to seed. Strip off yer coat and lay into it, and keep yer tongue quiet, for if 'ee set all the organs of yer body goin' at once, you'll die young."

This implied rebuke had the effect of making Sam enter zealously into the work, and before supper two light ladders were finished, each six feet long, which, together with a short ladder of the ordinary kind that Reuben used in his duties about the premises, provided Dick with a total length of eighteen or twenty feet. His notion was to carry these separate pieces down to the cave, and then lash them together to form one continuous whole.

He fixed on the following afternoon for his second visit to the cave. The morning turned out very wet, the rain pouring down in quite unusual volume; but the sky cleared after dinner, and the two boys set off, timing themselves as before to reach the cave when the ebbing tide left the entrance free. Again the baby seals were alone, and much as Dick would have liked a tussle with their parents, his sporting bent was for the time subordinate to his wish to find the supposed landward entrance to the cave.

The ladder perfectly answered its purpose, but it was disappointing to find that it was by no means long enough. Even when Dick, the taller of the two, stood on the topmost rung, Sam holding the ladder steady at the bottom, he saw that the walls still stretched for several feet above him. But the roof was now in sight, an irregular arch, consisting of knobs, wedges, and inverted pyramids of rock, and Dick felt the tantalising certainty that the opening, if opening there was, could not be far away.

They went all round the cave, setting the ladder up at frequent intervals, Dick exploring every foot of the jagged wall with the aid of his lantern. There were plenty of recesses and depressions, ranging from a finger's breadth to the length of his arm; but he did not find one where he was unable to touch the back of it with his outstretched hand. It was clear that the opening, if it existed, must be above his head.

"We shall have to make another length of ladder, and come back again," he said to Sam. "I won't give it up."

He was standing high on the ladder as he spoke, dangling the lantern by a ring at the top. The words were scarcely out of his mouth when there was a tremendous crash, which shook the place, and so much startled him that, in an instinctive movement to cling on to something, he let the lantern fall. It lighted fairly on the top of Sam's head, bounced off, and dropped with a thud to the sandy floor, where the candle was instantly extinguished.

"Are you hurt, Sam?" cried Dick, anxiously.

"Rabbit it all!" roared Sam, in high indignation. "Do 'ee think my head be wood then? Bean't I got feelings like any other common man? My skull have got a furrow in it a yard long, and I may rub it till I'm dead, I'll never straighten it out again."

"I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it, Sam. Light the candle again, will you, so that we can see what has happened."

Sam growled and grunted as he struck a light from his tinder-box. The rekindled candle revealed a strange catastrophe. A huge mass of the wall and roof of the cavern had collapsed, owing perhaps to the heavy rains in the morning, and the debris was lying in a heap against the opening of the tunnel leading to the exterior.

"If this bean't a pretty kettle of fish, never call me Sam again," said the boy in consternation. "'Tis closed up; we be shet in."

Dick climbed down the ladder, and crossed the floor of the cave to see the extent of the mischief. It was as Sam had said. Their exit was barred by a mass of rock and loose soil that must weigh several tons.

"Quick, Sam!" cried Dick, "we must work hard to clear it away. The tide will be on the turn, and we don't want to be imprisoned here all night."

They began to work with all haste, but soon found that the task would be a long one. The smaller pieces of rock were easily cast aside; but there were many large masses which, besides being heavy and cumbersome themselves, were very difficult to move by reason of the earth in which they were imbedded. The boys had made but little progress when the sea began to creep in.

"We'll be drownded alive!" said Sam, now in a state of terror.

"Work, then. Shove your hardest, Sam; we'll do it yet."

They tugged and hauled and pushed with fierce energy, and by employing their united strength upon the largest masses, they succeeded in clearing a path wide enough to allow room for the boat. By this time the water was almost up to their knees, and they heard the boat graze the rocks as it floated on the incoming tide. Loosing the painter, they pushed the craft through the tunnel, only to find, when they approached the seaward opening, that but a small segment of the sky was visible, the gap being too shallow to afford a passage.

"We are trapped, Sam; there's no denying it," said Dick quietly. "But don't be alarmed. I don't suppose the water reaches the roof of the cave even at high tide, so that we can float in the boat quite safely. It only means a few hours' imprisonment."

"If I've got to be jailed, I'd rather be in village lock-up; 'tis dry at any rate. Can't we swim out, Maister Dick?"

"Of course we can, but I doubt whether we had better do it. There's a dozen yards or more under water first, and then a good half-mile outside before we can land. We should get pretty well knocked about on the rocks if there's any swell on the sea. We had much better stay here."

Sam gloomily assented to this course. They got into the boat, and sat there for some time watching it rise gradually as the tide grew higher.

"Hang me for a jackass!" cried Dick suddenly.

"What have 'ee been and done?" asked Sam with concern.

"Why, we haven't got gun, cutlass, or any other weapon."

"'A b'lieve not," said Sam, "but we couldn't keep out the tide with un if we had forty guns and fifty cutlasses."

"The seals! They'll come back with the tide, and be in a terrible rage with us, thinking we're after their babies."

"Be-jowned if I thought of it! 'Twas a true word; you do be a great jackass, sure enough."

"Mind what you say, Sam, or I'll throw you out."

"'Twas your word, not mine. I wouldn't go so far as that. Ninnyhammer is the worst I'd call 'ee. But I told 'ee how 'twould be, with yer head itchin' with this magget of openin's and ladders and all that."

"Be ready to use the boat-hook, or the anchor, if the seals attack us. I'll use one of the oars."

"I don't believe we'll have to fight at all," cried Sam. "Look 'ee! There be they two young seals swimmin' out to find the old uns. They bean't so young as you thought if they can swim like that, and we med as well have took 'em yesterday as not."

"Well, 'tis too late now. They're gone."

"To get their supper, I reckon. I be mortal hungry, Maister Dick, arter all that work. Have 'ee got a morsel of bread in yer pocket?"

"Not a bit."

"Not a apple or codling?"

"Not one."

"I could eat a turmit or a raw tater. But don't name 'em to me, or I shall feel very bad for thinkin' of 'em. Best thing is to go to sleep when yer hungry, 'cos you don't feel it then."

"Well, sleep. I'll wake you if anything happens."

The boy curled himself up in the bottom of the boat, and soon filled the cavern with his snores.

Chapter The Fifth

St. Cuby's Well

To see another eat when oneself is hungry, or sleep when oneself is wakeful, is surely very trying to the temper, except to those happily-constituted individuals who are incapable of envy. Dick Trevanion was as generous-hearted a boy as you could wish; but as the time went by, unmarked by anything but the slow rise of the boat and the quick dwindling of the candle in the lantern, he looked at Sam's open mouth with impatience, listened to his untuneful solo with dislike, and felt a deplorable desire to kick him. He had no watch, and bethought himself that it might be as well, when he got home, to test the duration of a candle, so that if he were ever in such a predicament again he might at least have a clock of King Alfred's sort. Every now and then he snuffed the coarse wick, and when the tallow had sunk almost to the socket, he substituted another candle-end that he happened to have in his pocket. Beyond this he had nothing to employ him.

But by-and-by, as the roof of the vault came nearer to him with the gradual lifting of the boat, an idea struck him. Why not use the boat as a raised platform for the ladder, and so contrive to examine an additional ten or twelve feet of the walls? The ladder!--it was floating on the surface of the water, heaving simultaneously with the boat as the tide gently rippled in.

"Wake up, Sam!" he called.

Sam snored on.

"Wake up!" cried Dick again, leaning over and pinching the sleeper's nose.

Sam struck out with his fist, as any honest English boy would have done, without opening his eyes. But at a third call he roused himself, sat up, and rubbing those heavy organs vigorously, sighed like a furnace, and then said sleepily:

"Why, where be I?"

"In dreamland, I should think," replied Dick, laughing. "Wake up! I want you to hold the ladder against the wall while I climb again."

"In twelve feet o' water! Not me; I bean't growed enough for that. 'Tis work for a giant."

"Not on the ground, of course; in the boat, I mean."

Sam looked dubious.

"Won't it wamble? And if you tumble you'll sink us."

"Well, we can try. Take hold of the end of the ladder floating by you, and I'll paddle close to the wall."

On lifting the ladder, they found that its top came within a few feet of the roof. But when Dick began to climb, he descended in a hurry, for the ladder being of necessity set up at an angle, every upward step drove the boat from the wall towards the middle of the cave.

"Be-jowned if we can do it!" cried Sam. "That there openin' will be the death o' me."

Dick was at a loss. There was no way of keeping the boat in a fixed position. Even if he dropped the anchor and it held in the sandy bottom, the boat would still have a range of movement that altogether prohibited the success of his plan. He looked gloomily at Sam; it was vexatious to be baulked when achievement was so near. Sam, with his hands on the sides of the ladder, was gazing up its length, his eyes gradually converging as they travelled higher, until they seemed almost to be looking at each other. All at once they reverted to their natural position, and he cried:

"I've got a noble thought, I do b'lieve."

"What's that?"

"Why, 'tis as easy as anything. See that place, Maister Dick, up aloft there, where the wall goes in summat?"

"Well, what then?"

"I'll show 'ee. You'd never ha' thought of it, 'cos you was lookin' down instead o' lookin' up."

He drew down the ladder until its whole length lay along one side of the boat.

"Look 'ee here," he said. "We'll take the anchor, and fix it upright in middle of the ladder, lash it to the top rung, do 'ee see?" He suited the action to the word. "There! Now 'tis a hook, or a clutch, or whatever name you like to gie un. We'll lift un again till it hooks on that ledge; then it will hang free, and you can climb as easy as climbing trees."

"A capital notion, Sam," cried Dick.

"I said it was, purticler for a poor mazy stunpoll of a feller like me."

"You're a genius if it works out. The thing is to try it."

Raising the ladder to its former position, they moved it along the face of the wall until one fluke of the anchor held firmly to the ledge of rock, as they proved by exerting a considerable downward strain.

"This is splendid," said Dick. "Now to go up."

"Ah, don't 'ee take the lantern with 'ee this time. I don't want no more cracks on the nob, and if it fell again, 't 'ud get soused in the water, and then we'd be in darkness."

"You're right. I'll take the candle out and stick it in my hat as the miners do. I must have a light, of course."

"I reckon you must, if you be goin' to find that openin'," said Sam, sceptical to the last.

Dick stuck the lighted candle into the band of his hat, stepped out of the boat, and began to climb, Sam watching his progress and offering bits of cautionary counsel. In a few seconds, when Dick's head projected above the anchor, he saw that the ledge of rock, extending for some distance on both sides, was the floor of a roughly rectangular fissure, which penetrated the earth much as the tunnel below penetrated the cliff. It ran upwards. The smoky light from the candle did not reach far, but Dick, peering over the ledge, was unable to see any solid background to the fissure.

"I've found the opening!" he said.

"What do 'ee say?" called Sam. "Yer voice sounds all a mumble and a rumble."

Clinging firmly to the ledge with both hands, Dick lowered his head and repeated the words.

"Now yer satisfied, then," said Sam. "Better come down afore the candle goes out."

"No. I'm going on."

"But chok' it all, you won't leave me all alone! I'm not afeard, not I; but if there be three or four seals a-comin' home by-and-by, I can't fight 'em all."

"You must come up too when I've looked a little farther."

"But you can't climb on to the ledge without summat to hold to. Maister Dick, think of yer feyther and mother, and what I'm to say if 'ee falls and breaks yer neck, and I take 'ee home a gashly corp."

"Don't talk rubbish. I shan't fall if you don't worry me. I'm not going to sit for hours longer in the boat till the tide goes down, so hold your tongue till I am safe aloft."

Leaning well forward, he carefully lifted his foot to the next rung, then to the next, watching the anchor to see that it was not displaced by his movements. Then he got one knee on the rocky shelf, stretched his arms in front of him, and with a sudden movement heaved his body on to the ledge and fell flat, his feet projecting into space. He crawled along on hands and knees until his boots disappeared from Sam's view, and stood up within the dark entrance of the fissure.

"I'm up, Sam," he called, his voice reverberating hollowly in the vault.

"Then I be comin' too," cried the boy.

"Not yet. You must wait a little until I see where the opening leads to. I'll come back for you presently."

He turned his face to the opening and went in. Dim as the light was, he recognised almost at once that he was at the end of a mine adit. Within a few paces the fissure narrowed to a dwarf tunnel, through which a tiny stream trickled, disappearing, not over the ledge into the cave, but into a fissure in the wall of rock. There was space for only two persons to pass abreast, and as Dick proceeded, he had to bend his head to avoid striking the roof. He was about to explore further, when he remembered that the candle in his hat could not last more than a few minutes, and to advance in the dark would be foolhardy. He had no more candles, and supposed that Sam had none, so that it seemed as if he must postpone further exploration. But returning to the ledge, he saw a light in the cave.

"You've got some more candle-ends, then?" he cried.

"One, that I've just fished up out of my pocket along with a bit of string, some bait, a bit o' pudden that I'd forgot--can't eat it now, hungry as I be, 'cos 'tis all tallowed--and a green penny."

"I want the candle, Sam; mine's going out. Can you pitch it up?"

"I can, but it 'ud only fall back into the water and go to the bottom."

"Wait. I've a bit of string in my pocket. I'll let it down; tie the candle on."

"I must do it, I suppose. Iss, you shall have it, and I'll be left in the dark, but I'm not afeard--not very."

In a minute Dick had the fresh candle in his hat-band, and once more entered the tunnel.

It was very damp, and Dick guessed from the trickling stream at his feet that the adit had been designed, when the mine was in operation, to drain the upper workings. How long ago this was he had no idea. It must have been long before old Reuben's time, or the man would have had more definite knowledge than he actually possessed, and the existence of the opening would have been known as a fact instead of being a mere fragment of village tradition.

Dick went on. In some parts the tunnel was almost impassable with earth and rocks that had fallen in. Step as cautiously as he might, every now and then the rattle of loose earth displaced by his movements caused a cold shiver to run down his back. What if there should be a fall behind him which would cut off his retreat to the cave? The tunnel ought to lead to an opening to the air above, but the way might be blocked, and the possibility of being entombed was daunting. But having come so far Dick was unwilling to give in. The peril might be purely imaginary. Plucking up his courage, he hastened his steps, and after a few minutes came to an enlargement of the tunnel. To his left a second gallery ran downward at a sharp angle with that in which he was; no doubt this also led to some point of the shore. Still advancing, he saw, with some surprise, that the passage was strutted in places, and much freer from obstructions than the portion he had already traversed. About a hundred yards beyond the transverse gallery, however, his progress was suddenly checked: the whole width of the tunnel was filled with a mass of rocks, stones, and loose earth. A few seconds' examination sufficed to show the impossibility of proceeding farther in this direction; accordingly he retraced his steps and, a few yards away, came to another passage, to find, however, after twenty or thirty paces, that he was again brought to a stop.

This time the obstruction was of a different nature. It was a rough door made of stout wooden beams, closed with a heavy bar resting in sockets. He lifted the bar and pulled the creaking door, which came towards him for an inch or two, and then stuck. To open it fully he had to remove from the floor a number of planks and beams, which appeared to be the parts of a broken windlass. Having got the door open and passed through, he found himself in a square chamber that smelt very damp and close, though, on looking upwards, he could see no roof. He concluded that he was at the bottom of a deep shaft. But it had not the look of a mine shaft, which, so far as Dick's experience went, was always timbered. The walls here were cased with stone, moss-grown and damp.

Near the doorway he caught sight of a staple of rusty iron let into the wall; a little above this, a second of the same kind; and at the same interval above the second, a third. Looking up the wall, he perceived that similar staples projected from the stonework as far up as the flickering light of his candle revealed. Their shape, and the intervals between them, indicated that they were steps by which the wall could be climbed. And then it flashed upon him suddenly that he was in an ancient well, known as St. Cuby's Well, though who St. Cuby was nobody knew except, perhaps, Mr. Carlyon, deeply learned in the antiquities of his county. The upper end of the well-shaft opened on the cliff, about a quarter-mile from the cottage of old Joe Penwarden, the exciseman. It was covered by the ivy-grown ruins of a small oratory, whither in times long past the faithful had come to have their children baptised in the water of the holy well, to drink of it for the cure of their diseases, and to offer up vows and repeat prayers before the sacred cross.

Strange as it may seem, Dick's first impulse, when the identity of his whereabouts flashed upon him, was to dash through the doorway and scamper with all imaginable speed back to the cave. He was not more superstitious than other boys of his age; but in those days, before old beliefs and fancies had undergone the cold douche of science, people were credulous of omens and spells, blessings and curses, beneficent influences and the evil eye. From St. Cuby's Well the aroma of sanctity had long since departed; according to village tradition, a murder of peculiar horror had once been committed there; and now it was shunned as a plague spot. No pilgrims came to kneel beneath the sacred roof; no children ever played hide and seek among its picturesque ruins; everybody, from the Squire downwards, avoided it, and at night not a man would have ventured within a hundred yards of its unhallowed precincts. Stories were rife of apparitions seen there; it was these ghosts of which Ike Pendry had spoken to John Trevanion on the night when he had overtaken the trudging pedestrian on the high road.

Dick, of course, had no belief in ghosts, and regarded the stories with as much intellectual contempt as his father gave to the witch's couplet. But his imagination was subject to impressions which his reason scorned; and in the gloom of the well-shaft, which the yellow rays of his candle rendered more awful than complete darkness could have been, these vague conceptions of murder, sacrilege, and midnight hauntings possessed his mind so completely as at first to overwhelm his common-sense. But he resolutely crushed down these figments of his imagination, told himself that such evil traditions might probably be traced to no more real origin than the failure of the spring of water, and decided to go back for his companion and put an end to their captivity by climbing up the iron steps to the surface of the cliff.

"Oh, I am glad to see 'ee," cried Sam, as his young master's head appeared at the brink of the ledge. "I bean't afeard, not I, but 'twas 'nation dark, and I felt a queer wamblin' in the inside o' me, 'cos I'm tarrible hungry, I reckon."

"Well, come along. I've found the way out. The opening leads to St. Cuby's Well, and we can climb to the top in no time."

"St. Cuby's Well! Dash my bones if I go within a mile o't. Dead men's bones, and sperits o' darkness--no, never will I do it."

"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Dick, as stoutly as if he had never felt the least tremor on his own account. "I've seen no bones, and the spirits haven't laid a hand on me. Those silly tales only frighten children."

"And females. Ah, 'tis a pity the mistress won't let me take eggs and things to the Dower House. What I could tell to that nice young female wi' the hole in her rosy cheeks! How they'd go yaller and white when she heerd my tale of blood, and ghosteses in night-gowns, and all the other things o' darkness! Ah, 'twas to be, I s'pose: she'll hear it from some one else, and I shan't get the credit of it."

"No; she'll hear that you were too much of a baby to face 'em, and she'll despise you, instead of thinking well of you as she does now."

"Don't say it, Maister Dick," cried the boy. "Scrounch me if I lose my fame in that miserable way. I'll come, if you'll stand by me, and hold my hand if we hears a noise, and use your finest language to the sperits if they meddle wi' us. I've heerd tell that the Lord's prayer said back'ards will tarrify 'em out of their wits, but I reckon yer head's full of ancient heathen words that go straightfor'ard, and won't put 'ee to such a tarrible tax as turnin' religion topsy-turvy."

This was said as Sam climbed with deliberate care up the ladder. He gained the ledge more easily than Dick had done, having the help of Dick's hand.

"Can we get there afore candle's out?" he said anxiously, when they stood side by side.

"If we make haste," replied Dick, taking off his hat and looking at the inch-and-a-half of candle left, and the mass of tallow that lay on the brim like a small lake of lava. "We can fetch the boat at low-tide to-morrow."

They hurried on, and, Dick knowing the way, reached the shaft in much quicker time than when he had come alone. Sam got behind him at the doorway, peering under his armpits with wide eyes, and taking much comfort when he saw nothing but mossy walls.

"I'm downright shamed o' folks that believe in such gammut," he said, valiantly following Dick into the chamber.

"Well, now we'll climb up. It must be after sunset, or we should see a glimmer of light at the top. I'll go first."

"No, I'd better go first," said Sam hastily, looking round with something of his former air of timorous expectation. "You see, if you go first, the brim of yer hat will shet out all the light, and I'll miss my footing and be nawthin' but scattered members. But if I go first, do 'ee see, and you come close behind me--but not close enough to set my stockings afire--the light will be ekal betwixt us two. Do 'ee see my manin', Maister Dick?"

"Quite plain. I don't mind. We'll try one or two of the staples first, to make sure they are firm in the stonework, and then you can mount, and as your hind foot leaves one step, my fore hand will clutch it."

The staples stood the test of pulling, first by Dick, then by Sam, who also tried them, on the plea that he had more muscle. Then Sam began to climb, followed closely by Dick. After an ascent of perhaps a hundred feet, the former declared that he felt a whiff of fresh air, and immediately afterwards the candle flame was blown out. Looking up past Sam's fore-shortened body, Dick saw one star in the clear dark vault of the sky, and in a few seconds they were both standing on the ground beside the well-head, cooled by the breeze that blew through the ruined walls of the chapel from the sea. The roof had gone long ago; grass grew on the floor, and ivy twined itself in and out of the mullioned windows.

"There!" said Dick. "We are safe, you see. All that talk of ghosts is pure balderdash."

The darkness and the weird associations of the spot combined to make him set his tone of voice to a murmur. At that moment there fell upon the ears of the boys, as they stood side by side to recover breath after their climb, a low sound from somewhere beyond the walls, but not far away. It was like that of a person speaking in hollow, mournful accents. Sam caught Dick by the arm; Dick heard his teeth chatter.

"'Tis he!" whispered the trembling boy. "'Tis the ghost! Oh! let me hide myself afore he see I."

Dick did not reply. He was, it must be confessed, sufficiently startled. The sound ceased; but in a moment or two it recommenced, now being somewhat louder. Dick was in two minds, now thinking that he would run, now wondering whether he had not better stay. The slow droning still approached, and at last he caught articulate words:

"A-deary me! A-deary me! The world's a-cold, a bitter place for----"

The next words were indistinguishable.

"Hark to him!" whispered Sam. "He be in mortal pain, and I do feel that leery all down the small o' my back."

Dick sniffed, and sniffed again. Then he said:

"Ghosts don't smoke, Sam--at any rate, not tobacco. I'm going to see."

"How do 'ee know?" whispered Sam, still holding him by the arm. "I won't be so much afeard of him if he do be smoking bacca, but it may be summat else. It do smell rayther strong for a livin' man."

He followed Dick as he groped his way over fragments of masonry and through close-woven masses of ivy and weeds, until they came into the open. The night was very dark. The first thing they saw, at a distance of about twelve yards, was a small red glow, which brightened and faded at intervals. Drawing nearer to it cautiously, they perceived at the moments of greatest brightness that it lit up for an instant a grizzled chin, a sunken mouth, a quite ordinary nose, a ruddy face with a black patch over one eye, and a black hat over all.

"'Tis old Joe Penwarden," said Dick, in a tone that expressed surprise, relief, and a shame-faced consciousness.

"So 'tis, I do believe," cried Sam. "Be-jowned if 'a didn't ought to be locked up for playing such gashly tricks on poor souls."

"Avast there! Stand, in the King's name!" cried the old man, hearing their voices.

"So we will, so we will," said Sam. "Don't 'ee be afeard, maister; we bean't ghosteses, but just common mortals like yerself."

"Oh! 'tis you, Maister Dick," said Penwarden, as the boys came up to him. "'Pon my life, I was skeered for about a second and a half, never expectin' to see mortal men in this old haunt. What be 'ee doin' at this time o' night, in such a place, too?"

"What time is it, Joe?" asked Dick.

"Time all young things like lambs and birds and boys were abed and asleep. 'Tis past ten."

"Lawk-a-massy, if I didn't think it by the terrible emptiness in my inside," cried Sam, feelingly. "Come home-along, Maister Dick; I be mortal afeard as Feyther will send me to bed wi'out any supper."

"Wait a bit," replied Dick. "Where do you think we've been, Joe?"

"Not night-fishing, for ye've got no tackle. Nor rabbitin', for ye've got no snares. Ah, well! Ye med as well tell me first as last, for I be no good at guessin'."

"We've come up St. Cuby's Well."

"Come up, you say; but you must go down afore ye come up. I wouldn't like to say I don't believe 'ee."

"That would be very unfriendly. The truth is, Joe, we were down in the cave and got shut in by the tide, and to pass the time away we climbed up over a ledge and found ourselves in an old adit, and went along it till we came to the well-shaft. There are iron steps in the wall, and up we came."

"Well, if that bean't the queerest thing I've heerd for many a day. Who would ever ha' thowt it!"

"Didn't you know there were steps down the well side?

"Never heerd tell o' sech a thing."

"But haven't you seen it for yourself? I was thinking that, perhaps, you being here now, you knew all about it, and the idea did cross me that you might be the ghost people talk about, though to be sure you don't look like one."

"Bless 'ee, I've never set foot inside they walls. Sometimes of a night I come ramblin' round to smoke a peaceful pipe and meditate on the days o' my youth afore I turn in, but as for goin' inside--no, I've never thowt o't."

"Was 'ee afeard you med see the ghost, maister?" asked Sam, rejoicing to think that he had a fellow in timorousness.

"Well, no. A ghost is a sperit, they say, and I reckon I've got enough muscle in my aged arm to fend off a thing as has got no body."

"Still, you was talkin' to yerself as if ye was in great pain and sorrer. 'A-deary me,' 'ee said; I heard 'ee twice; and then 'the world's a-cold,'--and I s'pose 'ee felt the need o' takin' a comfortin' pull at yer pipe, for I heerd no more."

"It do show how young small chickerels like 'ee may be mistaken. Whenever I talk like that I be feelin' warmish and contented; remember that, young Sam, and don't traipse about spreadin' false reports about me. Moreover, don't 'ee tell nothing of yer climbing up the well, for 'a don't want the village rampin' round, spoilin' my peacefulness. St. Cuby's ghost hev his uses, and long may he walk."

"Very well, Joe," said Dick, "we'll say nothing about it. There have been no runs yet, I suppose?"

"No; 'tis early days for that. 'Tis true as Mr. Mildmay was called off Morvah way to-day. Maybe they'll try a run there to-night. But it won't be long afore we have trouble here, I reckon, for the pilchurs are late this year, and when they're late, smugglin' is early, 'cos the men get tired o' doin' nothing."

"Well, we had better be going. I usually tell Mother when I expect to be late, fishing or what not, and she'll wonder what has become of me. Are you coming our way, Joe?"

"Not yet, sir. I've a bit more meditation to get through first."

"What do you meditate about?" asked Dick.

"About my days o' youth, when I was a nimble young feller and served the King afloat. Ah! they were days, they were. Lord Admiral Nelson be a fine little chap, but nothing to the admiral I served with."

"Who was that?"

"Lord Admiral Rodney. Never shall I forget the time he spoke to me: yes, lord as he was, he did so. It do warm me of a cold night to think of it. Not every simple mariner could say he'd been spoke to ashore by sech a high person as a admiral."

"What did the lord high admiral say to 'ee?" asked Sam, much impressed.

"Well, 'twas on Plymouth Hoe, and the admiral was walking with two handsome females, showing 'em Drake's Island; Drake was another mariner, you must know, as lived about a thousand year ago, seemingly. Well, I turned round to look at the great man, and that moment he changed his course, put up his helm, ye may say, and ran across my bows. 'Get out o' the way, you cross-eyed son of a sea-cook!' says he to me. Ah! never shall I forget it, nor the tinkly laugh o' they fine females. 'Twas a great honour to be spoke to special by Lord Admiral Rodney, a fine feller of a man."

"I don't wonder it keeps you warm," said Dick, laughing. "Good-night, Joe."

"Good-night to you, sir. And young Sam, mind 'ee o' what I said."

"Make yourself easy, maister," returned Sam. "Oh, dear, what a thing it 'ud be to tell the maidy at the Dower House if on'y Squire warn't so cruel!"

"What are you mumblin' about?"

"Nawthin', Maister Penwarden. I were on'y thinkin' to myself what a lot o' folk 'ud be mazed if they knowed what sorrerful things ye do say when yer happy."

Chapter The Sixth

Penwarden does his Duty

Late as it was, neither Dick nor Sam was fated to get any sleep for hours. They walked rapidly without speaking across the cliff towards the Towers, being in fact so tired and hungry that the thoughts of both were fixed on supper and bed. There was no path on this part of the cliff, except a faint track which daylight would have revealed, where the grass had been slightly worn by Joe Penwarden in his marchings to and fro. Ordinary pedestrians always avoided the windings of the shore, taking the high road farther inland.

The boys had come within a hundred yards of Penwarden's cottage, when Sam all at once took Dick by the sleeve, saying:

"Look, Maister Dick, there be some one at old Joe's door."

It was too dark to see clearly, but Dick could just distinguish, now that it was pointed out to him, a dark form close against the whitewashed cottage on the side facing the sea.

"It's very odd at this time of night," he said. "We had better go and tell the man, whoever he is, where he can find Joe."

They hurried on, but had not gone more than half-way to the cottage when the figure moved from the door, and walked quickly in the direction of the Towers. There was a footpath at the back of the garden, over which the villagers had an immemorial right of way, though it was really the Squire's private property.

Dick was on the point of calling out when Sam checked him.

"That be Jake Tonkin," he said, quietly: "I know un by his bow legs. What med he want wi' old Joe, now?"

Jake was the son of Isaac Tonkin, the expertest fisher, the boldest seaman, and the most cunning and resourceful smuggler in the village. Isaac was a rough, quick-tempered fellow, violent when roused, but honest according to his lights; and Dick had a certain admiration for him, as every boy must have for a strong man who excels in bold and daring deeds. Once or twice he had gone fishing in Tonkin's smack, and had learnt a good deal from the man's blunt speech and craftsmanlike actions.

It was perfectly well known in the neighbourhood that Tonkin was the ringleader of the smugglers, but owing to his wariness and craft, and to the supineness of the revenue officer who had preceded Mr. Mildmay, nothing had ever been openly proved against him, and he had never been caught in the act. In the previous winter he had narrowly escaped a conflict with Mr. Mildmay, then in his first year of duty at this part of the coast; and it was common talk in the village that he resented the intrusion, as he regarded it, of so zealous an officer, and had promised to give the revenue men a very hot time if they interfered with him. It was he whose presence John Trevanion had remarked as he passed the open door of the tap-room in Doubledick's inn.

Dick was as much surprised as Sam to find that Penwarden's visitor was Tonkin's son. There was naturally no love lost between the exciseman and the free-traders, who had, however, looked upon him with a sort of contemptuous tolerance until Mr. Mildmay came. The old man had been harmless enough in the days of Mr. Curgenven; not that he was remiss in his duty, but that his efforts had been rendered nugatory by his superior's apathy. The advent of Mr. Mildmay acted as a stimulus; Penwarden was in truth fearful of being thought too old for his work, and seemed to set himself deliberately to prove the contrary to the officer. More than once in the previous winter he had prevented a run by his timely warnings; and though the checks were only temporary, the smugglers were annoyed with him for the difficulties he threw in their way. It was therefore strange that young Tonkin should have gone to visit, so late at night, a man from whom the smugglers in general held severely aloof. Suddenly Dick remembered what Penwarden had said about Mr. Mildmay having been summoned to Morvah, twenty-five miles or more down the coast. It was a favourite device of the smugglers, by aid of confederates, to decoy the officers to distant parts when they were intending to make a run, and Dick could not help wondering whether they were putting it in practice on the present occasion. But it did not explain Jake Tonkin's visit, and Dick was now sufficiently interested to think no more of his fatigue and hunger in his desire to ascertain what was afoot. He knew that it was no business of his; the Squire had carefully abstained from taking sides in the perennial quarrel between the smugglers and the revenue men, and had indeed resigned his magistracy, partly because of his reduced circumstances, but quite as much in order to avoid any official action as a county justice. Dick did not intend to break this neutrality; he was simply curious and athirst for excitement.

But he reflected that he could hardly satisfy his curiosity without spying on Jake Tonkin, and this was out of the question. He would have ruefully done nothing more had he not seen that the lad, instead of keeping to the path that ran directly to the village, struck off to the left along a track that led nowhere but to the Dower House. This raised his curiosity to a still higher pitch. What had Tonkin to do with John Trevanion? Knowing that his father and John were on bad terms, and having seen many little indications that the latter was bent on annoying his cousin, it was natural that he should wonder whether the interests of the Squire were in any way affected by the apparent connection between John and the smugglers. After a little hesitation, he sent Sam into the Towers, to reassure his parents and then go to bed, and went on himself after the waddling figure of Jake Tonkin, now almost out of sight.

Walking quickly, he was in time to see Jake enter an outhouse at the rear of the mansion. The door closed behind him, and Dick, taking a look round, and seeing no one, ran swiftly to the building and peeped through the window. The room was lighted by a single candle, whose rays fell on the forms of a dozen men seated on chairs, stools, pails, and the table. All had their faces blackened, and he failed to discover among them the large and massive form, almost impossible to disguise, of Jake's father.

"He be fast asleep," he heard Jake say, evidently in answer to a question. "I knocked once, a little un; then twice, rayther louder; then I tried the door: 'twas locked. I didn't hear un snore, but maybe he sleeps quiet."

"Hee! hee! 'a will sleep quieter in the grave," said a voice, which Dick had no difficulty in recognising as that of Doubledick, the innkeeper, whose conversation was always partial to death and the churchyard and similar cheerful subjects.

"Mildmay would fly in a passion if he knew old Joe were asleep," said a man whose voice Dick could not identify.

"Ay, and so would riding-officer," added a third. He referred to the official so denominated, whose duty it was to work on shore hand in hand with Mr. Mildmay on the sea, and who was in effect in charge of the coast for ten or fifteen miles, acting under the Custom House officer at St. Ives.

"Oh, 't'ud only be a little small passion," said Doubledick, "'cos the summer bean't over, and not a man of 'em will look for us to begin afore pilchur fishin' be past."

"Body o' me, hain't we 'ticed Mildmay away to stop a run?"

"Nay, sonny, 'twas tidings of a French privateer that baited him. 'Tis a proper dark night, and if the wind holds, Zacky will be here a little arter midnight. And the manin' o' that is twenty pound in our pockets, a noble fust lesson to say 'magnify' arter."

Dick sighed inwardly; what a boon twenty pounds would be to his father's impoverished treasury! Like all the gentlemen of the county, the Squire was willing to purchase smuggled goods; it seemed to Dick that there was not a great distinction between the purchaser and the smuggler; and yet he knew that his father would be horrified at the idea of enriching himself in that way. From what he had overheard it was clear that a run, the first of the season, was to be attempted that night, and since this did not concern the Squire, he was about to return home, when he heard the click of a lock, followed by footsteps from the house, and slipped round the angle of the building just in time to escape the eyes of John Trevanion.

The owner of the Dower House joined the smugglers, and Dick heard his loud and hearty greeting.

"Well, my friends, is all clear? No scent for the hounds, eh?"

"Not so much as would cover a penny-piece," cried Doubledick. "Hee! hee! Old Joe's abed."

"I'm glad of it. Mind you, you must not bring the tubs here if there's any interruption. It would never do for the county to know that I'm a freighter."

"Trust we for that, yer honour; we know you must keep up yer high place, and 'tis generous of 'ee to lend us yer cellars."

"Well, Doubledick, here's the key. I shall be abed, of course; I know nothing about your doings, and I can trust you to work quietly and not wake the servants."

"Iss, fay, yer honour," said a man: "ye can trust Billy Doubledick, to be sure. He be a very clever feller: I say it to his face."

"Good night, then. I wish you well."

Dick heard his cousin return to the house and lock the door. So John Trevanion was a freighter: one who bought contraband goods in a foreign port, paid the expenses of shipment and carrying, and received the profits. This was food for reflection. A word to Mr. Mildmay or Mr. Polwhele, the riding-officer, would lead to John Trevanion's arrest. The fate of smugglers caught in the act was five years' service in a man-of-war, or a long term of imprisonment; aiders and abettors also were subject to heavy penalties; and Dick would have liked to rid the neighbourhood of the man who had caused his father such distress. But he could not play the shabby part of informer, and for the first time in his life he wished heartily that the smugglers might be caught, and their connection with Trevanion discovered; hitherto his sympathies had been entirely on their side.

Since there was nothing to be gained by remaining longer at the outhouse, he went quietly away and walked back towards the Towers. But he was so much interested in his strange discovery that he felt it would be impossible to sleep until he knew whether the run proved successful. On reaching home, therefore, he went first to his mother's room to bid her good-night, then to the dining-room to get some supper, and shortly after eleven o'clock stole out again. He had never seen a smuggling run, and the likelihood that this one would be entirely undisturbed promised a peaceful view, without any risk of running into danger, of which he knew that his parents would disapprove.

He had not learnt where the run was to be, but guessed, if the tubs were to be carried to the cellars of the Dower House, that the head of Trevanion Bay would be the chosen spot. It was the most convenient place near to the Dower House, except the little harbour itself, which was not likely to be selected. He made his way, therefore, along the narrow headland known as the Beal, which formed the southern boundary of the bay. Near the end of the headland, overlooking the narrow passage between it and the reef, by which vessels could enter the harbour at low tide, was the favourite playground of his early boyhood. It was a hollow in the cliff, screened from observation seaward by a huge boulder somewhat insecurely poised. Only a few years had passed since Sam and he used to play there at fighting the French. There they had their toy citadel, from which they bombarded Boney's squadrons attempting an invasion. From it, too, they could see on to the decks of vessels passing in and out of the harbour at low tide, and hugging the cliff to avoid the reef. They played also at smuggling, and it is noteworthy that they were always the successful smugglers, and never the baulked and discomfited preventive men. It was a lonely spot, and they had it quite to themselves except for the gulls.

When, as they grew older, they no longer took the same childish delight in playing French and English, they turned the place into a storehouse for fishing gear. In a remote corner of the nook, they scooped out the earth to form a deep recess, lined this with wood, and kept there a reserve supply of hooks, tackle, rope, a spare anchor and sculls, two fowling-pieces, and other articles, by this means often saving themselves a journey back to the Towers. Lonely as the spot was, they often quaked with apprehension lest their secret should be discovered, especially during the pilchard season. At that time the huer, whose duty it was to keep watch, and indicate by flourishing a bush, for the benefit of the fishers below, the direction in which the shoals of fish were swimming, was accustomed to take his stand on the headland. But he naturally chose the highest point, and had no reason to seek the lower level of the cave, where he could neither see nor be seen so well. The boys were always careful to avoid the neighbourhood of their storehouse when the huer was about, and there being nothing to draw any one else to the spot, the secret had remained undiscovered.

It was towards this place that Dick proceeded on leaving the Towers. But when he arrived there, he found at once that if the smugglers' cargo was to be run in the bay it would be impossible to see anything of it. The night was particularly dark; only such moonless nights were chosen by the smugglers for their operations; and even the grey cliffs were almost invisible from where he stood. He determined, therefore, to return along the headland, and make his way down the face of the cliff by the path whereby he had ascended with Sam on the night of their bass fishing. There were recesses at the foot, in one of which he could easily conceal himself and watch all that went on. And as there was no time to lose, if he was to be in hiding before the smugglers arrived, he walked rapidly, and climbed down the steep path at a pace that would have been dangerous to any one who was not well acquainted with it.

He was unaware that a figure was following him. There was no sound of footsteps to attract his attention: he did not look back, and if he had done so he could hardly have seen the form that steadily kept pace with him at the distance of sixty or seventy yards. The second figure descended the path with the same surefooted ease, paused at the foot till Dick was out of sight, and then stole after him and ensconced himself in a hollow of the cliff only about three yards from that in which Dick had stationed himself. These hiding-places were some twenty yards from the bottom of the path.

Neither of the two silent watchers suspected that, on the cliff above them, a third figure was approaching the path by which they had descended, but from the opposite direction. Old Penwarden, so far from being snugly asleep, as Jake Tonkin rashly concluded, had never been more wide-awake in his life. The summoning of Mr. Mildmay to a distance, the lateness of the pilchard season, and the darkness of the night, combined to make him suspicious, and he had resolved to patrol the cliff from St. Cuby's Well to the Beal, to satisfy himself that the smugglers were not already at their tricks. Having smoked through his pipe at the Well, he returned to his cottage, took the telescope, the brace of pistols, the ammunition, the cutlass, and the blue light for giving an alarm which were his regular equipment, and began to march slowly and quietly up and down.

About ten minutes after the lads had taken up their positions, they heard a stone come rattling down the path twenty yards to the left. A few seconds after, they were just able to discern a dark figure emerge on to the beach. This was followed by another, and a third, and soon the whole beach was alive with dusky shapes. The tide was ebbing, but a stiff breeze sent long rollers dashing over the sand, their roar and rustle smothering the low voices of the men as they talked fitfully together.

The watchers saw one of the men drive an iron post firmly into the sand and attach to it the end of a rope. The other end was fastened to a similar post in the earth at the top of the cliff. By this means a rail was formed, to give assistance to the carriers as they climbed up with their burdens.

A little later there came from seaward a faint creak, scarcely distinguishable among the other sounds. The watchers pricked up their ears. Even at low tide there was enough water beneath the cliffs to enable a vessel to run in very close, and the hidden spectators guessed that a lugger was drawing in: at present they could not see it. The shore men were all low down on the beach. In a few minutes the men could be heard splashing in the water as they waded out to the vessel. Then the lugger itself appeared, a dark shape on the surface.

Soon the men could be seen returning in a long line, each one apparently twice as big as before. Each bore two tubs, one in front, one behind, slung over his shoulders by ropes which had been fitted before they left the lugger.

Several of the men had deposited their burdens on the beach, and were going back for more, when there was a noise of scrambling on the path. Work ceased instantly. A figure ran a few yards towards the sea, and spoke to a large man who appeared to be directing the operations. His words were just audible to the watchers.

"Old Joe be comin' along cliff-top, Feyther."

"But they told me you said 'a was asleep."

"So 'a was, but 'a must ha' waked up. He be comin', sure enough."

"You must be a cussed stunpoll, then, to come slitherin' down cliff like that, makin' a rattle to wake the dead. Well, no matter. We can deal wi' old Joe, if so be as he's alone."

"Iss, he be alone. I pulled up the post and brought the rope down-along."

"You've some sense in yer skull, then. Now you, Pendred, and you, Simon Mail, go up cliff and keep a watch. Stand yerselves in that narrow part three-quarters of the way up, and if the old meddler comes, seize un, and choke un, but don't do un a hurt unless he shows fight. We don't want no crowner's quest."

The two men selected to waylay the exciseman set off to climb the cliff, and the work of running the cargo was resumed.

Dick was in a quandary. He had no interest in doing preventive work, and there were many reasons why he should refrain from interfering. But old Penwarden was a friend of his, and a mettlesome old fellow, who would certainly not allow himself to be seized without a struggle. Moreover, being armed, as he doubtless was, he would have a temporary advantage over the smugglers, who, expecting no opposition, would probably have no weapons with them but their knives. But it might well be that in the struggle the smugglers, driven to desperation, would make short work of rushing upon him and flinging him over the cliff; or if the struggle were prolonged, they could summon help from below, overpower him, and truss him up. In either case the old man would be in considerable danger, for the smugglers, when their passions were aroused, would not be over-scrupulous.

These considerations flashed through Dick's mind in a second. He could not let Penwarden run into danger unwarned; yet how was the warning to be given? There was but one way. A few yards to the right of the spot where he stood it was possible to scale the cliff. The ascent was much longer and more arduous than the regular path, and there was the risk that he would not be in time. Unless he gained the cliff-top before Penwarden had passed, he would be too late. There was not a moment to spare.

Dropping down on hands and knees behind a boulder that intercepted the view seaward, he crawled as fast as he could towards a slight indentation of the cliff beyond which he would be invisible to the smugglers, and where the ascent began. He was followed within a few moments by the second watcher. Just as he was beginning to climb he heard a low whisper behind him.

"I be comin' too, Maister Dick."

"You here, Sam? What do you mean by this?"

"Don't 'ee talk, now. I'll tell 'ee when we get to top."

They scrambled up the face of the cliff as actively as goats, clutching at stunted bushes and tufts of coarse grass, dodging awkward corners, fearful lest the stones and loose earth they disturbed should strike upon the boulders below and reveal their presence to the smugglers. Both were active lads with good wind, and their progress was no doubt more rapid, foot for foot, than that of the smugglers on the path a hundred yards to the right, encumbered as they were with their heavy sea-boots. But this advantage in speed was counterbalanced by the greater length of their course, though this in its turn was compensated by the fact that, unless Penwarden had already passed, they would be a hundred yards nearer to him when they reached the top.

In six minutes from the start, panting with their exertions, they heaved themselves over the brink of the cliff and stood erect. Twenty yards to their right, Penwarden was in the act of raising his telescope to spy over the waters of the bay. With trembling limbs they ran towards him, Dick giving him warning of their presence by a low clear whisper. The old exciseman shut up his telescope with a snap, and turned.

"'Tis you, Maister Dick!" he said.

"Yes. Some one saw you. Two men are waiting for you on the path. I can't tell you their names. You'll be knocked over if you try to go down."

"That's the way o't, is it? We'll see about that. Thank'ee for the warning. You didn't tell me they be running a cargo, but I know it. I'll dash their tricks."

"But, Joe--"

"Don't stop me," said Penwarden, shaking off Dick's detaining arm. "'Tis my duty to stop this run, Mr. Mildmay being haled off on a wild-goose chase, and do it I will. But get 'ee home-along, sir, you are best out o' this, though if 'ee were a bit older, dash my bones if I wouldn't call on 'ee to help in the King's name."

Without more ado, he took from his pocket the blue light, struck a spark from his tinder-box, and in a moment the cliff-top for many yards around was illuminated by the brilliant sputtering flame. It was intended to warn the lieutenant of the revenue cutter, if he were within sight, and to draw from their cottages in the village the tidesmen, as they were called, whose duty it was, on the alarm being given, to hasten to the exciseman's assistance. These men were cobblers, tinkers, and other small tradesmen, for the most part Methodists, who were ready to brave the hostility of the smugglers for the sake of good pay and a bounty for every hogshead seized.

Dick was aghast. Things were turning out even worse than he expected. The light would enrage the smugglers, and they would be in no mood to handle the old man gently. Penwarden was already hurrying towards the path. It seemed to Dick sheer madness for one man, and a man no longer young, to attempt to deal with a score of rough and determined smugglers. He was rushing headlong upon destruction. All care for what might be the consequences to himself vanished from Dick's mind; he could not leave the exciseman to his fate. But what could he do to help him, without weapon of any kind? He suddenly bethought him of the fowling-pieces laid up in the little nook on the Beal.

"Come, Sam," he said, and started to run at full speed to fetch them. They passed Penwarden like a flash; there might just be time to return before he encountered the ambushed men. The blue light was now extinguished, and sea and land were covered with the former darkness.

Much fleeter of foot than Sam, Dick outstripped him in a few seconds, and ran on alone to the little cave. He seized the fowling-pieces, and discovered that there was no ammunition; nevertheless, he raced back with them; they might serve to over-awe the smugglers, or in the last resort be used as clubs.

He had only just rejoined Sam when they heard a rough voice call out a command to halt, and Penwarden's answer.

"Stand aside, in the King's name."

Clearly the dauntless old man had arrived at the spot where the smugglers were in wait for him. The boys dashed forward, came to the head of the path, and ran recklessly down, Dick hoping that they might still be in time to prevent mischief. But before they reached the scene of the scuffle, they heard the noise of some heavy body crashing down the cliff, and then the roar of a pistol. Immediately afterwards they caught sight of two figures hurrying down the path.

"They've killed un dead!" muttered Sam.

With his heart in his mouth, Dick ran down the path, slipping, recovering himself, and running again. Sam was close behind. About half-way down a body lay huddled on a projecting ledge, which had broken its fall and prevented it from crashing to the base of the cliff. Dick stooped over it, expecting to see Penwarden shot to the heart. To his intense relief he heard a groan, and turning the man over, he was just able to perceive that his face was blackened. Joe, then, had escaped, and was one of the two who had gone down the path and were now out of sight.

The two boys hurried on. There was a great hubbub below them; having been discovered, the smugglers no longer troubled to preserve silence; and Dick, hearing their angry shouts and curses, feared that Penwarden's quixotic action in attempting to tackle them single-handed would prove his destruction. He took the rest of the path in reckless leaps, and, when he reached the beach, saw that the old exciseman had posted himself beside a row of tubs which he had seized in the King's name.

In the confusion Dick's arrival was unobserved. The smugglers were thronging up the beach with threatening cries. Penwarden's pistol flashed, but next moment a heavy missile, hurled by one of the men, struck him on the head, and he fell.

"Throw un into the sea," shouted a rough voice.

Half-a-dozen men rushed towards the prostrate man and began to drag him towards the water.

"Stand!" cried Dick, dashing forward. "Loose him, or we'll fire."

[Illustration: "'STAND!' CRIED DICK, DASHING FORWARD. 'LEAVE HIM, OR WE'LL FIRE.'"]

A sudden silence fell upon the scene. The men who held Penwarden's arms stood aside; the others edged away, taken aback by this unexpected intervention; there had not been time for the tidesmen to arrive from the village. Dick and Sam stood over the exciseman, pointing their useless muskets at the crowd. For a moment there was absolute stillness; then one of the men murmured:

"'Tis young Maister Trevanion."

"Yes," cried Dick, "and I warn you that if any of you lays a hand on the old man again I will report you all to Sir Bevil. I know you, for all your black faces. There's Doubledick, and Tonkin, and----"

"Iss, 'tis I, and I don't care who knows it," interrupted Tonkin, pushing forward. "What 'nation call ha' you got to meddle, cuss you!"

"I don't meddle with your trade; it's nothing to me; but I won't see an old fellow killed by a pack of ruffians."

Tonkin cursed again, but some one drew him back and spoke to him in low tones. The fact that the interruption had come from the Squire's son was more daunting than the lads' muskets, which had no terror for armed men accustomed to contend with equal numbers. But the name of Trevanion, in spite of the fallen fortunes of the house, was still a moral power in the country-side, and, further, if any harm befell the Squire's heir, they could not escape a heavy retribution.

After a few moments' colloquy, a man came forward.

"Hark 'ee, sir," he said, and Dick recognised his voice as Doubledick's, in spite of an attempt to disguise it. "We take it hard as you've meddled wi' honest free-traders as never did 'ee no harm. As for old Joe, 'twas only a bit of fun--hee! hee!--he bean't for drownin'. What I says I says for all, and that is, we'll let 'ee take un away if you do give us yer sacred word not to gie our names to Sir Bevil or Mr. Mildmay,--them as you knows."

"I don't want to play informer," replied Dick. "I agree to that."

"Not a word to a soul?"

"No. I've said so."

"That's fair spoke," said the man, turning to the rest.

A murmur of approval broke from them. Dick at once lifted Penwarden, with Sam's help, from the pool of water in which he was lying. It was difficult to keep him on his feet, for he was as yet only partially conscious. Without either assistance or interference from the smugglers they led him slowly to the foot of the path, and, one on each side of him, began to carry, rather than walk, him up the cliff. One of the smugglers dogged them throughout the toilsome ascent. When they came to the place where the man had fallen, after a shrewd thrust from Penwarden's cutlass, they found that he had disappeared, having no doubt made his way homeward.

"Thank 'ee for this, Maister Dick," murmured Penwarden when they paused to rest at the cliff-top. "I'll have the law of those tidesmen for not comin' when they was called."

"No doubt they didn't see your light. And look here, Joe, I promised not to split on the men, so I want you to promise too."

"Daze me if I could split if I tried. I didn't see one of 'em plain, nor hear their voices, and I got this crack on the head afore I could tell one from t'other."

"Do it hurt much, maister?" asked Sam.

"More'n you'd care about, young Sam. But 'tis nawthin' at all to the cracks and wounds we got when we served wi' Lord Admiral Rodney. Have I telled 'ee what 'a said to me purticler one day on Plymouth Hoe?"

"Yes, yes," said Dick, quickly. "The sooner you are in bed the better."

They took him slowly to his cottage, where Dick put him to bed, gave him some brandy, and bathed his wounded head.

"You'll stop with him to-night, Sam," he said. "Don't leave him until Gammer Oliver comes in the morning."

"What'll 'ee say to Feyther, Maister Dick? I'm afeard he'll be in a terrible rage wi' poor me."

"I'll make that right. Now, lock the door when I've gone, and give Mr. Penwarden anything he wants during the night. I'll come over in the morning."

It was nearly two o'clock before Dick got to bed, and day was breaking before he slept. Meanwhile the smugglers finished their work unmolested, and before morning eighty tubs of good French spirits lay in the capacious cellars beneath the Dower House.

Chapter The Seventh

The Breach Widens

Next morning John Trevanion, fresh and ruddy, dressed in white breeches and a blue coat with shining buttons, rode gaily down to the Five Pilchards and summoned Doubledick to the door.

"Well, you did the business, I see," he said jovially. "A small beginning: I wish my cellars held more."

"Iss, fay, a little small haul, to be sure; little and good. Hee! hee! But, Maister Trevanion, I've summat plaguey awk'ard to tell 'ee."

"What's that?" said Trevanion, with an uneasy look.

"Why, drown me if old Joe didn' come upon us, and, worse than that, when we'd cracked him on the head, who should come bouncing down-along but Squire's boy and young Sam Pollex, vowin' and swearin' they'd shoot us through the gizzard if we laid a finger on the old man."

"The deuce they did! and you knocked them on the head, of course?"

The look of uneasiness passed from Trevanion's face.

"Well, no, not 'zackly. 'Twas Squire's son, you see."

"What of that? You should have cracked their numskulls together and sent 'em home howling. Afraid of two boys! What did you do, may I ask?"

"Crackin' skulls is all very fine, but we didn' want a crowner's 'quest on young Squire. No, no, we don't want hangman's necklace chokin' the breath out of us. We let 'em take old Joe home-along, arter they'd give their Bible word to be mum as gravestones."

"Then you were a pack of fools. Don't you see the monkeys were spying on you? 'Twas they brought Joe, without a doubt, though I'd like to know how they got wind of the business."

"Well, if I didn' think it! ... Here's Zacky Tonkin. Maister Trevanion was sayin' as they two brats spied on us, Zacky."

"Not they, 'a b'lieve," said Tonkin, who had come up. "Young Squire said he'd no mind to meddle wi' the business, but was only a bit tender over old Joe."

"And you believe that!" said Trevanion, angrily flicking his riding-whip. "Make no mistake, the Squire has turned on you. I happen to know that Mildmay has been twice to the Towers of late; the Squire's as poor as a church mouse, and informer's pay will be riches to him."

"Squire turn informer!" cried Tonkin. "I can't believe it."

"I can, though," said Doubledick. "When a man's as low down in the world as Squire, he'll do a deal o' dirtiness to fill his purse, 'a b'lieve."

"Of course he will," said Trevanion. "You don't know the world, Tonkin. Depend upon it, a good many golden guineas will find their way to the Towers before a week's out."

Tonkin was an honest fellow, save in so far as the King's revenue was concerned, and had that simplicity of soul which is incredulous of trickery in others. He was not proof against the cunning suggestions of Trevanion. Naturally short-tempered and violent, he smote the flank of Trevanion's horse a blow that set it prancing, and cried with a savage oath:--

"Then I'll make 'em pay for 't, as sure as my name be Zack Tonkin. I will so."

"Hee! hee! That 'a will," said Doubledick, rubbing his hands. "They golden guineas 'll be a bad egg, to be sure."

Trevanion smiled. He had laid the train; he could trust his minions to fire it.

"Well, we'll speak no more of that," he said. "I'm riding to Truro: can you tell what for?"

"Not for more furnichy?" said Tonkin.

"Goin' a-courtin', hee! hee!" smirked Doubledick.

"No, no; I shan't trouble the parson yet awhile. I'm going to open the mines again, my men."

"Then I'm sorry for 'ee," said Tonkin bluntly. "Mines were worked out long ago."

"Maybe, maybe not. I'm going to try. I shall begin in quite a small way. I shan't fling my money into the earth as my cousin did. But I mean to try my luck, and within a week or two I shall have a few men at work."

"'Twill be good for the parish," said Doubledick. "The miners are drouthy souls, and have a proper taste for good sperits. Ay, sure, 'twill do us all good."

"You won't give up the trade, sir?" enquired Tonkin.

"Not I. The Polkerran men will do more than ever before. A fig for your Mildmays and Polwheles--Polwhele is still riding-officer, isn't he? My wits against them any day. We'll double our trade with Roscoff this winter."

"If Delarousse bean't nabbed," said Tonkin. "His game of privateerin' will souse him in hot water one o' these days."

"Oh! we can do without Delarousse. There's a man in Roscoff, no friend of his, who will deal with us better than he."

"It do maze me, Maister Trevanion," said Doubledick, "that arter bein' away all these years ye know so much about the trade."

"I keep my eyes open, that's all," replied Trevanion, with a laugh. "Well, I must be off. You can tell the neighbours about the mines. I'm glad to do something for the old village."

He rode away, giving smiling greetings to the people, men and women, whom he passed on the road.

"A fine feller!" said Doubledick, enthusiastically. "'Twill be heyday in village, Zacky; stirring life, and not so much of a tomb as 'tis since Squire became a pauper."

"But I'm sorry he do want us to break with Delarousse. He be a good trader, for a Frenchman. Howsomever, if there be a better, all the better for we, to be sure."

The men parted, to retail to their friends and neighbours the pleasing news of the great things John Trevanion was about to do for the village.

Roscoff, the place mentioned in the course of their conversation, was a little port in Brittany which had become the chief seat of the contraband trade with the south-west of England since a restrictive Act of Parliament had put a stop to it in the Channel Islands. The French Government had made it a free port to smugglers, and in a few years it had grown from a tiny fishing village to a thriving town. There were three classes of people engaged in the contraband trade. The freighters consigned or received the goods, and paid the expenses of their shipment. The boatmen conveyed them from port to port, always on moonless nights, and usually when a strong wind was blowing. The tub-carriers bore them to their destination. The boatmen received a fixed sum for each trip, the tub-carriers for each cargo run, and frequently in addition a portion of the goods, or a small share in the proceeds.

Until John Trevanion reappeared in Polkerran, Isaac Tonkin had been the principal freighter of the village, and was the owner and master of the lugger which plied between it and Roscoff. His dealings were chiefly with a certain Jean Delarousse, a ship-owner of Roscoff, who was notorious also as a daring seaman, and in his privateer vessel preyed on English shipping in the Channel between Poole and the Lizard. Delarousse had never come to Polkerran, but he was well known to Tonkin and the crew of his lugger, the Isaac and Jacob. Tonkin having little capital, the cargoes run at Polkerran were usually small, and were disposed of solely among the innkeepers, farmers, and gentry of the neighbourhood. Now that Trevanion had come home, the Polkerran folk expected great developments in the trade, and looked forward to an exciting and profitable winter. Apart from the monetary gain, the risks of smuggling exercised a fascination upon those engaged in it, providing the only excitement in their otherwise dull and monotonous lives. The fraud on the revenue weighed very lightly on their consciences. In their view they were entitled to the full value of the goods for which they had honestly paid, and the Government officials were thieves and tyrants. To best the Customs and Excise was both a business and a sport.

It was not long before the consequences of Dick's intervention on behalf of Joe Penwarden made themselves felt. Hitherto the smugglers had recognised the Trevanions of the Towers as rather for them than against them, but now, actuated by John Trevanion's malicious suggestion, they looked on them in a different light. For the first time a Trevanion had ranged himself on the side of the representatives of the law, and Tonkin, resenting what he regarded as defection, soon began to show that in threatening vengeance he meant to be as good as his word.

One morning Dick, going down with Sam to inspect the night lines he had set in the waters of Trevanion Bay, discovered with surprise and annoyance that they had been cut. A day or two afterwards they found their boat, which they had drawn up as usual above high-water mark, bumping among the rocks half a mile up the coast. They did not report these occurrences, hoping that they were nothing but a mark of temporary ill-feeling and would soon cease. But when for the third time their lines were tampered with, Dick became seriously concerned. The fish they caught were a very important part of the provisions for the household. What was not required at once was salted and dried for consumption when fishing was over for the season. Without these constant supplies they would have to draw more largely on their pigs and poultry, which they were accustomed to sell. Dick was unwilling to impart his troubles to any one, and for several nights he and Sam kept watch, hoping that if the culprits were caught in the act, the fear of exposure would put a stop to their mischief. On three nights nothing happened: and yet, on the first night when they left the lines unguarded, the same fate befell them.

"This is more than I can bear," cried Dick, in the morning. "I shall tell Petherick."

Petherick was the village constable, who filled also the offices of sexton, bell-ringer, and beadle in the parish church.

"Bless 'ee, you'll waste yer breath," said Sam. "Old Petherick be a crony o' Tonkin, and wouldn' lift a finger against him, without it were murder or arson: and then he'd have to get the sojers to help him. Why, 'tis said he've let 'em keep the tubs in church-tower sometimes when the preventives have been smellin' too close."

"Well, we must put a stop to it somehow. I'll tell Joe, and see what he has to say."

Later in the day he went into the village to buy some new fishing tackle at a general-shop, where the folk could buy tea, sugar, cheese, needles, thread, letter-paper, bootlaces--in short, every small article they needed. On his return, he heard a hubbub proceeding from the village green, where wrestling-bouts, games of quoits, dog-fights, and other sports took place. In the midst was a duck-pond. Bending his steps thither to see what was going on, he beheld Sam with his back against a tree, sturdily defending himself with fists and feet against a crowd of the village lads, among whom the hulking form of Jake Tonkin was conspicuous.

"Heave un in duck-pond," he heard Jake cry.

"You'd better!" he shouted, rushing forward to assist his companion.

The crowd fell back as he forced his way through it, bowling one fellow over like a ninepin, and driving another out of his path with a shove that nearly sent him into the pond. It is probable that his energy, and the prestige attached to him as the Squire's son, would have put an end to the affair; but it chanced that John Trevanion rode by at this moment, and reining up his horse, contrived in some subtle manner to indicate that his sympathy was with the larger party. Only this could explain the sudden change in their attitude. They closed round Dick and Sam with derisive yells.

"Gie un both a duckin'," shouted one, and they made a sudden concerted rush, trying to seize the two boys.

Dick, never having been to school, had never had occasion or opportunity to learn the noble art; but his muscles were in good condition, and the obvious necessity was to make full use of them. Standing beside Sam against the tree, he hit out against any head, trunk, or shoulder that came within reach, Sam making good play as before with feet as well as arms. One young fisher retired with a crimson nose, another with a bump over one eye, a third shouting that his leg was broken. All the time John Trevanion sat his horse, smiling, and flinging out now and then an encouraging word, which might have been intended for either side, but was appropriated by Tonkin's crew.

Courage and the best will in the world cannot prevail over a triple excess of numbers. The fisher-lads were still six when their wounded comrades had retired to the rear. Led by Jake Tonkin they hurled themselves upon the two defenders. For a few minutes there was a brisk scrimmage; many good blows were given and exchanged; then Dick and Sam fell, to be immediately pounced on by the victors, who caught them by legs and arms and began to drag them down to the pond.

They were within a yard of the brink when a loud voice thundered a command to halt, and a riding-whip cracked and curled its thong round the legs and backs of the aggressors. With howls of pain they released their victims and fled across the green. Rising, bruised and muddy, from the ground, the two boys saw Mr. Polwhele, the riding-officer, close by on horseback, his face flushed and stern-set with anger.

"You look on and do nothing!" he said indignantly to John Trevanion.

"My dear sir, why should I interfere? Boys must fight, let them fight it out."

"Three to one--is that your idea of fair play?"

Trevanion shrugged.

"Hadn't you better reserve your whip for stimulating your tidesmen, Mr. Polwhele? They need a little spiriting, if what I hear is true."

And with that as a parting shot Trevanion rode away.

"What was the origin of this?" asked Mr. Polwhele. "I'm sorry to see it, Master Trevanion."

"'Twas like this, sir," said Sam, rubbing his head and legs alternately. "I comed upon they chaps, and Jake Tonkin says to me, 'Catched any fish lately, young Sam?' Says I, ''Tis easier to cut lines, to be sure,' says I, and then they set on me, and they'd ha' melled and mashed me if Maister Dick hadn't come up."

"Have they been cutting your lines, then?"

Dick saw no help for it but to acquaint the riding-officer with the petty persecution he had lately s