Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty.Matters grew no better. There was a leaning toward the rough lad, who seemed never weary of trying to perform little acts of kindness for his father’s prisoner; but there was only one thing which the midshipman desired, and, as that could not be accorded, the friendly feeling between the two lads stayed where it was. In fact, it seemed to be turning into positive dislike on one side, Archy fiercely rating his gaoler over and over again, and Ram bearing it all in the meekest way.The gloom was so familiar to Archy now that he could go almost anywhere about the great place, without stumbling over the loose fragments of stone, or being in danger of running up against the great pillars. And, as he roved about the quarry, his busy fingers touched packages and bales; he knew which parcels contained tobacco; he handled bales which he felt sure were silk, and avoided the piled-up kegs of brandy, whose sickly odour would always remind him of being ill at sea.All these things occupied his mind a little, and when he was extra dull, he would go and lie down by the hole which admitted the salt sea air, or else make his way right under the trap-door, and climb up to it, and sit and listen for the coming of Ram.One morning he was there, wondering whether it was near the boy’s hour, and he was listening most intently, so as to get full warning and insure time enough to go back to his place and wait, when he fancied he heard the bark of a dog.It was not repeated, and he was beginning to think that it was fancy, when the sound came again nearer, then nearer still, till there was a prolonged volley of canine-words, let us call them, for they evidently meant something from their being so persistent.“Why—hurrah! He has found me!” cried the prisoner excitedly; and he heard quite plainly, as he clung to the rough steps and pressed his ear against the trap-door, the eager scratching made by a dog, and the snuffling noise as it tried to thrust its nose down amongst the stones.“Hi! Good dog then!” he shouted, and there was a furious burst of barking.Then there was a sharp sound as if a heavy stone had fallen upon a heap, and he heard it rattle down to the side.Then there was a fierce growl, a bark, and directly after silence.The midshipman’s heart, which had been throbbing with excitement a few minutes before, sank down now like lead, as he waited to hear the sounds again, but waited in vain.If ever the loud baying of a dog sounded like music in his ear, it was during those brief moments, and as he sat there, longing to know what it meant, and whether his conjecture was right that the dog had scented him out, he faintly heard the gruff tones of a voice, and, hastily descending, he went down the slope and made for his usual place.“That’s what it was,” said Archy to himself. “The dog scented me out, and was scratching there till that great brute of a smuggler saw him, and threw a stone and drove him away. There they are.”He was right, the rough pieces of stone were being removed, and a few minutes later he saw the swinging lamp coming through the gloom.The prisoner was, as he said, quite right, for that day Celia Graeme had wandered down towards the edge of the huge line of cliffs in a different direction to that which it was her wont to take.It was not often that she stirred far from the gloomy fir-wood at the back of the house, for her life had not been that of most young people of her age. Her father’s disappointed and impoverished life, consequent upon his political opinions, and her mother’s illness and depression, had made the Hoze always a mournful home, and naturally this had affected her, making her a serious, contemplative girl, older than her years, and one who found her pleasure in sitting on a fallen trunk in the sheltering woods, listening to the roar of the wind in the pine boughs, watching the birds and squirrels, and having for companion her dog Grip, who, when she took him for her walks, generally ran mad for the first hour, scampering round and round her, making charges at her feet, and pretending to worry her shoes or dress; running off to hide and dash out upon her in a mock savage way; bounding into furze bushes, chasing the rabbits into their holes; and then, as if apologising for this wild getting rid of a superabundance of animal spirits kept low in the mournful old house, he would come as soon as she sat quietly down, crouch close up to her, and lay his head on her knee, to gaze up in her face, blinking his eyes, and not moving again perhaps for an hour.Celia seldom went seaward. The distance was short, but she was content to watch the beautiful changes on the far-spreading waste from high up on the hills. There had been wrecks on the Freestone Shore, which made her shudder as she recalled how the wild cries of the hapless mariners in their appeals for help had reached the shore; she had seen the huge waves come tumbling in, to send columns of spray high in the air, to be borne over the land in a salt rain, and, as a rule, the sea repelled her, and she shrank, too, from the great folds of the cliff, with their mysterious-looking grass-grown ledges and cracks, up which came the whispering and gurgling of water, and at times fierce hissings as if sea monsters lived below, and were threatening those who looked down and did not pause to think that these sounds must be caused by air compressed by the inrushing tide.Then, too, there was something oppressing in the poorly protected shafts with their sloping descents, once, perhaps hundreds of years back, the busy spots where old hewers of stone worked their way down below the thinner and poorer strata to where the freestone was clean and solid.These spots attracted and yet repelled her, as she peered cautiously down, to see that they were half hidden by long strands of bramble, with tufts of pink-headed hemp agrimony, and lower down the sides and archway infringed with the loveliest of ferns.There was something very mysterious-looking in these ancient quarries where foot of man never trod now, and she shivered as she passed funnel-shaped holes which she knew were produced by the falling in of the surface to fill up passages and chambers in the stone whose roofs had given way far below.She often thought, when tempted by Grip in the direction of these weird old places, how horrible it would be if some day the earth suddenly sank beneath her, and she should be buried alive.At such times her hands grew wet, and she retraced her steps, fancying the while that the earth sounded hollow beneath her tread.Upon this particular morning Grip had vanquished her. He was always tempting her in this direction by making rushes and looking back as if asking her to come, for the dark holes tempted him. The rabbit burrows were all very well, but he could never get in them beyond his shoulders, while in these holes he could penetrate as far as he liked in search of imaginary wild creatures which were never found. Then, too, there were the edges of the cliffs where he could stand and bark at the waves far below, and sometimes, where they were not perpendicular, descend from shelf to shelf.The morning was glorious, and the sea of a lovely amethyst blue, as Celia wandered on and on toward the highest of the hills away west of the Hoze. Grip was frantic with delight, his tail stood straight out, and his ears literally rattled as he charged over the short turf after some rabbit, which dodged through the bushes, reached its hole, displayed a scrap of white cotton, and disappeared.And still, smiling at the dog’s antics, the girl wandered on, nearer and nearer to where the land suddenly ended and the cliff went sharply down to the sea.As she went on, stopping to admire the beautiful purple thistles, which sent up one each a massive head on its small stalk, or admired the patches of dyer’s rocket and the golden tufts of ragwort, the old fancies about the ancient quarries were forgotten for the time, and she seated herself at last upon a projecting piece of stone, away there in the solitude, to watch the grey gulls and listen to the faint beat of the waves hundreds of feet below.There were a few sheep here and there, but the Hoze was hidden beyond a fold of the mighty hills, and Shackle’s farm and the labourer’s cottage were all down in one of the valleys.It was very beautiful, but extremely lonely, and to right and left there were the great masses of cliff, which seemed like huge hills suddenly chopped off by the sea, and before her the wide-stretching amethystine plain, with a sail or two far away.Celia sat watching a little snake which was wriggling rapidly along past her, a little creature whose scales looked like oxidised silver in the afternoon sunshine, and she was about to rise and try to capture the burnished reptile, knowing from old experience that it was harmless, when at one and the same moment she became aware that Grip was missing, and that Ram Shackle and the big labourer from the farm, Jemmy Dadd, were coming up a hollow away to the right, one by which they could reach the down-like fields that spread along the edge of the cliffs from the farm.She saw them, and hardly realising that they did not see her, she went on watching the reptile as it glided with easy serpentine motion through the grass.“Ram is going to gather blackberries,” she said to herself, as she glanced at his basket; “and Dadd is going to count the sheep. I ought to have brought a basket for some blackberries.”She felt full of self-reproach, as she recalled how plentifully they grew there, and how useful they would be at home. “And I might get some mushrooms, too,” she thought, “instead of coming out for nothing.”Just then she heard Grip again barking very faintly.“Stupid dog!” she said to herself, with a little laugh. “He has followed a rabbit to its hole. If he would only catch a few more, how useful they would be!”Then she moved a little to follow the slow-worm, which was making for a patch of heath, and she was still watching it when, some time after, Grip came running up quickly, snarling and growling, and pausing from time to time to look back.“Oh, you coward!” she said, sitting down and pulling his ears, as he thrust his head into her lap. “Afraid of a fox! Was it a fox’s hole, then, and not a rabbit’s, Grip?”The dog growled and barked.“Poor old fellow, then. Where is it, then?”The dog leaped up, barked, and ran a few yards, to stop, look back at her, and bark again.“No, no, Grip; I don’t want to see,” she said; and she began idly to pick up scraps of wild thyme and toss at the dog, who vainly kept on making rushes toward the slope of the great cliff.“No, sir,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “I am not going to be led to one of your discoveries, to see nothing for my pains.”The dog barked again, angrily, and not until she spoke sharply did he obey, and followed her unwillingly up the slope and then down into a hollow that looked as if at one time it might have been the bed of some great glacier.The dog tried again to lead her away toward the sea, but she was inexorable; and so he followed her along unwillingly, till, low down in the hollow, as she turned suddenly by a pile of great blocks of weather-worn and lichened stone, she came suddenly upon Dadd and Ram, the former flat on his back, with his hat drawn-down over his eyes, the latter busy with his knife cutting a rough stick smooth.“How do, Miss Celia?” said Ram, showing his white teeth.“Quite well, Ram. How is your head now?”“Oh, it’s all right agen now, miss. On’y a bit sore.”“You tumbled off the cliff, didn’t you?”“Off a bit of it,” said Ram, grinning. “Not far.”“But how foolish of you! Mrs Shackle said you might have been killed.”“Yes, miss, but I wasn’t.”“What were you doing in such a dangerous place?”“Eh?” said Ram, changing colour; “what was I doing?”“Yes, to run such a risk.”“I was—I was—”Ram was completely taken aback, and sat staring, with his mouth open.“Lookin’ after a lost sheep,” came in a deep growl from under Jemmy Dadd’s hat.“Oh! And did you find it?”“Yes; he fun’ it,” said the man, “but it were in a very dangerous place. It’s all dangerous ’long here; and Master Shackle wouldn’t let young Ram here go along these here clift slopes without me to take care on him.”Ram grinned.“And you take my advice, miss, don’t you come ’bout here. We lost four sheep last year, and come nigh losing the missuses best cow not long ago. Didn’t you hear?”“Yes; old Mary told me, and Mrs Shackle mentioned it too.”“Ay,” continued Jemmy, without removing his hat, “she fell slip-slap into the sea.”“Poor thing.”“Ay, little missus; and, if I were you, I wouldn’t come along top o’ they clifts at all. Grass is so short and slithery that, ’fore you knows where you are, your feet goes from under you, and you can’t stop yourself, and over you goes. And that aren’t the worst on it; most like you’re never found.”“Yes, ’tis very slippy, Miss Celia,” said Ram, beginning to hack again at his stick.“I do not come here very often, Ram,” she said, quietly. “It is a long time since I came.”“Ay, and I wouldn’t come no more, little missus,” continued Jemmy, from under his hat, “for if you did not go off, that there dog—”Grip had been looking on uneasily, and turning his head from one to the other, as each spoke in turn; but the minute he heard himself mentioned, he showed his teeth, and began to growl fiercely at the man.“Look ye here,” cried Jemmy, sitting up quickly and snatching away his hat, “if you comes at me—see the heel o’ that there boot?”He held up the great heavy object named, ready to kick out, and Grip bared his teeth for an attack.“Down, Grip! Come here, sir. How dare you?”But Grip did dare, and he would have dashed at the labourer if Celia had not caught him by the loose skin of his neck, when he began to shake his head and whine in a way that sounded like protesting.“And me giving a bit of advice too,” said Jemmy in an ill-used tone.Grip barked fiercely.“Be quiet, sir!”“And going to say, little missus, that if that there dog comes hanging about here, he’ll go over them there cliffs as sure as buttons, and never be seen no more.”“Come away, Grip. Thank you, Mr Dadd,” said Celia, hurrying the dog away, and giving him a run down along the hollow; while Jemmy Dadd threw himself back, rolled over on to his face, and laughed hoarsely.“I say, young Ram,” he cried, “what a game!”“What’s a game?” said the boy sharply.“That there dog; he won’t forget that whack I give him on the ribs for long enough.”“Needn’t have thrown so hard.”“Why not?”“Don’t like to see dogs hurt,” said Ram, who was dealing with an awkward knot.“Oh, don’t you! Why, if your father had been along here with that rusty old gun of hisn, that he shoots rabbits with, and seen that dog scratching among them stones, know what he’d have done?”“No.”“Well, then, I do. He’d have shot him. And if I ketches him ferretin’ about there again, I’ll drop a big flat stone down on him, and then chuck him off the cliff.”“If you do, I’ll chuck you down after him,” said Ram.“What?” cried the man, bursting into a fresh roar of laughter. “Oh, come, I likes that. Why, you pup! That’s what you are—a pup.”This was uttered with what was meant to be a most contemptuous intonation of the voice.“Pups can bite hard sometimes, Jemmy,” said Ram slowly; “and I shan’t have Miss Celia’s dog touched.”“Ho! Then he’s to come here when he likes, and show everybody the way into our store, is he? Well, we shall see.”“Yes; and you’d better go and see if they’ve gone.”“Ah, yes, lad, I’ll go and see if they’ve gone; and we needn’t quarrel ’bout it, for it strikes me as little missus won’t come down here no more, I scared her too much.”Jemmy burst into another hoarse fit of laughing, and went lumping off in his big sea-boots to see if Celia and her dog were well out of sight, before rejoining Ram to take the prisoner his repast.

Matters grew no better. There was a leaning toward the rough lad, who seemed never weary of trying to perform little acts of kindness for his father’s prisoner; but there was only one thing which the midshipman desired, and, as that could not be accorded, the friendly feeling between the two lads stayed where it was. In fact, it seemed to be turning into positive dislike on one side, Archy fiercely rating his gaoler over and over again, and Ram bearing it all in the meekest way.

The gloom was so familiar to Archy now that he could go almost anywhere about the great place, without stumbling over the loose fragments of stone, or being in danger of running up against the great pillars. And, as he roved about the quarry, his busy fingers touched packages and bales; he knew which parcels contained tobacco; he handled bales which he felt sure were silk, and avoided the piled-up kegs of brandy, whose sickly odour would always remind him of being ill at sea.

All these things occupied his mind a little, and when he was extra dull, he would go and lie down by the hole which admitted the salt sea air, or else make his way right under the trap-door, and climb up to it, and sit and listen for the coming of Ram.

One morning he was there, wondering whether it was near the boy’s hour, and he was listening most intently, so as to get full warning and insure time enough to go back to his place and wait, when he fancied he heard the bark of a dog.

It was not repeated, and he was beginning to think that it was fancy, when the sound came again nearer, then nearer still, till there was a prolonged volley of canine-words, let us call them, for they evidently meant something from their being so persistent.

“Why—hurrah! He has found me!” cried the prisoner excitedly; and he heard quite plainly, as he clung to the rough steps and pressed his ear against the trap-door, the eager scratching made by a dog, and the snuffling noise as it tried to thrust its nose down amongst the stones.

“Hi! Good dog then!” he shouted, and there was a furious burst of barking.

Then there was a sharp sound as if a heavy stone had fallen upon a heap, and he heard it rattle down to the side.

Then there was a fierce growl, a bark, and directly after silence.

The midshipman’s heart, which had been throbbing with excitement a few minutes before, sank down now like lead, as he waited to hear the sounds again, but waited in vain.

If ever the loud baying of a dog sounded like music in his ear, it was during those brief moments, and as he sat there, longing to know what it meant, and whether his conjecture was right that the dog had scented him out, he faintly heard the gruff tones of a voice, and, hastily descending, he went down the slope and made for his usual place.

“That’s what it was,” said Archy to himself. “The dog scented me out, and was scratching there till that great brute of a smuggler saw him, and threw a stone and drove him away. There they are.”

He was right, the rough pieces of stone were being removed, and a few minutes later he saw the swinging lamp coming through the gloom.

The prisoner was, as he said, quite right, for that day Celia Graeme had wandered down towards the edge of the huge line of cliffs in a different direction to that which it was her wont to take.

It was not often that she stirred far from the gloomy fir-wood at the back of the house, for her life had not been that of most young people of her age. Her father’s disappointed and impoverished life, consequent upon his political opinions, and her mother’s illness and depression, had made the Hoze always a mournful home, and naturally this had affected her, making her a serious, contemplative girl, older than her years, and one who found her pleasure in sitting on a fallen trunk in the sheltering woods, listening to the roar of the wind in the pine boughs, watching the birds and squirrels, and having for companion her dog Grip, who, when she took him for her walks, generally ran mad for the first hour, scampering round and round her, making charges at her feet, and pretending to worry her shoes or dress; running off to hide and dash out upon her in a mock savage way; bounding into furze bushes, chasing the rabbits into their holes; and then, as if apologising for this wild getting rid of a superabundance of animal spirits kept low in the mournful old house, he would come as soon as she sat quietly down, crouch close up to her, and lay his head on her knee, to gaze up in her face, blinking his eyes, and not moving again perhaps for an hour.

Celia seldom went seaward. The distance was short, but she was content to watch the beautiful changes on the far-spreading waste from high up on the hills. There had been wrecks on the Freestone Shore, which made her shudder as she recalled how the wild cries of the hapless mariners in their appeals for help had reached the shore; she had seen the huge waves come tumbling in, to send columns of spray high in the air, to be borne over the land in a salt rain, and, as a rule, the sea repelled her, and she shrank, too, from the great folds of the cliff, with their mysterious-looking grass-grown ledges and cracks, up which came the whispering and gurgling of water, and at times fierce hissings as if sea monsters lived below, and were threatening those who looked down and did not pause to think that these sounds must be caused by air compressed by the inrushing tide.

Then, too, there was something oppressing in the poorly protected shafts with their sloping descents, once, perhaps hundreds of years back, the busy spots where old hewers of stone worked their way down below the thinner and poorer strata to where the freestone was clean and solid.

These spots attracted and yet repelled her, as she peered cautiously down, to see that they were half hidden by long strands of bramble, with tufts of pink-headed hemp agrimony, and lower down the sides and archway infringed with the loveliest of ferns.

There was something very mysterious-looking in these ancient quarries where foot of man never trod now, and she shivered as she passed funnel-shaped holes which she knew were produced by the falling in of the surface to fill up passages and chambers in the stone whose roofs had given way far below.

She often thought, when tempted by Grip in the direction of these weird old places, how horrible it would be if some day the earth suddenly sank beneath her, and she should be buried alive.

At such times her hands grew wet, and she retraced her steps, fancying the while that the earth sounded hollow beneath her tread.

Upon this particular morning Grip had vanquished her. He was always tempting her in this direction by making rushes and looking back as if asking her to come, for the dark holes tempted him. The rabbit burrows were all very well, but he could never get in them beyond his shoulders, while in these holes he could penetrate as far as he liked in search of imaginary wild creatures which were never found. Then, too, there were the edges of the cliffs where he could stand and bark at the waves far below, and sometimes, where they were not perpendicular, descend from shelf to shelf.

The morning was glorious, and the sea of a lovely amethyst blue, as Celia wandered on and on toward the highest of the hills away west of the Hoze. Grip was frantic with delight, his tail stood straight out, and his ears literally rattled as he charged over the short turf after some rabbit, which dodged through the bushes, reached its hole, displayed a scrap of white cotton, and disappeared.

And still, smiling at the dog’s antics, the girl wandered on, nearer and nearer to where the land suddenly ended and the cliff went sharply down to the sea.

As she went on, stopping to admire the beautiful purple thistles, which sent up one each a massive head on its small stalk, or admired the patches of dyer’s rocket and the golden tufts of ragwort, the old fancies about the ancient quarries were forgotten for the time, and she seated herself at last upon a projecting piece of stone, away there in the solitude, to watch the grey gulls and listen to the faint beat of the waves hundreds of feet below.

There were a few sheep here and there, but the Hoze was hidden beyond a fold of the mighty hills, and Shackle’s farm and the labourer’s cottage were all down in one of the valleys.

It was very beautiful, but extremely lonely, and to right and left there were the great masses of cliff, which seemed like huge hills suddenly chopped off by the sea, and before her the wide-stretching amethystine plain, with a sail or two far away.

Celia sat watching a little snake which was wriggling rapidly along past her, a little creature whose scales looked like oxidised silver in the afternoon sunshine, and she was about to rise and try to capture the burnished reptile, knowing from old experience that it was harmless, when at one and the same moment she became aware that Grip was missing, and that Ram Shackle and the big labourer from the farm, Jemmy Dadd, were coming up a hollow away to the right, one by which they could reach the down-like fields that spread along the edge of the cliffs from the farm.

She saw them, and hardly realising that they did not see her, she went on watching the reptile as it glided with easy serpentine motion through the grass.

“Ram is going to gather blackberries,” she said to herself, as she glanced at his basket; “and Dadd is going to count the sheep. I ought to have brought a basket for some blackberries.”

She felt full of self-reproach, as she recalled how plentifully they grew there, and how useful they would be at home. “And I might get some mushrooms, too,” she thought, “instead of coming out for nothing.”

Just then she heard Grip again barking very faintly.

“Stupid dog!” she said to herself, with a little laugh. “He has followed a rabbit to its hole. If he would only catch a few more, how useful they would be!”

Then she moved a little to follow the slow-worm, which was making for a patch of heath, and she was still watching it when, some time after, Grip came running up quickly, snarling and growling, and pausing from time to time to look back.

“Oh, you coward!” she said, sitting down and pulling his ears, as he thrust his head into her lap. “Afraid of a fox! Was it a fox’s hole, then, and not a rabbit’s, Grip?”

The dog growled and barked.

“Poor old fellow, then. Where is it, then?”

The dog leaped up, barked, and ran a few yards, to stop, look back at her, and bark again.

“No, no, Grip; I don’t want to see,” she said; and she began idly to pick up scraps of wild thyme and toss at the dog, who vainly kept on making rushes toward the slope of the great cliff.

“No, sir,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “I am not going to be led to one of your discoveries, to see nothing for my pains.”

The dog barked again, angrily, and not until she spoke sharply did he obey, and followed her unwillingly up the slope and then down into a hollow that looked as if at one time it might have been the bed of some great glacier.

The dog tried again to lead her away toward the sea, but she was inexorable; and so he followed her along unwillingly, till, low down in the hollow, as she turned suddenly by a pile of great blocks of weather-worn and lichened stone, she came suddenly upon Dadd and Ram, the former flat on his back, with his hat drawn-down over his eyes, the latter busy with his knife cutting a rough stick smooth.

“How do, Miss Celia?” said Ram, showing his white teeth.

“Quite well, Ram. How is your head now?”

“Oh, it’s all right agen now, miss. On’y a bit sore.”

“You tumbled off the cliff, didn’t you?”

“Off a bit of it,” said Ram, grinning. “Not far.”

“But how foolish of you! Mrs Shackle said you might have been killed.”

“Yes, miss, but I wasn’t.”

“What were you doing in such a dangerous place?”

“Eh?” said Ram, changing colour; “what was I doing?”

“Yes, to run such a risk.”

“I was—I was—”

Ram was completely taken aback, and sat staring, with his mouth open.

“Lookin’ after a lost sheep,” came in a deep growl from under Jemmy Dadd’s hat.

“Oh! And did you find it?”

“Yes; he fun’ it,” said the man, “but it were in a very dangerous place. It’s all dangerous ’long here; and Master Shackle wouldn’t let young Ram here go along these here clift slopes without me to take care on him.”

Ram grinned.

“And you take my advice, miss, don’t you come ’bout here. We lost four sheep last year, and come nigh losing the missuses best cow not long ago. Didn’t you hear?”

“Yes; old Mary told me, and Mrs Shackle mentioned it too.”

“Ay,” continued Jemmy, without removing his hat, “she fell slip-slap into the sea.”

“Poor thing.”

“Ay, little missus; and, if I were you, I wouldn’t come along top o’ they clifts at all. Grass is so short and slithery that, ’fore you knows where you are, your feet goes from under you, and you can’t stop yourself, and over you goes. And that aren’t the worst on it; most like you’re never found.”

“Yes, ’tis very slippy, Miss Celia,” said Ram, beginning to hack again at his stick.

“I do not come here very often, Ram,” she said, quietly. “It is a long time since I came.”

“Ay, and I wouldn’t come no more, little missus,” continued Jemmy, from under his hat, “for if you did not go off, that there dog—”

Grip had been looking on uneasily, and turning his head from one to the other, as each spoke in turn; but the minute he heard himself mentioned, he showed his teeth, and began to growl fiercely at the man.

“Look ye here,” cried Jemmy, sitting up quickly and snatching away his hat, “if you comes at me—see the heel o’ that there boot?”

He held up the great heavy object named, ready to kick out, and Grip bared his teeth for an attack.

“Down, Grip! Come here, sir. How dare you?”

But Grip did dare, and he would have dashed at the labourer if Celia had not caught him by the loose skin of his neck, when he began to shake his head and whine in a way that sounded like protesting.

“And me giving a bit of advice too,” said Jemmy in an ill-used tone.

Grip barked fiercely.

“Be quiet, sir!”

“And going to say, little missus, that if that there dog comes hanging about here, he’ll go over them there cliffs as sure as buttons, and never be seen no more.”

“Come away, Grip. Thank you, Mr Dadd,” said Celia, hurrying the dog away, and giving him a run down along the hollow; while Jemmy Dadd threw himself back, rolled over on to his face, and laughed hoarsely.

“I say, young Ram,” he cried, “what a game!”

“What’s a game?” said the boy sharply.

“That there dog; he won’t forget that whack I give him on the ribs for long enough.”

“Needn’t have thrown so hard.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t like to see dogs hurt,” said Ram, who was dealing with an awkward knot.

“Oh, don’t you! Why, if your father had been along here with that rusty old gun of hisn, that he shoots rabbits with, and seen that dog scratching among them stones, know what he’d have done?”

“No.”

“Well, then, I do. He’d have shot him. And if I ketches him ferretin’ about there again, I’ll drop a big flat stone down on him, and then chuck him off the cliff.”

“If you do, I’ll chuck you down after him,” said Ram.

“What?” cried the man, bursting into a fresh roar of laughter. “Oh, come, I likes that. Why, you pup! That’s what you are—a pup.”

This was uttered with what was meant to be a most contemptuous intonation of the voice.

“Pups can bite hard sometimes, Jemmy,” said Ram slowly; “and I shan’t have Miss Celia’s dog touched.”

“Ho! Then he’s to come here when he likes, and show everybody the way into our store, is he? Well, we shall see.”

“Yes; and you’d better go and see if they’ve gone.”

“Ah, yes, lad, I’ll go and see if they’ve gone; and we needn’t quarrel ’bout it, for it strikes me as little missus won’t come down here no more, I scared her too much.”

Jemmy burst into another hoarse fit of laughing, and went lumping off in his big sea-boots to see if Celia and her dog were well out of sight, before rejoining Ram to take the prisoner his repast.

Chapter Thirty One.Three days passed, and the idea of losing her companion was so startling to Celia, that she made no further journey toward the cliffs, in spite of several efforts made by Grip to coax her in that direction. But on the fourth day there was so mean and unsatisfactory a dinner at the Hoze, of the paltry little rock fish caught by the labouring men, that, as Celia watched her mother partaking of the unsatisfactory fare, and thought how easily it might have been supplemented by a dish of mushrooms and a blackberry pudding, she made up her mind that the next day she would go.“I could be very careful, and not go near any of the slopes running down to the cliff, and I could make Grip keep with me. Yes, I will go,” she said.The next morning she partook of her breakfast quite early—a simple enough meal, consisting of barley bread and a cup of fresh milk from the Shackles’ farm, and, taking a basket, she called Grip, who came bounding about her in a state of the most exuberant delight.The dog’s satisfaction was a little damped as his mistress took her way toward the fir-wood, and he kept making rushes by another path. But it was of no use; Celia had made her own plans, and, as the dog could not coax her his way, and would not go alone, he had to follow her.There was a reason for this route being chosen, for Celia did not care to be seen by Ram, or any of the men who might be pretending to work hard on Shackle’s farm, which was ill tended, and consisted for the most part of cliff grazing land; but somehow seemed to need quite a large staff of labourers to keep it in such bad order.By passing through the fir-wood, Celia meant to get out of sight of the cottages, and she went on, with the dog following sulkily behind, but reviving a little upon being given the basket to carry.She trudged on for about a mile over the thin stony pastures, found a fair number of small, sweet, pink-gilled mushrooms where the turf was finest and richest, and gradually adding to her store of glistening bramble-berries till her finger-tips were purple with the stains.The course she chose was down in the hollows between the hills, till at last she struck the one along which she had passed after leaving Ram and his companion, and turned down here, believing that, if the boy selected it, there would be good reason for his so doing. She walked steadily on, finding a button mushroom here and a bunch of blackberries there. For one minute she paused, struck by the peculiar sweet and sickly odour of a large-leaved herb which she had crushed, and admired its beautifully veined blossoms, in happy ignorance of the fact that it was the deadly poisonous henbane, and then all at once she missed Grip.“Oh, how tiresome!” she cried excitedly; and she called him loudly, but there was no reply. A gull or two floated about and uttered their querulous calls, otherwise the silence was profound, and, though she swept the great curved sides of the hollow, whose end seemed filled up by the towering hill, all soft green slope toward her, but sheer scarped and projecting cliff toward the sea, there was not so much as a sheep in sight.With a great horror coming upon her, she hurried along towards the cliff, thinking of what Dadd had said, and picturing in her mind’s eye poor Grip racing along some seaward slope in chase of a rabbit, and going right over the cliff, she went on almost at a run, pausing, though, to call from time to time.It was intensely hot in that hollow, for the sea breeze was completely shut off, but she did not pause, and rapidly neared the cliff now, her dread increasing, as she wondered whether Ram would be good enough to get a boat, and row along under the cliff to find the poor dog’s body, so that she might bury it up in the fir-wood behind the house, in a particular spot close to where she had so often sat.No sign of Grip: no sound. She called again, but there was no cheery bark in response, and with her despondent feeling on the increase, she began to climb the side of the hollow, passing unnoticed great clusters of blackberries, whose roots were fast in the stones, and the fruit looking like bunches of black grapes; past glistening white mushrooms, better than any she had yet seen, but they did not attract her; and at last she had climbed so high that she could see the blue waves spreading up and up to the horizon, and about a couple of miles out the white-sailed cutter, which was creeping slowly along the shore.“I wonder where that midshipman is,” she thought, forgetting the dog for the moment. “How strange that all was! Could it really have been a dream?”“Yes, it must have been, or else he would have gone and told his captain, and they would have come and searched the cellar, and there would have been sad trouble.”She turned her eyes from the sea, and began to search the green slopes around, and then all at once she uttered a cry of joy as she could sight, on the highest slope right at the end of the valley, a white speck which suddenly appeared out of the earth, and then stood out clear on the green turf, and seemed to be looking about before turning and plunging down again.It was quite half a mile away, and her call was in vain, and she began to descend diagonally into the hollow, the tears in her eyes, but a smile of content on her lips.“Oh, you bad dog,” she cried merrily, “how I will punish you!” and she stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even sang a scrap of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came to a bramble clump, and went on staining her fingers.By degrees she passed the end of the hollow, leaving all the blackberries behind, and now, only pausing to pick a mushroom here and there, she began to ascend the slope toward where she had seen the dog.“It is getting nearer the edge of the cliff,” she said; “but it slopes up, and not down. Ah, I see you, sir. Come here directly! Grip! Grip!”The dog had suddenly made his appearance about fifty yards in front, right as it were out of the grassy slope, to stand barking loudly for a few moments before turning tail and plunging down again.“Oh, how tiresome!” she cried. “Grip! Grip!”But, as the dog would not come to her, she went on, knowing perfectly well that he had gone down one of the old stone pits, and quite prepared to stand at last gazing into a hole which inclined rapidly into the hillside, but was as usual provided with rough stones placed step-wise, and leading the way into darkness beneath a fern-fringed arch, while the whole place was almost entirely choked-up with the luxuriantly growing brambles.“He has found a rabbit,” she thought to herself, as her eyes wandered about the sides of the pit, and brightened at the sight of the abundant clusters of blackberries, finer and riper than any she had yet secured.“I wish I was not so frightened of these places,” she said to herself. “Why, I could fill a basket here, and there can’t be anything to mind, I know; it is only where they used to dig out the stone.”A sudden burst of barking took her attention to the dog, who came bounding up the rugged steps right to her feet, looked at her with his great intelligent eyes, and, before she could stop him, rushed down again, where she could hear him scratching, and there was a sound which she knew was caused by his moving a piece of stone such as she could see lying at the side in broken fragments, and of the kind dug in thin layers, and used in the neighbourhood instead of tiles.“Oh, Grip, Grip! And you know you can’t get at him. Come here.”“Ahoy!”Celia was leaning over the rugged steps, gazing down into the darkness beneath the ferns, when, in a faint, smothered, distant way, there came this hail, making her nearly drop her basket as she started away from the pit.The hail was followed by a sharp burst of barking, and the dog came bounding up again, to stand looking after her, barking again before once more descending.Slowly, and with her eyes dilated and strained, the girl crept back step by step, as she withstood her desire to run away, for all at once the thought had come that perhaps some shepherd or labourer had fallen down to the bottom, and was perhaps lying here with a broken leg.She had heard of such things, and it would be very terrible, but she must know now, and then go for help.In this spirit she once more reached the entrance to the old quarry, and peered down, listening to the worrying sound made by the dog, who kept rattling one piece of stone over another, every now and then giving a short, snapping bark.“Ahoy!” came again, as if from a distance, and a thrill ran through the girl, bringing with it a glow of courage.“It is some poor fellow fallen down;” and, placing her basket by the side, she began to descend cautiously, with Grip rushing to meet her, barking now joyously, and uttering whine after whine.The descent was not difficult, and after the first few steps the feeling of timidity began to wear off, and Celia descended more quickly till, about fifty feet from the top, some distance under where the fringe of ferns hung, and where it had seemed quite dark from above, but was really a pleasant greenish twilight, she found beneath her feet a few loose flat stones, part of a quantity lying before her in the archway that seemed to lead straight on into the quarry.But here, right at her feet, the dog began to scratch, tossing one thin piece of stone over the others upon which it lay.Celia looked before her wonderingly, for she had expected to see a fallen man at once, probably some one of the men whom she knew by sight; but, in spite of the dog’s scratching, she could not imagine anything was there, and she was bending forward, gazing into the half choked-up level passage before her, when there came from under her feet the same smothered,—“Ahoy!”She started away, clinging to the side for support, and ready in her fear to rush back to the surface.But the dog’s action brought her to herself, as he began again to bark furiously, and tore at the stones.“Hush! Quiet, Grip!” she said in an awe-stricken whisper, as she went down on her knees and listened, her heart beating wildly, and a horrible idea, all confused, of some one having been buried alive, making her face turn ashy pale.“Ahoy! Any one there?” came in the same faint tones.“Yes—yes,” panted the girl. “What is it?”“Help!”And then, more loudly,—“Let me out, pray.”“Oh,” moaned the girl, “what does it mean?”“Ahoy there!” came more plainly now. “Whoever you are, get a boat, and go off to the cutterWhite Hawk. Can you hear?”“Yes, yes,” said the girl huskily, as a horrible suspicion ran through her mind.“Tell Lieutenant Brough that Mr Raystoke is a prisoner, kept by the smugglers, and then show his men the way here.”There was a pause, for Celia could make no reply; she knew who Mr Raystoke was, and it seemed horrible to her that the frank, good-looking young midshipman should be kept a prisoner in such a tomb-like place as that.“Don’t, don’t say you will not go!” came up in the smothered tones. “You shall have a reward.”“As if I wanted a reward!” panted Celia. “What shall I do? What shall I do?”“Help—pray help!” came from below; and Grip joined in.“Yes, I will help you,” cried Celia, placing her face close down to the stones.“What!” came up. “I know you—the young—yes, Miss Graeme.”“Yes,” she cried hastily.“Pray help me.”“I want to,” she said; “but—but you will go and—and tell—about what you have seen.”There was a pause, and then came faintly the words,—“I—don’t—want to; but—I must.”“But I cannot—I cannot help you if you are going to fetch the sailors here, perhaps to seize—Oh, what shall I do?”There was a pause before the prisoner spoke again.“Look here,” he said; “I don’t want to tell about your father being mixed up with the smugglers.”“You must not—you dare not!” cried Celia.There was another pause, and then the prisoner’s voice came again reproachfully.“You ought to know it’s my duty, and that I was sent ashore to find this out.—I say.”“Yes.”“Did you know I was shut up like this by those beasts?”“Oh, no, no, no!”“Your father did. He had me sent here, so that he should not get into trouble.”“Indeed no! He would not do so wicked a thing.”“But he is a smuggler.”“It is not true!” cried Celia passionately; “and if you dare to say such things of my dear, good, suffering father, I’ll go away and never help you.”“I can’t help saying it,” said Archy sturdily. “I’d give anything to get out of this dreadful dark place; but I must speak.”“Not of him.”“I don’t want to speak of him,” said Archy, “but what can I do? I must tell about all those smuggled things there in the cellar that night when you found me in that room—out of uniform.”“Ah!” ejaculated Celia.“I know it’s hard on you, but I’ve been here a prisoner ever since, and it’s enough to break one’s heart.”The poor fellow’s voice changed a little as he spoke, and he would have given way if he had seen Celia’s head bowed down, and that she was crying bitterly.“You will send for help?”“I cannot,” sobbed the girl, “unless you will promise not to tell.”There was a pause again.“I can’t promise,” came up huskily, in faint smothered tones. “I say, is the door locked as well as bolted?”“I cannot tell; it is covered with stones. Pray, pray promise me that you will not tell. I do want to help you to get away.”“I can’t promise,” said Archy at last, after a bitter struggle with self. “I must go straight to my officer and tell him as soon as I get out.”At that moment there was a sharp barking from the dog, who rushed up the steps to stand at the top for a few moments before coming down again.“Won’t you help me?”“To send my poor innocent father to prison,” said Celia in a low voice.“I can’t hear you,” came from below.“And I can’t tell you,” said Celia to herself. “What shall I do—what shall I do?”She stole softly up the rugged steps, with her fingers in her ears, in dread lest she should be called upon to listen to the prisoner’s piteous appeals for help; and, as soon as she reached the top, she set off running as hard as she could go, to find her father, tell him all, and appeal to him to try and save the poor fellow from the cruel trials he was called upon to bear.Celia could hardly see the direction in which she was going, for her eyes were blinded with tears, and so it was that, when down in the lowest part of the hollow, as she hurried blindly along, she tripped over one of the many loose stones, fell heavily, striking her temple against a block projecting from the steep side of the little valley; and fell, to lie insensible for a time; and when she did come to her senses, it was to find Grip lying by her, with his head upon her chest, and his eyes looking inquiringly into hers, as if to ask what it all meant.Her head ached, and she felt half stunned still, but she strove to rise to her feet, and sank back with a moan of pain.For a worse trouble had discovered itself: her ankle was badly wrenched, so that she could not stand, and in the solitary place in which she had fallen, it was possible that she might lie for days and not be found, unless special search was made.A sudden thought came—to tie her handkerchief about Grip’s neck, and send him home.The first was easily done, the latter impossible. Grip was an intelligent dog in his way, but nothing would make him leave his mistress there; and the poor girl lay all day in the hot sun, and at last saw that night was coming on, and that there was no help.

Three days passed, and the idea of losing her companion was so startling to Celia, that she made no further journey toward the cliffs, in spite of several efforts made by Grip to coax her in that direction. But on the fourth day there was so mean and unsatisfactory a dinner at the Hoze, of the paltry little rock fish caught by the labouring men, that, as Celia watched her mother partaking of the unsatisfactory fare, and thought how easily it might have been supplemented by a dish of mushrooms and a blackberry pudding, she made up her mind that the next day she would go.

“I could be very careful, and not go near any of the slopes running down to the cliff, and I could make Grip keep with me. Yes, I will go,” she said.

The next morning she partook of her breakfast quite early—a simple enough meal, consisting of barley bread and a cup of fresh milk from the Shackles’ farm, and, taking a basket, she called Grip, who came bounding about her in a state of the most exuberant delight.

The dog’s satisfaction was a little damped as his mistress took her way toward the fir-wood, and he kept making rushes by another path. But it was of no use; Celia had made her own plans, and, as the dog could not coax her his way, and would not go alone, he had to follow her.

There was a reason for this route being chosen, for Celia did not care to be seen by Ram, or any of the men who might be pretending to work hard on Shackle’s farm, which was ill tended, and consisted for the most part of cliff grazing land; but somehow seemed to need quite a large staff of labourers to keep it in such bad order.

By passing through the fir-wood, Celia meant to get out of sight of the cottages, and she went on, with the dog following sulkily behind, but reviving a little upon being given the basket to carry.

She trudged on for about a mile over the thin stony pastures, found a fair number of small, sweet, pink-gilled mushrooms where the turf was finest and richest, and gradually adding to her store of glistening bramble-berries till her finger-tips were purple with the stains.

The course she chose was down in the hollows between the hills, till at last she struck the one along which she had passed after leaving Ram and his companion, and turned down here, believing that, if the boy selected it, there would be good reason for his so doing. She walked steadily on, finding a button mushroom here and a bunch of blackberries there. For one minute she paused, struck by the peculiar sweet and sickly odour of a large-leaved herb which she had crushed, and admired its beautifully veined blossoms, in happy ignorance of the fact that it was the deadly poisonous henbane, and then all at once she missed Grip.

“Oh, how tiresome!” she cried excitedly; and she called him loudly, but there was no reply. A gull or two floated about and uttered their querulous calls, otherwise the silence was profound, and, though she swept the great curved sides of the hollow, whose end seemed filled up by the towering hill, all soft green slope toward her, but sheer scarped and projecting cliff toward the sea, there was not so much as a sheep in sight.

With a great horror coming upon her, she hurried along towards the cliff, thinking of what Dadd had said, and picturing in her mind’s eye poor Grip racing along some seaward slope in chase of a rabbit, and going right over the cliff, she went on almost at a run, pausing, though, to call from time to time.

It was intensely hot in that hollow, for the sea breeze was completely shut off, but she did not pause, and rapidly neared the cliff now, her dread increasing, as she wondered whether Ram would be good enough to get a boat, and row along under the cliff to find the poor dog’s body, so that she might bury it up in the fir-wood behind the house, in a particular spot close to where she had so often sat.

No sign of Grip: no sound. She called again, but there was no cheery bark in response, and with her despondent feeling on the increase, she began to climb the side of the hollow, passing unnoticed great clusters of blackberries, whose roots were fast in the stones, and the fruit looking like bunches of black grapes; past glistening white mushrooms, better than any she had yet seen, but they did not attract her; and at last she had climbed so high that she could see the blue waves spreading up and up to the horizon, and about a couple of miles out the white-sailed cutter, which was creeping slowly along the shore.

“I wonder where that midshipman is,” she thought, forgetting the dog for the moment. “How strange that all was! Could it really have been a dream?”

“Yes, it must have been, or else he would have gone and told his captain, and they would have come and searched the cellar, and there would have been sad trouble.”

She turned her eyes from the sea, and began to search the green slopes around, and then all at once she uttered a cry of joy as she could sight, on the highest slope right at the end of the valley, a white speck which suddenly appeared out of the earth, and then stood out clear on the green turf, and seemed to be looking about before turning and plunging down again.

It was quite half a mile away, and her call was in vain, and she began to descend diagonally into the hollow, the tears in her eyes, but a smile of content on her lips.

“Oh, you bad dog,” she cried merrily, “how I will punish you!” and she stooped and picked a couple of mushrooms, quite happy again, and even sang a scrap of a country ditty in a pretty bird-like voice as she came to a bramble clump, and went on staining her fingers.

By degrees she passed the end of the hollow, leaving all the blackberries behind, and now, only pausing to pick a mushroom here and there, she began to ascend the slope toward where she had seen the dog.

“It is getting nearer the edge of the cliff,” she said; “but it slopes up, and not down. Ah, I see you, sir. Come here directly! Grip! Grip!”

The dog had suddenly made his appearance about fifty yards in front, right as it were out of the grassy slope, to stand barking loudly for a few moments before turning tail and plunging down again.

“Oh, how tiresome!” she cried. “Grip! Grip!”

But, as the dog would not come to her, she went on, knowing perfectly well that he had gone down one of the old stone pits, and quite prepared to stand at last gazing into a hole which inclined rapidly into the hillside, but was as usual provided with rough stones placed step-wise, and leading the way into darkness beneath a fern-fringed arch, while the whole place was almost entirely choked-up with the luxuriantly growing brambles.

“He has found a rabbit,” she thought to herself, as her eyes wandered about the sides of the pit, and brightened at the sight of the abundant clusters of blackberries, finer and riper than any she had yet secured.

“I wish I was not so frightened of these places,” she said to herself. “Why, I could fill a basket here, and there can’t be anything to mind, I know; it is only where they used to dig out the stone.”

A sudden burst of barking took her attention to the dog, who came bounding up the rugged steps right to her feet, looked at her with his great intelligent eyes, and, before she could stop him, rushed down again, where she could hear him scratching, and there was a sound which she knew was caused by his moving a piece of stone such as she could see lying at the side in broken fragments, and of the kind dug in thin layers, and used in the neighbourhood instead of tiles.

“Oh, Grip, Grip! And you know you can’t get at him. Come here.”

“Ahoy!”

Celia was leaning over the rugged steps, gazing down into the darkness beneath the ferns, when, in a faint, smothered, distant way, there came this hail, making her nearly drop her basket as she started away from the pit.

The hail was followed by a sharp burst of barking, and the dog came bounding up again, to stand looking after her, barking again before once more descending.

Slowly, and with her eyes dilated and strained, the girl crept back step by step, as she withstood her desire to run away, for all at once the thought had come that perhaps some shepherd or labourer had fallen down to the bottom, and was perhaps lying here with a broken leg.

She had heard of such things, and it would be very terrible, but she must know now, and then go for help.

In this spirit she once more reached the entrance to the old quarry, and peered down, listening to the worrying sound made by the dog, who kept rattling one piece of stone over another, every now and then giving a short, snapping bark.

“Ahoy!” came again, as if from a distance, and a thrill ran through the girl, bringing with it a glow of courage.

“It is some poor fellow fallen down;” and, placing her basket by the side, she began to descend cautiously, with Grip rushing to meet her, barking now joyously, and uttering whine after whine.

The descent was not difficult, and after the first few steps the feeling of timidity began to wear off, and Celia descended more quickly till, about fifty feet from the top, some distance under where the fringe of ferns hung, and where it had seemed quite dark from above, but was really a pleasant greenish twilight, she found beneath her feet a few loose flat stones, part of a quantity lying before her in the archway that seemed to lead straight on into the quarry.

But here, right at her feet, the dog began to scratch, tossing one thin piece of stone over the others upon which it lay.

Celia looked before her wonderingly, for she had expected to see a fallen man at once, probably some one of the men whom she knew by sight; but, in spite of the dog’s scratching, she could not imagine anything was there, and she was bending forward, gazing into the half choked-up level passage before her, when there came from under her feet the same smothered,—

“Ahoy!”

She started away, clinging to the side for support, and ready in her fear to rush back to the surface.

But the dog’s action brought her to herself, as he began again to bark furiously, and tore at the stones.

“Hush! Quiet, Grip!” she said in an awe-stricken whisper, as she went down on her knees and listened, her heart beating wildly, and a horrible idea, all confused, of some one having been buried alive, making her face turn ashy pale.

“Ahoy! Any one there?” came in the same faint tones.

“Yes—yes,” panted the girl. “What is it?”

“Help!”

And then, more loudly,—

“Let me out, pray.”

“Oh,” moaned the girl, “what does it mean?”

“Ahoy there!” came more plainly now. “Whoever you are, get a boat, and go off to the cutterWhite Hawk. Can you hear?”

“Yes, yes,” said the girl huskily, as a horrible suspicion ran through her mind.

“Tell Lieutenant Brough that Mr Raystoke is a prisoner, kept by the smugglers, and then show his men the way here.”

There was a pause, for Celia could make no reply; she knew who Mr Raystoke was, and it seemed horrible to her that the frank, good-looking young midshipman should be kept a prisoner in such a tomb-like place as that.

“Don’t, don’t say you will not go!” came up in the smothered tones. “You shall have a reward.”

“As if I wanted a reward!” panted Celia. “What shall I do? What shall I do?”

“Help—pray help!” came from below; and Grip joined in.

“Yes, I will help you,” cried Celia, placing her face close down to the stones.

“What!” came up. “I know you—the young—yes, Miss Graeme.”

“Yes,” she cried hastily.

“Pray help me.”

“I want to,” she said; “but—but you will go and—and tell—about what you have seen.”

There was a pause, and then came faintly the words,—

“I—don’t—want to; but—I must.”

“But I cannot—I cannot help you if you are going to fetch the sailors here, perhaps to seize—Oh, what shall I do?”

There was a pause before the prisoner spoke again.

“Look here,” he said; “I don’t want to tell about your father being mixed up with the smugglers.”

“You must not—you dare not!” cried Celia.

There was another pause, and then the prisoner’s voice came again reproachfully.

“You ought to know it’s my duty, and that I was sent ashore to find this out.—I say.”

“Yes.”

“Did you know I was shut up like this by those beasts?”

“Oh, no, no, no!”

“Your father did. He had me sent here, so that he should not get into trouble.”

“Indeed no! He would not do so wicked a thing.”

“But he is a smuggler.”

“It is not true!” cried Celia passionately; “and if you dare to say such things of my dear, good, suffering father, I’ll go away and never help you.”

“I can’t help saying it,” said Archy sturdily. “I’d give anything to get out of this dreadful dark place; but I must speak.”

“Not of him.”

“I don’t want to speak of him,” said Archy, “but what can I do? I must tell about all those smuggled things there in the cellar that night when you found me in that room—out of uniform.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Celia.

“I know it’s hard on you, but I’ve been here a prisoner ever since, and it’s enough to break one’s heart.”

The poor fellow’s voice changed a little as he spoke, and he would have given way if he had seen Celia’s head bowed down, and that she was crying bitterly.

“You will send for help?”

“I cannot,” sobbed the girl, “unless you will promise not to tell.”

There was a pause again.

“I can’t promise,” came up huskily, in faint smothered tones. “I say, is the door locked as well as bolted?”

“I cannot tell; it is covered with stones. Pray, pray promise me that you will not tell. I do want to help you to get away.”

“I can’t promise,” said Archy at last, after a bitter struggle with self. “I must go straight to my officer and tell him as soon as I get out.”

At that moment there was a sharp barking from the dog, who rushed up the steps to stand at the top for a few moments before coming down again.

“Won’t you help me?”

“To send my poor innocent father to prison,” said Celia in a low voice.

“I can’t hear you,” came from below.

“And I can’t tell you,” said Celia to herself. “What shall I do—what shall I do?”

She stole softly up the rugged steps, with her fingers in her ears, in dread lest she should be called upon to listen to the prisoner’s piteous appeals for help; and, as soon as she reached the top, she set off running as hard as she could go, to find her father, tell him all, and appeal to him to try and save the poor fellow from the cruel trials he was called upon to bear.

Celia could hardly see the direction in which she was going, for her eyes were blinded with tears, and so it was that, when down in the lowest part of the hollow, as she hurried blindly along, she tripped over one of the many loose stones, fell heavily, striking her temple against a block projecting from the steep side of the little valley; and fell, to lie insensible for a time; and when she did come to her senses, it was to find Grip lying by her, with his head upon her chest, and his eyes looking inquiringly into hers, as if to ask what it all meant.

Her head ached, and she felt half stunned still, but she strove to rise to her feet, and sank back with a moan of pain.

For a worse trouble had discovered itself: her ankle was badly wrenched, so that she could not stand, and in the solitary place in which she had fallen, it was possible that she might lie for days and not be found, unless special search was made.

A sudden thought came—to tie her handkerchief about Grip’s neck, and send him home.

The first was easily done, the latter impossible. Grip was an intelligent dog in his way, but nothing would make him leave his mistress there; and the poor girl lay all day in the hot sun, and at last saw that night was coming on, and that there was no help.

Chapter Thirty Two.Celia Graeme took sundry precautions to avoid being seen, but she was not so successful as she imagined.Jemmy Dadd was an old servant of Farmer Shackle, one who always made a point of doing as little as was possible about the farm. He did not mind loading a cart, if he were allowed as much time as he liked, or feeding the pigs, because it afforded him an opportunity to lean over the sty and watch the pretty creatures eat, while their grunting and squeaking was sweet music in his ear. He generally fed the horses, too, and watched them graze. Calling up the cows from the cliff pastures he did not mind, because cows walked slowly; and he did the milking because he could sit down and rest his head; but to thump a churn and make butter was out of his line.Mrs Shackle complained bitterly to her lord and master about different lots of cream being spoiled, but Farmer Shackle snubbed her.“Can’t expect a man to work night and day too,” he grunted. “Set one of the women to churn.”In fact, the farmer never found any fault with Jemmy, for the simple reason that he was his best worker on dark nights, and as handy a sailor as could be found.Jemmy knew it, felt that he was licensed, and laughed to himself as he followed his own bent, and spent a good deal of time every day in what he called seeing the crops grow.When there were no crops growing, he went to see how the grass was getting on, and to do this properly, he put a piece of hard black tobacco in his cheek, and went and lay down on one of the hill-slopes.He was seeing how the grass got on that particular morning with his eyes shut, when, happening to open them, he caught sight of Celia going along, a mile away, with her basket and dog.He knew her by the dog, though even at that distance, as she moved almost imperceptibly over the short turf of the treeless expanse along by the sea, he would have been sure that it was Sir Risdon’s child.“What’s the good of telling on her?” he growled to himself, as he lay back with his hands under his head; and in that attitude he rested for nearly three hours. Then, moved by the cogitations in which he had been indulging, he slowly and deliberately rose, something after the fashion of a cow, and began to go slowly in the direction taken by Celia hours before.Jemmy Dadd seemed to be going nowhere, and as he slouched along, lifting up one heavy sea boot and putting it down before the other, he never turned his head in either direction. So stiff was he in his movements, that any one who watched him would have concluded that he was looking straight forward, and that was all.A great mistake; for Jemmy, by long practice, had made his eyes work like a lobster’s, and, as he went on, they were rolling slowly round and round, taking in everything, keeping a look-out to sea, and watching the revenue cutter, sweeping the offing, running over the fields and downs and hollows, missing nothing, in short, as he steadily trudged along, not even the few mushrooms that the pleasant showers had brought up, and placing them in his hat.Slow as his pace was, the distance between the prints of the big boots was great, and the mushroom hunting took him, before very long, up the cliff beyond the entrance to the old quarry, then down below it, and then close up alongside, where he stooped over, and then went down a few steps out of sight.He did not turn his head, for his lobster eyes had convinced him that no one was in sight, and, as he disappeared in the deep hole, he pounced upon the basket, and then went softly and quickly down to where the loose tile stones lay.A rapid examination satisfied him that they had not been moved, and he went softly up again, basket in hand, stood still and rolled his eyes, but saw no sign of the basket’s owner, and then, thrusting his arm through the handle, he went steadily back to the farm, where he thrust his head in at the door, stared at Farmer Shackle, who was innocently mending a net, and backed out and went into the rough stable.Shackle followed him, net in one hand, wooden netting-needle in the other.“Hullo!” he said.Jemmy held out the basket.“Well, I see brambrys and masheroons. What of ’em?”“Little missus’s basket. Fun’ it.”“Take it home. No—I’ll send Ramillies. Ladyship don’t like to see you.”“Fun’ it in number one!”“What!”“See her going along there with that dog. She must ha’ smelled him out.”“Place been opened?”“No.”Farmer Shackle scratched his nose on both sides with the netting-needle; then he poked his red worsted cap a little on one side with the same implement, and scratched the top of his head, and carefully arranged the red cap again.“Mayn’t have seen or heard anything, lad.”“Must, or wouldn’t have left the basket.”“Right. Have big Tom Dunley, Badstock and two more, and be yonder at dark. Ramillies know?”“Not yet.”“Don’t tell him. He’s waiting yonder for you. Here he comes. Go on just as usual, and don’t tell him nothing. I’ll meet you soon as it’s dark.”“Pistols?”“No. Sticks.”“Jemmy there, father? Ah, there you are! Come on. I’ve been waiting such a time.”Ram looked sharply from one to the other, and knew there was something particular on the way, but he said nothing.“Get it out of Jemmy,” he said to himself.“I’m ready, lad; I’m ready.”“Look sharp, boy,” said the farmer.“Yes, father,” said Ram. “I’ll go and get the basket.”“Ay, do, boy. And look here—never mind more to-day; but take double ’lowance to-morrow, so as not to go every day.”“Very well, father. Look sharp, Jemmy!”The boy ran back to the house, followed by his father, who went on netting, and a minute later Jemmy and Ram were off over the bare pastures in the direction from which the man had come.“Find that basket you give to father, Jemmy?”“Ay, lad, half full o’ brambrys and masheroons. Wondered whose it was. Gaffer says it’s little missus’s, and you’re to take it up.”“Oh,” thought Ram, “that’s what they were talking about;” and he began whistling, quite content, as they went wandering about mushrooming, till, apparently tired, they sat down close to the mouth of the quarry, where Jemmy’s eyes rolled round for a good ten minutes before he said, “Now.”Then the pair rolled over to left and right, down into the hole, and descended quickly to the bottom, where the man crept right on along the half choked passage, took a lanthorn from a great crevice; there was the nicking of flint and steel, a faint blue light, and the snap of the closing lanthorn as the dark passage showed a yellow glow.Meanwhile Ram had been busy removing the pieces of stone, laying bare a trap-door upon which were a big wooden lock and a couple of bolts. These he unfastened, threw open the door, and descended with his basket; while, after handing down the lanthorn into the black well-like hole, Jemmy climbed up again to the surface and stood with his eyes just above the level, sheltered by blackberry strands and other growth, and slowly made his eyes revolve; till, at the end of half an hour, Ram reappeared, when the business of closing and bolting the door went on, while Jemmy blew out the light, closed the lanthorn, through whose crevices came forth an unpleasant odour, bore it back to its hiding-place; and then the pair departed as cautiously as they came.“What did he say?” growled Jemmy.“Oh, not much. Seemed all grumpy, and wouldn’t answer a civil question.”“Should ha’ kicked him,” said Jemmy.Very little more was said till they reached home, and Ram busied himself about the farm till after supper, wishing that he could help the midshipman to escape without getting his father into trouble.He was thinking how horribly dark and miserable the old quarry must be, for the first time. The thought had not occurred to him before, through every hole and corner being so familiar, from the fact that scores of times he had held the lanthorn while his father’s men carried in smuggled goods landed at the ledge, if there was plenty of time; for, if the landing had been hurried, and the danger near, the things were often carried up to the Hoze for temporary deposit till carts came to bear the things into the interior.“I do wish he’d be friends,” thought Ram, when his musings were interrupted by his father saying,—“Ah, there’s that basket Jemmy found’s mornin’. Go and take it up to the Hoze.”“He needn’t go to-night, need he?” said Mrs Shackle.“You mind your own business,” said the farmer fiercely. “Be off, boy.”Ram put on his red cap, took the basket, and trotted off toward the Hoze, while Mrs Shackle sighed, for she knew that something particular must be on the way, or Ram would not have been sent off, and her husband have prepared to go out directly after.“Oh dear me, dear me, dear me!” said the plump, comfortable-looking woman, as the door closed on her husband’s back. “If he would only keep to his cows and sheep!”“Here,” said the farmer, reopening the door, “be off to bed. Ramillies need not know that I’m gone out.”“No, dear. But do take care of yourself.”“Yah!”Bang went the door, and Mrs Shackle, after putting a few things straight, went off obediently to bed, troubling in no wise about the door being left on the latch.

Celia Graeme took sundry precautions to avoid being seen, but she was not so successful as she imagined.

Jemmy Dadd was an old servant of Farmer Shackle, one who always made a point of doing as little as was possible about the farm. He did not mind loading a cart, if he were allowed as much time as he liked, or feeding the pigs, because it afforded him an opportunity to lean over the sty and watch the pretty creatures eat, while their grunting and squeaking was sweet music in his ear. He generally fed the horses, too, and watched them graze. Calling up the cows from the cliff pastures he did not mind, because cows walked slowly; and he did the milking because he could sit down and rest his head; but to thump a churn and make butter was out of his line.

Mrs Shackle complained bitterly to her lord and master about different lots of cream being spoiled, but Farmer Shackle snubbed her.

“Can’t expect a man to work night and day too,” he grunted. “Set one of the women to churn.”

In fact, the farmer never found any fault with Jemmy, for the simple reason that he was his best worker on dark nights, and as handy a sailor as could be found.

Jemmy knew it, felt that he was licensed, and laughed to himself as he followed his own bent, and spent a good deal of time every day in what he called seeing the crops grow.

When there were no crops growing, he went to see how the grass was getting on, and to do this properly, he put a piece of hard black tobacco in his cheek, and went and lay down on one of the hill-slopes.

He was seeing how the grass got on that particular morning with his eyes shut, when, happening to open them, he caught sight of Celia going along, a mile away, with her basket and dog.

He knew her by the dog, though even at that distance, as she moved almost imperceptibly over the short turf of the treeless expanse along by the sea, he would have been sure that it was Sir Risdon’s child.

“What’s the good of telling on her?” he growled to himself, as he lay back with his hands under his head; and in that attitude he rested for nearly three hours. Then, moved by the cogitations in which he had been indulging, he slowly and deliberately rose, something after the fashion of a cow, and began to go slowly in the direction taken by Celia hours before.

Jemmy Dadd seemed to be going nowhere, and as he slouched along, lifting up one heavy sea boot and putting it down before the other, he never turned his head in either direction. So stiff was he in his movements, that any one who watched him would have concluded that he was looking straight forward, and that was all.

A great mistake; for Jemmy, by long practice, had made his eyes work like a lobster’s, and, as he went on, they were rolling slowly round and round, taking in everything, keeping a look-out to sea, and watching the revenue cutter, sweeping the offing, running over the fields and downs and hollows, missing nothing, in short, as he steadily trudged along, not even the few mushrooms that the pleasant showers had brought up, and placing them in his hat.

Slow as his pace was, the distance between the prints of the big boots was great, and the mushroom hunting took him, before very long, up the cliff beyond the entrance to the old quarry, then down below it, and then close up alongside, where he stooped over, and then went down a few steps out of sight.

He did not turn his head, for his lobster eyes had convinced him that no one was in sight, and, as he disappeared in the deep hole, he pounced upon the basket, and then went softly and quickly down to where the loose tile stones lay.

A rapid examination satisfied him that they had not been moved, and he went softly up again, basket in hand, stood still and rolled his eyes, but saw no sign of the basket’s owner, and then, thrusting his arm through the handle, he went steadily back to the farm, where he thrust his head in at the door, stared at Farmer Shackle, who was innocently mending a net, and backed out and went into the rough stable.

Shackle followed him, net in one hand, wooden netting-needle in the other.

“Hullo!” he said.

Jemmy held out the basket.

“Well, I see brambrys and masheroons. What of ’em?”

“Little missus’s basket. Fun’ it.”

“Take it home. No—I’ll send Ramillies. Ladyship don’t like to see you.”

“Fun’ it in number one!”

“What!”

“See her going along there with that dog. She must ha’ smelled him out.”

“Place been opened?”

“No.”

Farmer Shackle scratched his nose on both sides with the netting-needle; then he poked his red worsted cap a little on one side with the same implement, and scratched the top of his head, and carefully arranged the red cap again.

“Mayn’t have seen or heard anything, lad.”

“Must, or wouldn’t have left the basket.”

“Right. Have big Tom Dunley, Badstock and two more, and be yonder at dark. Ramillies know?”

“Not yet.”

“Don’t tell him. He’s waiting yonder for you. Here he comes. Go on just as usual, and don’t tell him nothing. I’ll meet you soon as it’s dark.”

“Pistols?”

“No. Sticks.”

“Jemmy there, father? Ah, there you are! Come on. I’ve been waiting such a time.”

Ram looked sharply from one to the other, and knew there was something particular on the way, but he said nothing.

“Get it out of Jemmy,” he said to himself.

“I’m ready, lad; I’m ready.”

“Look sharp, boy,” said the farmer.

“Yes, father,” said Ram. “I’ll go and get the basket.”

“Ay, do, boy. And look here—never mind more to-day; but take double ’lowance to-morrow, so as not to go every day.”

“Very well, father. Look sharp, Jemmy!”

The boy ran back to the house, followed by his father, who went on netting, and a minute later Jemmy and Ram were off over the bare pastures in the direction from which the man had come.

“Find that basket you give to father, Jemmy?”

“Ay, lad, half full o’ brambrys and masheroons. Wondered whose it was. Gaffer says it’s little missus’s, and you’re to take it up.”

“Oh,” thought Ram, “that’s what they were talking about;” and he began whistling, quite content, as they went wandering about mushrooming, till, apparently tired, they sat down close to the mouth of the quarry, where Jemmy’s eyes rolled round for a good ten minutes before he said, “Now.”

Then the pair rolled over to left and right, down into the hole, and descended quickly to the bottom, where the man crept right on along the half choked passage, took a lanthorn from a great crevice; there was the nicking of flint and steel, a faint blue light, and the snap of the closing lanthorn as the dark passage showed a yellow glow.

Meanwhile Ram had been busy removing the pieces of stone, laying bare a trap-door upon which were a big wooden lock and a couple of bolts. These he unfastened, threw open the door, and descended with his basket; while, after handing down the lanthorn into the black well-like hole, Jemmy climbed up again to the surface and stood with his eyes just above the level, sheltered by blackberry strands and other growth, and slowly made his eyes revolve; till, at the end of half an hour, Ram reappeared, when the business of closing and bolting the door went on, while Jemmy blew out the light, closed the lanthorn, through whose crevices came forth an unpleasant odour, bore it back to its hiding-place; and then the pair departed as cautiously as they came.

“What did he say?” growled Jemmy.

“Oh, not much. Seemed all grumpy, and wouldn’t answer a civil question.”

“Should ha’ kicked him,” said Jemmy.

Very little more was said till they reached home, and Ram busied himself about the farm till after supper, wishing that he could help the midshipman to escape without getting his father into trouble.

He was thinking how horribly dark and miserable the old quarry must be, for the first time. The thought had not occurred to him before, through every hole and corner being so familiar, from the fact that scores of times he had held the lanthorn while his father’s men carried in smuggled goods landed at the ledge, if there was plenty of time; for, if the landing had been hurried, and the danger near, the things were often carried up to the Hoze for temporary deposit till carts came to bear the things into the interior.

“I do wish he’d be friends,” thought Ram, when his musings were interrupted by his father saying,—

“Ah, there’s that basket Jemmy found’s mornin’. Go and take it up to the Hoze.”

“He needn’t go to-night, need he?” said Mrs Shackle.

“You mind your own business,” said the farmer fiercely. “Be off, boy.”

Ram put on his red cap, took the basket, and trotted off toward the Hoze, while Mrs Shackle sighed, for she knew that something particular must be on the way, or Ram would not have been sent off, and her husband have prepared to go out directly after.

“Oh dear me, dear me, dear me!” said the plump, comfortable-looking woman, as the door closed on her husband’s back. “If he would only keep to his cows and sheep!”

“Here,” said the farmer, reopening the door, “be off to bed. Ramillies need not know that I’m gone out.”

“No, dear. But do take care of yourself.”

“Yah!”

Bang went the door, and Mrs Shackle, after putting a few things straight, went off obediently to bed, troubling in no wise about the door being left on the latch.

Chapter Thirty Three.Archy Raystoke was fast asleep, dreaming about being once more on board the cutter, with the sun shining full in his eyes, because he was lying on the deck, right in everybody’s road, and Gurr the master was scolding him for it in a way which was very disrespectful to an officer and a gentleman, while the men grouped around grinned.He was not surprised, for somehow Mr Brough was not there, and Gurr had assumed the command of the cutter, and was playing the part of smuggler and pirate, and insulting him, whom he addressed again: “Get up!”Archy leaped to his feet, and saw at a glance that it was not the sun, but the light of a lanthorn shining in his eyes, while, before he could do more than realise that several men were standing close to him, half of a sack was drawn-down over his head and shoulders, and a thin rope was twisted round and round his arms, fastening him securely, and only leaving his hands free.“What are you going to do?” he shouted, after a vain struggle to free himself, and his voice sounded muffled and thick through the heavy sack.“Pitch you off the cliff if you make so much as a sound,” said a gruff voice by his car. “Keep quiet, and you won’t be hurt.”The lad’s heart beat heavily, and he felt hot and half suffocated.“Do you want to smother me?” he said. “Can’t breathe.”“Slit the back of the sack, lad,” said the same gruff voice, and there was a sharp cutting noise heard, as a breathing-hole was cut right up behind his head.“Now, then, bring him along.”His hand was grasped, and, as he felt himself led over ground that was quite familiar now, he knew that he was on the way to the entrance.Were they going to take him out, and set him free?No; if they had been going to do that, they would not have blindfolded his eyes.Yes, they would, for, if they were going to set him free, they would do so in a way that would place it beyond his power to betray their secret store.Quick immatured thoughts which shot through him as he was led along, and he knew directly after that it was only fancy. Of course. He could show the lieutenant where the opening was in the cliff, and by knowing that it would be easy to track out the land entrance.“No,” said the midshipman to himself sadly; “they are going to take me and imprison me somewhere else, for they must now know that I was holding communications with that girl.”“Now then, steady!” said a voice, as he felt that the cool air was coming down on to his head, and he breathed it through the thick sacking. “Make a rope fast round him.”“I must be at the foot of the way in,” thought Archy, as he felt a rope passed round him, and the next minute it tightened, he was raised from his feet, and the rope cut into him painfully as he felt himself hauled up. Then hands seized him, and he was thrown down on the grass, while the last rope was cast off.As he lay there being untied, though his eyes were blinded, his ears were busy, and he listened to the smothered sounds of the trap being fastened and the stones being drawn over it again.“Trap-door—door into a trap,” he thought. “Where am I going now? Surely they would not kill me.”A cold chill shot through him, but he mastered the feeling of terror as he felt himself dragged to his feet.“Now, then, keep step,” the same gruff voice said; and, with apparently half a dozen men close by him, as far as he could judge by their mutterings and the dull sound of their feet over the grass, he was marched on for over an hour—hearing nothing, seeing nothing, but all the while with his ears strained, waiting for an opportunity to appeal for help, in spite of the threats he had heard, as soon as he could tell by the voices that he was near people who were not of the smugglers’ gang.But no help seemed to be at hand, and, as far as he could judge, he was being taken along the fields and rough ground near the edge of the wild cliffs, now near the sea, now far away. At one time he could hear the dull thud and dash of waves, for a good brisk breeze was blowing, and he fancied that he had a glint of a star through the thick covering, but he was not sure. Then the sound of the waves on the shore was completely hushed, and he felt that they must either be down in a hollow, or going farther and farther away inland.Twice this happened, and the third time, as all was still, and he could feel a hard road beneath his feet, he became sure. There was an echoing sound from their footsteps, dull to him, but still plain, and it seemed as if they were down in some narrow cutting or rift, when all at once! Just in front, after the men about him had been talking more loudly, as if clear of danger, there rang out a stern—“Halt—stand!”There was a hasty exclamation. Then came in the loud, gruff voice,—“Back, lads, quick!”He was seized, and retreat had begun, when again rang out:—“Halt—stand!”The smugglers were between two fires.The midshipman was conscious of a familiar voice crying,—“No shots, lads. Cutlashes!”There was a rush; the sound of blows, men swayed and struggled about wildly, and the lad, bound, blindfolded, and helpless, was thrust here and there. Then he received a sharp blow from a cudgel, which sent him staggering forward, and directly after a dull cut from a steel weapon, which, fortunately for him, fell upon and across the rope which bound his arms to his sides. There were oaths, fierce cries, and the struggling grew hotter, till all at once there was a rush, Archy went down like a skittle, men seemed to perform a triumphal war-dance upon his body, and then they passed on with the fight, evidently consisting of a retreat and pursuit, till the sounds nearly died away.A minute later, as Archy lay there perfectly helpless, the noises increased again. Men were evidently laughing and talking loudly, and the sounds seemed to come round a corner, to become plainer all at once.“Pity we didn’t go on after them? Nonsense, my lad! They know every hole and corner about here, and there’s no knowing where they’d have led us,” said a familiar voice.“Well, it is precious dark,” said another.“Too dark to see what we are about. But I take you all to witness, my lads, they ’tacked us first.”“Ay, ay: they began it,” came in chorus.“And if it happens that they are not smugglers, and there’s trouble about it, you know what to say.”Archy heard all this, and it seemed to him that the party were about to pass him, when a voice he well knew growled out,—“Hit me an awful whack with a stick.”“Ay, I got one too, my lad; and I didn’t like to use my cutlash.”“Wish we’d took a prisoner, or knocked one or two down. Why, here is one.”There was a buzz of voices, and Archy felt himself hoisted up.“Can you stand? Not wounded, are you? Who cut him down?”“Well, I’m ’fraid it was me,” said one of the familiar voices. “Why, he is a prisoner ready made.”“What? Here, cut him loose, lads. Hullo, my lad, who are you?”“Take this off,” panted Archy in a stifled voice; and then, as the sack was dragged over his head, he uttered a sigh, and staggered, and would have fallen, had not one of the men caught him.“Hold up, lad. Not hurt, are you?”“No,” said Archy hoarsely.“Who are you? What were they going to do with you?”“Don’t you know me, Mr Gurr?”“Mr Raystoke!”The rest of his speech, if he said anything, was drowned in a hearty cheer as the men pressed round.“Well, I am glad!” cried the master. “We’ve been ashore a dozen times, my lad, and searched everywhere, till the skipper thought you must have run away.”“Run away!” cried Archy huskily. “I’ve been a prisoner.”“Those were smugglers, then?”“Yes,” cried Archy; “but they shall smart for all this. I know where all their hiding-places are, and we’ll hunt them down.”“Hooray!” shouted the men.“Were you looking for me?”“Well, not to-night, my lad. Making a bit of a patrol,” said Gurr. “The skipper thought that perhaps we might run against something or another, and we have and no mistake. But what’s the matter? Not hurt, are you?”“No, not much. I got a blow on the shoulder, and then some one gave me a chop with a cutlass.”“That was you, Dirty Dick! I did see that,” cried one of the men.“Well, I don’t say it warn’t me. How was I to know it was a orsifer in the dark, and smothered up like that?”“Are you wounded, then?” cried the master excitedly.“No; it felt more like a blow, but people kept trampling on me after I was down.”“That’s bad,” said Gurr, giving vent to a low whistle. “Here, lads, let’s carry him to the boat.”“No, no!” cried the midshipman. “I think I can walk. I could hardly breathe.”“Well, go steady, then. It’s on’y ’bout half a mile to the cove. Where did they mean to take you, lad?”“I don’t know. Perhaps on board some ship to get me out of the way;” and he briefly explained his late position, as they walked steadily on, the men listening eagerly the while.“Then you can take me right to the place, Mr Raystoke?” said Gurr.Archy hesitated.“I can point it out from the sea, but it will be all guess-work from the shore.”“Never mind; we’ll find it. But you can’t think about where they were taking you to-night?”“I have no idea. Of course they blindfolded me, so that I should not see the way out of the place I left, nor the way into the other.”“Ah, well, come on, and the skipper will talk to you. He has been fine and mad about it, and I ’most think he’s turned a bit thinner, eh, Dick?”“Ay, that he have,” said the latter. “Leastwise you might think so.”“One day he’s been all in a fret, saying you’ve run away, and that you’d be dismissed the service, and it was what he quite expected; and then, so as not to put him out, when you agreed with him, he flew out at you, and called you a fool, and said he was sure the smugglers had murdered his officer, or else tumbled him off the cliff.”Archy was too weary with excitement to care to talk much, and he tramped on with the men, hardly able to realise the truth of his escape, and half expecting to wake up in the darkness and find it all a dream. But he was reminded that it was no dream, from time to time, by feeling a hand laid deprecatingly upon his bruised arm, and starting round to see in the darkness that it was Dirty Dick, who patted his injury gently, and then uttered a satisfied “Hah!”“Pleased to see me back,” thought the midshipman, “but I wish he wouldn’t pat me as if I were a dog.”“Hullo!” exclaimed the master just then, as they came opposite a depression in the cliff which gave them a view out to sea. “What’s going on? Forrard, my lads. Smart!”The pace was increased, for away in the darkness there hung out a bright signal which all knew meant recall, and the midshipman’s heart throbbed as he felt that before long he would be in a boat dancing over the waves, and soon after treading the deck of the smart little cutter.“No,” he said to himself, as after a hail a boat came out of the darkness, its keel grating on the pebbly shore, and he uttered a sigh of content on sinking back in the stern-sheets; “it isn’t a dream.”

Archy Raystoke was fast asleep, dreaming about being once more on board the cutter, with the sun shining full in his eyes, because he was lying on the deck, right in everybody’s road, and Gurr the master was scolding him for it in a way which was very disrespectful to an officer and a gentleman, while the men grouped around grinned.

He was not surprised, for somehow Mr Brough was not there, and Gurr had assumed the command of the cutter, and was playing the part of smuggler and pirate, and insulting him, whom he addressed again: “Get up!”

Archy leaped to his feet, and saw at a glance that it was not the sun, but the light of a lanthorn shining in his eyes, while, before he could do more than realise that several men were standing close to him, half of a sack was drawn-down over his head and shoulders, and a thin rope was twisted round and round his arms, fastening him securely, and only leaving his hands free.

“What are you going to do?” he shouted, after a vain struggle to free himself, and his voice sounded muffled and thick through the heavy sack.

“Pitch you off the cliff if you make so much as a sound,” said a gruff voice by his car. “Keep quiet, and you won’t be hurt.”

The lad’s heart beat heavily, and he felt hot and half suffocated.

“Do you want to smother me?” he said. “Can’t breathe.”

“Slit the back of the sack, lad,” said the same gruff voice, and there was a sharp cutting noise heard, as a breathing-hole was cut right up behind his head.

“Now, then, bring him along.”

His hand was grasped, and, as he felt himself led over ground that was quite familiar now, he knew that he was on the way to the entrance.

Were they going to take him out, and set him free?

No; if they had been going to do that, they would not have blindfolded his eyes.

Yes, they would, for, if they were going to set him free, they would do so in a way that would place it beyond his power to betray their secret store.

Quick immatured thoughts which shot through him as he was led along, and he knew directly after that it was only fancy. Of course. He could show the lieutenant where the opening was in the cliff, and by knowing that it would be easy to track out the land entrance.

“No,” said the midshipman to himself sadly; “they are going to take me and imprison me somewhere else, for they must now know that I was holding communications with that girl.”

“Now then, steady!” said a voice, as he felt that the cool air was coming down on to his head, and he breathed it through the thick sacking. “Make a rope fast round him.”

“I must be at the foot of the way in,” thought Archy, as he felt a rope passed round him, and the next minute it tightened, he was raised from his feet, and the rope cut into him painfully as he felt himself hauled up. Then hands seized him, and he was thrown down on the grass, while the last rope was cast off.

As he lay there being untied, though his eyes were blinded, his ears were busy, and he listened to the smothered sounds of the trap being fastened and the stones being drawn over it again.

“Trap-door—door into a trap,” he thought. “Where am I going now? Surely they would not kill me.”

A cold chill shot through him, but he mastered the feeling of terror as he felt himself dragged to his feet.

“Now, then, keep step,” the same gruff voice said; and, with apparently half a dozen men close by him, as far as he could judge by their mutterings and the dull sound of their feet over the grass, he was marched on for over an hour—hearing nothing, seeing nothing, but all the while with his ears strained, waiting for an opportunity to appeal for help, in spite of the threats he had heard, as soon as he could tell by the voices that he was near people who were not of the smugglers’ gang.

But no help seemed to be at hand, and, as far as he could judge, he was being taken along the fields and rough ground near the edge of the wild cliffs, now near the sea, now far away. At one time he could hear the dull thud and dash of waves, for a good brisk breeze was blowing, and he fancied that he had a glint of a star through the thick covering, but he was not sure. Then the sound of the waves on the shore was completely hushed, and he felt that they must either be down in a hollow, or going farther and farther away inland.

Twice this happened, and the third time, as all was still, and he could feel a hard road beneath his feet, he became sure. There was an echoing sound from their footsteps, dull to him, but still plain, and it seemed as if they were down in some narrow cutting or rift, when all at once! Just in front, after the men about him had been talking more loudly, as if clear of danger, there rang out a stern—

“Halt—stand!”

There was a hasty exclamation. Then came in the loud, gruff voice,—

“Back, lads, quick!”

He was seized, and retreat had begun, when again rang out:—

“Halt—stand!”

The smugglers were between two fires.

The midshipman was conscious of a familiar voice crying,—

“No shots, lads. Cutlashes!”

There was a rush; the sound of blows, men swayed and struggled about wildly, and the lad, bound, blindfolded, and helpless, was thrust here and there. Then he received a sharp blow from a cudgel, which sent him staggering forward, and directly after a dull cut from a steel weapon, which, fortunately for him, fell upon and across the rope which bound his arms to his sides. There were oaths, fierce cries, and the struggling grew hotter, till all at once there was a rush, Archy went down like a skittle, men seemed to perform a triumphal war-dance upon his body, and then they passed on with the fight, evidently consisting of a retreat and pursuit, till the sounds nearly died away.

A minute later, as Archy lay there perfectly helpless, the noises increased again. Men were evidently laughing and talking loudly, and the sounds seemed to come round a corner, to become plainer all at once.

“Pity we didn’t go on after them? Nonsense, my lad! They know every hole and corner about here, and there’s no knowing where they’d have led us,” said a familiar voice.

“Well, it is precious dark,” said another.

“Too dark to see what we are about. But I take you all to witness, my lads, they ’tacked us first.”

“Ay, ay: they began it,” came in chorus.

“And if it happens that they are not smugglers, and there’s trouble about it, you know what to say.”

Archy heard all this, and it seemed to him that the party were about to pass him, when a voice he well knew growled out,—

“Hit me an awful whack with a stick.”

“Ay, I got one too, my lad; and I didn’t like to use my cutlash.”

“Wish we’d took a prisoner, or knocked one or two down. Why, here is one.”

There was a buzz of voices, and Archy felt himself hoisted up.

“Can you stand? Not wounded, are you? Who cut him down?”

“Well, I’m ’fraid it was me,” said one of the familiar voices. “Why, he is a prisoner ready made.”

“What? Here, cut him loose, lads. Hullo, my lad, who are you?”

“Take this off,” panted Archy in a stifled voice; and then, as the sack was dragged over his head, he uttered a sigh, and staggered, and would have fallen, had not one of the men caught him.

“Hold up, lad. Not hurt, are you?”

“No,” said Archy hoarsely.

“Who are you? What were they going to do with you?”

“Don’t you know me, Mr Gurr?”

“Mr Raystoke!”

The rest of his speech, if he said anything, was drowned in a hearty cheer as the men pressed round.

“Well, I am glad!” cried the master. “We’ve been ashore a dozen times, my lad, and searched everywhere, till the skipper thought you must have run away.”

“Run away!” cried Archy huskily. “I’ve been a prisoner.”

“Those were smugglers, then?”

“Yes,” cried Archy; “but they shall smart for all this. I know where all their hiding-places are, and we’ll hunt them down.”

“Hooray!” shouted the men.

“Were you looking for me?”

“Well, not to-night, my lad. Making a bit of a patrol,” said Gurr. “The skipper thought that perhaps we might run against something or another, and we have and no mistake. But what’s the matter? Not hurt, are you?”

“No, not much. I got a blow on the shoulder, and then some one gave me a chop with a cutlass.”

“That was you, Dirty Dick! I did see that,” cried one of the men.

“Well, I don’t say it warn’t me. How was I to know it was a orsifer in the dark, and smothered up like that?”

“Are you wounded, then?” cried the master excitedly.

“No; it felt more like a blow, but people kept trampling on me after I was down.”

“That’s bad,” said Gurr, giving vent to a low whistle. “Here, lads, let’s carry him to the boat.”

“No, no!” cried the midshipman. “I think I can walk. I could hardly breathe.”

“Well, go steady, then. It’s on’y ’bout half a mile to the cove. Where did they mean to take you, lad?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps on board some ship to get me out of the way;” and he briefly explained his late position, as they walked steadily on, the men listening eagerly the while.

“Then you can take me right to the place, Mr Raystoke?” said Gurr.

Archy hesitated.

“I can point it out from the sea, but it will be all guess-work from the shore.”

“Never mind; we’ll find it. But you can’t think about where they were taking you to-night?”

“I have no idea. Of course they blindfolded me, so that I should not see the way out of the place I left, nor the way into the other.”

“Ah, well, come on, and the skipper will talk to you. He has been fine and mad about it, and I ’most think he’s turned a bit thinner, eh, Dick?”

“Ay, that he have,” said the latter. “Leastwise you might think so.”

“One day he’s been all in a fret, saying you’ve run away, and that you’d be dismissed the service, and it was what he quite expected; and then, so as not to put him out, when you agreed with him, he flew out at you, and called you a fool, and said he was sure the smugglers had murdered his officer, or else tumbled him off the cliff.”

Archy was too weary with excitement to care to talk much, and he tramped on with the men, hardly able to realise the truth of his escape, and half expecting to wake up in the darkness and find it all a dream. But he was reminded that it was no dream, from time to time, by feeling a hand laid deprecatingly upon his bruised arm, and starting round to see in the darkness that it was Dirty Dick, who patted his injury gently, and then uttered a satisfied “Hah!”

“Pleased to see me back,” thought the midshipman, “but I wish he wouldn’t pat me as if I were a dog.”

“Hullo!” exclaimed the master just then, as they came opposite a depression in the cliff which gave them a view out to sea. “What’s going on? Forrard, my lads. Smart!”

The pace was increased, for away in the darkness there hung out a bright signal which all knew meant recall, and the midshipman’s heart throbbed as he felt that before long he would be in a boat dancing over the waves, and soon after treading the deck of the smart little cutter.

“No,” he said to himself, as after a hail a boat came out of the darkness, its keel grating on the pebbly shore, and he uttered a sigh of content on sinking back in the stern-sheets; “it isn’t a dream.”

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