"Alan refused to accept this offer of friendship."
"Continue," urged Sir Donald, with a black cloud in his face. "What happened next?"
"When Neil had gone out of the room," said the old campaigner, "Alan gave a mocking laugh. 'What do you think of them, Jack?' said he. 'It seems to me we've dropped into a hornet's nest. It will be war to the knife with my father and me after this. Which reminds me,' he added, crossing the room to the wall opposite the window there, 'this pretty dirk is mine. I may as well take possession of it.' And he took down a long-bladed, jewel-hafted dagger that was hung there under the picture of Bonnie Belinda. 'Wait outside for me, Jack,' said he; 'wait at the stable door. There's something else I want to do before we go back to Nairn.' So I went out and waited at the stable. I waited for fully an hour. When Alan joined me at last, he was a different man. He was strangely agitated—almost mad with passion and fierce vindictive rage against his father.
"'Look here, Jack,' said he, 'you'd better ride back to Nairn at once—without me. I shall come on later—perhaps not until to-morrow morning. Ride back as quickly as you can, and see the Duke of Cumberland. If you can't see him, go to Major Wolfe. Tell him—tell either of them—that the rebel army is only some four thousand strong, but that the Pretender has determined to attack the King's troops to-morrow. I have just heard this by accident. The three of them—Charles Stuart, my father, and that young scamp Neil—have been closeted together. But I overheard them talking and unfolding their plans. There was only a thin curtain between us, and I heard every word. I heard my father saying that he had a store of arms and ammunition here in the castle for the use of the Highlanders. Two hundred muskets and as many swords, as well as ten thousand pounds in gold. These he offered to Stuart, bidding him send for them at eleven o'clock to-night. The arms and the moneyare to be delivered to the messengers by my brother Neil at the postern gate in the castle garden. Theywillbe delivered, Jack, if—if I don't prevent it, as I mean to do.'"
Colonel Ossington paused in his narrative. His gaze was fixed upon the earnestly attentive eyes and the white face of Colin Leslie. The boy seemed mentally to be associating this fact of the delivery of arms at the postern gate with the recently seen apparition of Neil Leslie. As for Sir Donald, he had now ceased to doubt Colonel Ossington's affirmations, and was as deeply interested in the narrative as was his grandson, although the sympathies of the two were directly at variance.
"Ten thousand pounds in gold!" ejaculated Sir Donald in astonishment. "Where on earth did it all come from?"
"I do not know," returned Ossington. "Probably it represented the contributions of the wealthy Jacobites of the immediate neighbourhood."
"And did the Highlanders get those guns and things in time to use them in the next day's battle?" Colin ventured to ask. He breathed a sigh of disappointment when Colonel Ossington answered, with more conviction than the mere words implied—
"I believe not. Alan Leslie remained behind with the purpose of frustrating their delivery."
"Ay, and did frustrate it, I'll be bound," interposed the grandfather. "Alan was brave, he was strong and determined. He would stick at nothing! When did you next see him, colonel?"
"I never saw him again," replied Ossington. "Since that night when I left him his fate has been to me a complete mystery. On the next day, at Nairn, when the muster-roll was called, he was absent. We advanced to Culloden, and the battle was fought—if battle it may be called which was a mere rout. But Alan Leslie was nowhere on the field. When the Highlanders had retreated,vanquished, and the Duke of Cumberland was pursuing his too terrible vengeance upon the innocent and the guilty alike, I searched among the wounded and the dead for my missing comrade, but nowhere could I find him. Afterwards, I came here. Your castle had been attacked and partly demolished by Hawley's dragoons. Sir John Leslie, I heard, had gone the night before with Charles Stuart to the house of Lord Lovat, to be present at a council of war. He afterwards escaped with the fugitives—probably in company with his son Neil."
"Ay!" added Sir Donald; "and Neil, I'll be bound, did not neglect to carry off the gold with him, and use it for his own selfish purposes; for the Pretender never got the money. I'm thankful for that at least. That he should have it were worse even than that Neil should squander it." The old man began again to stride to and fro across the floor. "Neil was a villain!" he cried; "an ingrain villain and scoundrel. He ought to have been hanged with the rest of them! I could almost be content at the loss of the family fortunes if I might only know that the rascal had died an outlaw's death on the gallows. It was doubtless he who prevented Alan from getting back to his regiment that night."
Colonel Ossington meditated a few moments in silence.
"Yes," he said at length, "no doubt you are right. But in what way did he prevent him, Sir Donald? That is what I want most particularly to know."
"To my mind there is but one answer to that question," returned Sir Donald decisively. "My brother Alan was not in the battle, you say. If he had been alive I am certain he would not have shirked his duty. But I believe he was not alive, colonel; I believe that he was murdered, and murdered by his own brother, Neil Leslie. That also would tally with the fact that since that fatal night, Neil has never dared to show himself at his home."
Colin Leslie here ventured to break in with a remark.
"You have no right to say such a thing, grandfather," he said emphatically. "Why should Neil ever think of murdering Alan? He had nothing to fear from him."
"You know nothing about the matter, boy," growled Sir Donald. "It is no business of an ignorant lad to discuss such a thing as this with his elders."
But Colonel Ossington did not so despise the boy's opinions.
"By the way, Master Colin," said he, "your ghost of this evening should have some bearing on this mystery. Did you not say that the apparition was dressed in the Highland kilt?"
"Ghost!" echoed Sir Donald in astonishment. "What ghost? What apparition?"
"The ghost that I saw to-night when I went out with Colonel Ossington to the stables," returned Colin; "the ghost of Neil Leslie. It went in at the postern gate; the gate where the arms and the money were to have been delivered."
"Ah!" the old man drew his breath in sharply, "I have heard of that ghost before. Old Elspeth has seen it. Once, also," he hesitated, listening to the angry blast of the wind; "once, also, on a wild, blustering night just such as this, I saw it myself. That was many years ago; but, I remember, it was at that same place—near the postern gate. Probably the rascal's guilty conscience troubles him, even in his grave—if, indeed, he be in his grave."
There was a long pause, during which the wind howled even more piteously than before. Colonel Ossington emptied his glass and set it down with deliberate slowness upon the table at his elbow.
"I am persuaded that there was some foul play on that night," said he, in a low, clear voice. "But of course there can now be no proof. How could there be, afterall these years?" He leaned forward with his open hands clasping his knees, and with his eyes fixed upon the fire. Then he went on, as if speaking to himself: "Some years ago, just after the taking of Quebec, I chanced to make the acquaintance of an aged Highlander, who had a bullet in his chest and was dying in the hospital. I learned that the man's name was David Duncan. We got talking of the Jacobite rebellion, and I discovered that he had been present at Culloden. Further conversation elicited the information that this same old Highlander had been one of the Pretender's messengers sent to Castle Leslie to convey the arms and money to the rebel encampment. Duncan and his companions waited that night near the postern gate. They were at their post at eleven. They waited until three o'clock. But no one ever came to them and the arms were never delivered. While they waited, Duncan heard a strange, weird cry, like a cry for help. Whence it came he could not tell; neither did he know whether it was the cry of a man or of a woman. Human it certainly was. It seemed, he said, to come out of the ground at his feet. It was then midnight."
The old clock in the outer hall struck eleven. Sir Donald Leslie signed to Colin, indicating that it was high time the boy was in bed. Colin bade the two men good-night, but still lingered in the room for a few moments, hoping to hear more of this family mystery.
"I infer from what you have said," remarked Colonel Ossington, addressing his host, "that you have no knowledge of the secret place in which the military stores and the gold of which we have been speaking were hidden?"
"There is no such secret place in all the castle," returned Sir Donald. "Of that I am quite certain. Whether the rebels received the stores or not, the things were assuredly removed long before I returned to Scotland."
These were the last arguments that Colin Leslie heardbefore he retired to bed. As he lay wakeful on his pillow, he reflected upon the story that had been revealed to him. The men had come to the conclusion that Neil Leslie, the Jacobite, had murdered his own brother. "Could this really be so?" thought Colin. The boy wondered where and in what exact circumstances the tragedy had taken place. He wondered in which room the guns and swords and all those thousands of golden guineas had been hidden. Colonel Ossington had suggested a secret chamber as the probable receptacle; but Colin knew every nook and cranny about the building, and he was forced to acknowledge to himself that his grandfather's words were true when he said, "There is no such secret place in all the castle."
But on the following morning, when Colin accompanied Colonel Ossington in a walk round the garden, a new light seemed to come to him.
They were passing the little postern of which so much had been said—the postern through which, as the boy declared, he had himself seen the apparition of Neil Leslie disappear on the previous night. Here Colin now stood. He stamped his feet upon the ground.
"Listen!" he said. "Do you hear anything?" He stamped once again. "I've often thought, as I have passed this spot, that the ground seems to give back a hollow sound."
"And if it does, what of it?" asked Colonel Ossington.
"Well," said Colin, with a curious lift of his eyebrows, "I was thinking that it is just possible there may be some cave, or passage, or cellar under here; and that perhaps it was down there that the guns and things you were telling us of last night were stored."
"You may be right," smiled the colonel, "but Idon't see that it matters very much now. It's so long ago, you know."
"Yes," went on Colin, "but I should like to find out, all the same. I have often thought of it before—of the underground passage, I mean. Most castles in Scotland have underground passages somewhere, and Castle Leslie can scarcely be an exception. At one time I thought I had found a way into this one." He pointed up to the top of the ivy-covered wall. "You see the place where that buttress ends?" he asked. The colonel nodded. "Well, last spring a jenny wren built her nest up there. I wanted to get it. I climbed up from the inside of the ruin, and crept along the top of the wall. I had got as far as where the nest was when, leaning over to reach it, I felt one of the big stones give way beneath me. I held on by the ivy; but the loosened stone fell with a crash to the ground. I didn't look where it fell. I was only thinking of how I should get down with the nest. But a day or two afterwards I was coming through the place that used to be the guard-room in the old days, before Hawley's dragoons burnt this part of the castle down, and I saw the stone lying there. It wasn't smashed; but it had smashed the flagstone that it had fallen upon. Some parts of the flagstone had dropped through, right down into a sort of black well. I did not try to open the well; although I should have done if any other boys had been here to help me. But this morning I thought of it again in connection with your story—"
"I understand," interrupted the colonel. "You think it may have been down there that old Sir John Leslie hid the arms for the rebels, eh? Well, let me see this fancied entrance to the subterranean passage. Where is it?"
"It's through here," said Colin. And he led his companion through the postern gate into a large roofless room.
In one of the corners there was a heap of garden refuse, covered by a thin layer of melting snow. Colintook an old spade and industriously cleared the rubbish away. Presently he revealed a large cracked flagstone. He went down on his knees and busily endeavoured to dislodge one of the broken fragments. He scraped and tore and pulled at it to no purpose. Then he stood up and stamped upon it. The rattling of loose earth underneath encouraged him to continue.
"Can you find such a thing as a pickaxe?" questioned Colonel Ossington.
Colin shook his head, but ran, nevertheless, in search of some such instrument, returning some minutes afterwards with a heavy sledge-hammer. With this he opened an assault upon the flagstone, and soon succeeded in loosening one small fragment. A small brown rat darted out from the excavation and scampered across the uneven floor.
"Wait!" cried the colonel; "lend me the hammer. Let us try first to remove this smaller stone, then we can better get at the larger one."
He took the sledge-hammer, raised it over his shoulder, and brought it down with a well-directed blow upon the smaller stone, splitting it. A second blow broke it into splinters. These he removed. Beneath them he discovered the end of a rusty bar of iron that was shot like a bolt through an iron ring. The bar seemed to extend under the larger flagstone, supporting it through its centre of gravity. For many minutes he hammered at the rusty iron, and with each blow the flagstone trembled on its axle and a shower of loosened stones and gravel fell into the depths below. With each development the old soldier's energy increased, while Colin looked on absorbed in boyish expectation.
At last the corroded bar broke. The flagstone collapsed and slipped a few inches into the void, where it was arrested by some obstacle. Its removal revealed an irregular opening, some two feet in diameter.
"You were right, boy," remarked the colonel; "there is indeed a secret chamber here, and this is, or once was, its entrance. See! the flagstone has formed a sort of trap-door. It may have been opened by a spring set under the smaller stone at the side. Look down there; you can see the edge of one of the stone stairs."
"Can we get down?" asked Colin.
"It is possible, I think," returned the old soldier. "But we should require a lighted lantern. Could you fetch one?"
Colin ran off. He was absent some ten minutes. During that interval Colonel Ossington contrived so to force back the broken flagstone that it left an opening sufficiently wide to admit his body. He went upon his knees and thrust his feet into the cavity, descending step by step until his eyes were on a level with the paved floor. There he waited, resting with his hands on the second step. The fingers of his right hand touched something that was softer than the cold stone. He gripped it and drew it forth into the fuller light. It was a fragment of mouldy cloth or felt. Attached to it was a disc of tarnished metal upon which the figure "4" was embossed.
"God!" he exclaimed, "it's the badge of the Fourth Foot."
He tore off the badge and thrust it into his pocket. At this moment Colin Leslie appeared with the lighted lantern, and accompanied by his grandfather.
"I am glad you have come too, Sir Donald," said the colonel somewhat absently.
"What boy's adventure are you contriving now, colonel?" demanded Sir Donald. "One would think that you had gone back to your childhood."
"Not quite so far back as that," returned the old soldier grimly, "but my mind has indeed gone back to my young manhood. Give me the light, Colin," he added, turning to the lad. "I had better, perhaps, go down in advance."
"Colin handed him the lantern."
Colin handed him the lantern and stood at the top of the steps watching him slowly and cautiously descend. The light flickered upon the damp moss-grown stones ofthe walls that formed the sides of the narrow stairway. It went down and down, growing gradually dimmer and dimmer, until at last it died away. The old grandfather and Colin waited, listening. They faintly heard the tread of the colonel's spurred boots echoing hollowly in the darkness. Once they heard him cough, and then all was silent. The minutes slowly passed. Sir Donald grew a trifle nervous, his nervousness being indicated by the impatient tapping of his foot.
"Listen!" cried Colin. "I heard something fall—something that rattled." He knelt down and peered into the opening. "I hear him walking," he whispered. "He's coming nearer now. Now he has stopped. Now he is coming on again. He's on the stairs. He's carrying something that knocks against each step. I can see the reflection of the light now. And now here's the lantern." The boy drew back. "Mind your head, colonel, or you'll knock it," he cried.
Colonel Ossington did not require the caution. Bending his head, he crept upward, holding the lantern in his extended hand. Presently his face appeared in the aperture. It was ghastly white, and his eyes stared wildly. He drew a deep breath of the fresher air.
"You had better come down," he said, glancing up at Sir Donald Leslie; and drawing his left hand upward, he cast an old and rusty broadsword at the old man's feet. Sir Donald glanced at the weapon and kicked it aside.
"Come!" reiterated the colonel in a voice of authority, and the grandfather slowly obeyed. Colin followed him down the steps, although he was aware that he had not been included in the command. Perhaps he would have been wiser to remain where he was, but his boyish curiosity and love of adventure overcame his caution. Step by step they descended into the gloom. The air about them was damp and cold and stifling. The walls dripped with moisture. The stone stairs were slimy. Darkness hemmedthem in, saving only for a fitful glimmer of the lantern light that was below them.
"Three steps more, Sir Donald," said the colonel, standing aside on the firm floor of what appeared to be an arched vault. He held the light aloft. "Now, follow me closely," he added; "the passage turns sharply to the left. Be careful of the corner. I knocked my elbow against it just now. Is that the boy behind you?"
"Yes."
"He ought not to have come. Never mind now; let him follow close at your heels. Now halt and look down upon the floor while I hold the light."
The colonel held out his free hand and gripped the older man's arm, directing his gaze into a narrow archway.
"Those are the muskets," he said. "There are two hundred there. I have counted them."
Colin crept up to his grandfather's side, holding him by the skirts of his coat. Looking into the archway he saw the neatly stacked-up guns, with their rusty barrels and locks and rotting stocks.
The colonel drew his companions onward some three or four steps.
"And here are the claymores," said he. "You see the rebels did not get them, after all."
"No, Alan was true," murmured Sir Donald. "I felt sure he would frustrate their delivery. But—" He gripped the soldier's arm and asked in a suppressed but eagerly acquisitive tone: "But where was the gold, colonel? Did Neil take it all—every guinea of it?"
The colonel held his lantern full in front of Sir Donald's face, which he regarded with an expression of undisguised contempt.
"The gold," he answered, "was stored in the next vault. And," he added loftily, as he signed to Sir Donald to go past him, "I think you will find it all there still."
"The light! the light!" demanded Sir Donald. "Hold it nearer, that I may see."
By the help of the lantern he made his way a few steps farther into the chamber. The yellow rays of light were cast into the low vault. On the floor of hewn rock were many little canvas bags, that were so rotten and mouldy that their sides had fallen away under the pressure of the golden guineas that they had contained. The gold glistened in the lantern light. With greedy outstretched hands, and with eyes staring wide with covetousness, Sir Donald leapt at the treasure. He plunged his fingers into the midst of the coins, lifting his filled hands, and letting the gold fall from them in a jingling shower.
"Wonderful!" he cried. "Ah! now I am rich—rich—rich!" He glanced behind him with shrinking, miserly fear. "It's mine—all mine!" he frenziedly exclaimed, and proceeded eagerly to fill his pockets.
Colonel Ossington lightly touched him on the shoulder.
"Remember, my friend, that the money is Jacobite money," said he. "It was meant for the Pretender, you know."
Sir Donald's coat-pockets were already full to overflowing.
"Meant for the Pretender?" he repeated. "Ah, but look! look!" he added, holding up one of the coins to the light, "every one of them bears the head of the King! No; do not go yet! Let me have the lantern."
"The money will not run away," remarked Colonel Ossington, passing on with the lantern. "You have found it, and may return when you will. And now, since we have solved the material part of the mystery, let us go further that you may understand its more human side."
He led the way, with Colin at his side, and the grandfather was perforce obliged to follow.
"There is something here that you must see," said the colonel, as, having turned a sharp angle in the passage,he stood still, with his hat under his arm and holding the light in front of him so that its rays shot along the slimy floor. Wondering, Sir Donald and his grandson bent forward, searching into the gloom. Colin drew back as his eyes rested for a moment on something white. But he advanced again and timidly looked once more. His trembling finger pointed down upon the floor at the gaunt, fleshless face and the tall form of a man that was partly hidden under mouldy folds of a Highland plaid and kilt. At the left shoulder there was a tarnished silver brooch, set in the centre with a dim yellow stone. The man lay flat on his back. His sword was in its scabbard at his side; the blanched bones of his right hand still held the remains of one of the canvas money-bags. The gold guineas lay in a little pile beneath the long fingers.
"He was carrying that bag of gold to give to the Prince's messenger," cried the boy Colin, aghast. "It is Neil—Neil Leslie!"
"Yes," nodded Colonel Ossington. "And he must have been met just here by his murderer."
"Neil?" echoed Sir Donald, reeling back; "my brother Neil? Then he did not escape to France? And he has been dead all this time!" The old man shuddered. "Murdered, did you say? But who could have murdered him down here? Perhaps he died naturally. Perhaps he could not find his way out up those stairs and through the stone trap-door!"
"The trap-door could certainly be opened only from the outside," remarked the colonel. "This place was evidently built as a dungeon—a prison from which it was not meant that any one should escape. But," he added solemnly, "Neil Leslie was not a prisoner. He probably left the door open, not expecting to be interrupted by the villain who drove that dagger into his honest heart. Do you see the dagger, Donald Leslie?" He pointed to the dead man's breast, and brought the lantern nearer untilits gleam fell upon the jewelled hilt of a Highland dirk. "You should recognise the weapon—as I do. It used to hang under the painted portrait of the Lady Belinda. It is the same weapon that Alan Leslie carried away with him on the eve of Culloden fight."
"Neil? my brother Neil?"
"I do not believe it!" cried Sir Donald excitedly. "My brother Alan never was down here. He did not know of the existence of such a place, any more than I did until this hour. For all that you say I do not believe but that my brother Alan died like a brave man on Culloden Moor, fighting, I thank God, for the King!"
Colonel Ossington silently shook his head and turned away, carrying the lantern with him to the foot of the stairs by which the three had entered the dungeon. Here he stood, holding the lantern so that its light shone only directly in front of him. He confronted Sir Donald and Colin, the while he put his hand into his breast pocket, and drew something forth which he held out for the old man's inspection.
"I found this on one of the upper stairs when I first entered," he said, holding the thing under the light. "It came off a soldier's regimental cap. It is the badge of the Fourth Foot. The man who wore it and who left it lying up there was a man whom I once called my friend; but whom I now know to have been a dishonourable spy, an unscrupulous traitor, an assassin and a fratricide. When Neil Leslie came down here faithfully to fulfil his father's instructions, he was dogged and followed by his brother. It was Alan Leslie who murdered him."
"Then where is Alan now?" interrupted Sir Donald. "Why did he never come home?"
"Because," answered the colonel, "when he came down here to kill his brother, he made the mistake of closing the trap-door behind him. He could not open it, he could not escape. He was imprisoned here withhis dead victim. He may have starved; he may have been suffocated by the smoke from the burning building above him that night when Hawley's dragoons set fire to the castle. However it was, he never left this place." The colonel moved aside, allowing the light to shine upon the dull red, mildewed cloth of a soldier's coat that covered the crouching figure of a man long dead. "That is what remains of Alan Leslie," he added grimly. He handed the lantern to Colin, bidding the lad hold it aloft. He knelt down. "When a soldier disgraces his regiment," he continued, "we usually remove the facings from his uniform. This man was not worthy to wear the uniform of so honoured a regiment as the Fourth Foot."
"I think," remarked Colin, "that, rebel though he was, Neil Leslie was by far the better man."
"I am sure of it, my boy," returned Colonel Ossington.
Author of "Frank and Saxon," &c. &c.
Author of "Frank and Saxon," &c. &c.
"Oh, bother the old books!"
And as if to bother them, though more likely to break their backs, Lance Penwith closed two with a sharp clap, rose from his seat at the table, and then, holding one flat in each hand, he walked round behind his cousin, who was bent over another, with his elbows on the study-table, a finger in each ear, and his eyes shut as if to keep in the passage he was committing to memory. But the next moment he had started up, hurting his knees, and stood glaring angrily at Lance, who was roaring with laughter.
For the hearty-looking sunburned boy had passed behind his fellow-student's chair with the intention of putting his books on one of the shelves, but seeing his opportunity, a grin of enjoyment lit up his face, and taking a step back, he stood just at his cousin's back, and brought the two books he carried together, cymbal fashion, but with all his might, and so close to the reader's head that the air was stirred and the sharp crack made him spring up in alarm.
"What did you do that for?"
"To wake you up, Alfy. There, put 'em away now, and let's go down to the cliff."
"And leave my lessons half done?—Don't you dothat again. You won't be happy till I've given you a sound thrashing."
"Shouldn't be happy then," said Lance, with a laugh; "and besides, you couldn't do it, Alfy, my lad, without I lay down to let you."
"What! I couldn't?"
"Not you. Haven't got strength enough. Jolly old molly-coddle, why don't you come out and bathe and climb and fish?"
"And hang about the dirty old pilchard houses and among the drying hake, and mix with the rough old smugglers and wreckers."
"How do you know they're smugglers and wreckers?"
"Everybody says they are, and uncle would be terribly angry if I told him all I know about your goings on."
"Tell him, then: I don't care. Father doesn't want me to spend all my time with my nose in a book, my eyes shut, and my ears corked up with fingers."
"Uncle wants you to know what Mr. Grimston teaches us."
"Course he does. Well, I know my bits."
"You don't: you can't. You haven't been at work an hour."
"Yes, I have; we sat down at ten, and it's a quarter past eleven, and I know everything by heart. Now, then, you listen."
"Go on, then," cried the other.
"Not likely. I've done. Come on and let's do something. The rain's all gone off and it's lovely out."
"There, I knew you didn't," cried the other. "You can't have learned it all. And look here, if you do that again I shall certainly report it to uncle."
"Very well, report away, sneaky. Now then, will you come? We'll get Old Poltree's boat and make Hezz come and row."
The student reseated himself, frowning, and bent over his book again.
"Look here," cried his cousin, "I'll give you one more chance. Will you come?"
No answer.
"One more chance. Will you come?"
"Will you leave off interrupting me?" cried the other furiously.
"Certainly, sir. Very sorry, sir. Hope you will enjoy yourself, sir. Poor old Alf! He'll want specs soon."
Then pretending great alarm, the speaker darted out into the hall, and thrust his head through a door on the right, which he half opened, and stood looking in at a slightly grey-haired lady who was bending over her work.
"Going out, mother," he said.
The lady looked up and smiled pleasantly.
"Don't be late for dinner, my dear. Two o'clock punctually, mind."
"Oh, I shall be back," said the boy, laughing.
"And don't do anything risky by the cliff."
"Oh no, I'll mind."
The boy closed the door and crossed the hall, just as a shadow darkened the porch, and a tall, bluff-looking man entered.
"Hullo, you, sir!" he cried; "how is it you are not at your studies?—Going out?"
"Yes, father; down to the shore a bit. Done lessons."
"Why don't you take your cousin with you?"
"Won't come, father. I did try."
It was only about half a mile to the cliff, where a few fishermen's cottages stood on shelves of the mighty granite walls which looked as if they had been built up of blocks by the old Cornish ogres, weeded out by the celebrated Jack the Giant-killer; and here Lance made his way to wherein front of one long whitewashed granite cot, perched a hundred feet above the shore, there was a long protecting rail formed of old spars planted close to the edge of the cliff, just where a tiny river discharged itself into the sea. This opened sufficiently to form a little harbour for half-a-dozen fishing luggers, the rocks running out sufficiently to act as a breakwater and keep off the huge billows which at times came rolling in from the south-west, so that on one side of the cliffs lay piled up a slope of wave-washed and rounded boulders, many as big as great Cheshire cheeses, while on the other, where the luggers lay, there were pebbles and sand.
Upon this rail four men were leaning with folded arms, apparently doing nothing but stare out at the bright, clear sea; but every eye was keenly on the look-out for one of those dark-cloud, shadow-like appearances on the surface which to them meant money and provisions.
But there was no sign of fish breaking the surface of the water, and as Lance approached he had a good view of four immense pairs of very thick flannel trousers, whose bottoms were tucked into as many huge boots, which, instead of being drawn well up their owners' thighs, hung in folds about their ankles, and glittered in the sunshine, where they were well specked with bright fish scales.
Higher up Lance looked upon four pairs of very short braces, hitched over big bone buttons, and holding the aforesaid trousers close up under their wearers' armpits. The rest of the costume consisted of caps, home-made, and of fur formerly worn by unfortunate seals which had come too near a boat instead of seeking safety in one of the wave-washed caves round the point.
"Hi! Old Poltree!" shouted Lance, as he drew near, "where's Hezz?"
The broadest man present raised his head a little, screwed it round, and unfolding his arms, set one at liberty to give three thrusts downward of a hand which was of the samecolour as all that could be seen of a very hairy face—mahogany.
"Thankye," shouted Lance, turning off to the left, and the big man folded his arms again and looked seaward, the others not having stirred.
Lance's turn to the left led him to a steep descent all zigzag—a way to the shore that a stranger would have attacked like a bear and gone down backwards; but Lance was no stranger, and the precipitous nature of the way did not deter him, for he descended in a series of jumps from stone to stone, till he finished with a drop of about ten or a dozen feet into a bed of sand lying at the mouth of a wave-scooped hollow, from which came strange moans and squeaks, the latter painfully shrill, the former deepening at times into a roar.
The said stranger would have imagined that a person had fallen from the cliff and was lying somewhere below, badly broken and wanting help; but there was nothing the matter. It was only Hezz, or more commonly "Hezzerer," in three syllables, and he had been busy at work putting a patch on the bottom of a clumsy upturned boat which, as he put it, "lived in the cave," and he was now daubing his new patch with hot tar from a little three-legged iron kettle held in his left hand.
But this does not account for the groans and squeaks.
These were produced from the youth's throat. In fact, Hezz was singing over his work, though it did not sound very musical at the time, for something was broken; but it was only Hezz's voice, and it was only the previous night that Old Poltree, his father, had said to Billy Poltree, another of the big fisherman's offspring, "Yo' never know wheer to have him now, my son: one minute he's hoarse as squire's Devon bull, and next he's letting go like the pig at feeding time."
At the sound of the dull thuds made by Lance's feet in the sand, Hezz Poltree whisked himself round andheld his tar-kettle and brush out like a pair of balances to make him turn, and showed a good-looking young mahogany face—that is to say, it was paler than his father's, and not so ruddy and polished.
"Hullo, Master—Lance," he said, widening his mouth and showing his white teeth, joining in the laughter as the visitor threw himself down on the sand and roared.
"Whisked himself round and held his tar-kettle and brush out like a pair of balances."
"I can't help it, Master—Lance."
"Try again," cried the new-comer, wiping the tears from his eyes.
"I do try," growled the boy, beginning once more in a deep bass, and then ending in a treble squeak. "There's somethin' got loose in my voice. 'Tarn't my fault. S'pose it's a sort o' cold."
"Never mind, gruff un. But I didn't know the boatwas being mended. I wanted to go out fishing, and the pitch isn't dry."
"That don't matter," growled Hezz, setting down his kettle and brush, and catching up a couple of handfuls of dry sand, which he dashed over the shiny tar. "Come on."
Lance came on in the way of helping to turn the clumsy boat over on its keel; then it was spun round so as to present its bows to the sea; a block was placed underneath, another a little way off, and the two boys skilfully ran it down the steep sandy slope till it was half afloat, when they left it while they went back to the natural boat-house for the oars, hitcher, and tackle.
"Got any bait?" said Lance.
"Heaps," came in a growl. Then in a squeak—"Thought you'd come down, so I got some wums—lugs and rags, and there's four broken pilchards in the maund, and a couple o' dozen sand-eels in the coorge out yonder by the buoy."
"Are there any bass off the point?"
"Few. Billy saw some playing there 'smorning, but p'raps they won't take."
"Never mind; let's try," said Lance eagerly. "Look sharp; I must be back in time for dinner."
"Lots o' time," growled Hezz, as he loaded himself up with the big basket, into which he had tumbled the coarse brown lines and receptacles of bait, including a scaly piece of board with four damaged pilchards laid upon it and a sharp knife stuck in the middle. "You carry the oars and boat-hook," came in a squeak.
They hurried down to the boat, and were brought back to the knowledge that four pairs of eyes were watching them from a hundred feet overhead, by Old Poltree roaring out as if addressing some one a mile at sea—
"You stopped that gashly leak proper, my son?"
"Iss, father," cried Hezz, in a shrill squeak, as he dumped down his load.
Lance thrust in the oars and hitcher and sprang in, after giving the boat a thrust; and as a little wave came in and floated her, Hezz ran her out a bit farther and sprang in too, thrust an oar over the stern, and sculled the craft out, fish-tail fashion, to where a black keg did duty for a buoy. Here he kept the boat's head while Lance leaned over the side to unhitch a piece of line and draw a spindle-shaped wicker basket along the side to the stern, where he made it fast to a ring bolt, the movement sending a score or so of eely-looking silvery fish gliding over one another and flashing by the thin osiers of which the basket was formed.
Then each seized an oar and pulled right away to get round the rocky buttress which was continued outward in a few detached rocks, that stood up boldly, to grow smaller farther out, and farther, till only showing as submerged reefs over which the sea just creamed and foamed.
It was out here that the tide ran swiftly, a favourite spot for the bass to play, and as they approached the familiar spot Lance handed his oar to his sturdy companion, while he took one of the lines, laid the hook and lead ready, and then drew the coorge in, opened a wicker trap-door in the top, inserted his hand, closed the lid again, and with deft fingers hooked the silvery writhing fish, popped it overboard, and let the line run out with the tide, while Hezz kept the boat carefully, as nearly as he could, in one place.
"There they are, Master Lance," he cried. "Be on the look-out; they'll take that bait pretty sharp perhaps."
The lad was quite right, for hardly five minutes had elapsed before there was a snatch at the line, and something was hooked.
"Got him!" cried Lance, whose face was glowing with excitement. "Oh, why didn't Alfy come? I say, Hezz, he's a whopper. He does pull. Shall I let him run?"
"Gahn! no. Haul him in fast as you can, 'fore he gets off."
The tackle was coarse and strong, and there was no scientific playing attempted. It was plain, straightforward pully-hauly work, and in a very short time the transparent water astern seemed to be cut into flashing streaks by something silvery which was drawn in hand over hand, till, just as Lance was leaning over to get his fingers close to the end of the snood where the hook was tied, the water was splashed up into his face, and he sat up with a cry of disappointment, seeing only a streak of silver flashing in the sunshine, for the fish had gone.
"Never mind: bait again," squeaked Hezz.
"Bait again," cried Lance, imitating him. "What! with that hook? Look at it. Nearly straightened out. I wish you wouldn't have such nasty soft-roed things. Why, that was a fifteen pounder."
"Take another hook, Master Lance. Look sharp; look at 'em playing."
Lance put on a fresh hook, baited again, and sent the sand-eel gliding off along the rushing tide, which played among the rocks like a mill-stream, and waited excitedly for another snatch, but waited in vain.
"Don't pull," he said at last; "let the boat run out a bit."
Hezz obeyed, cleverly managing so that the boat glided slowly after the bait in the direction of the broken water where the shoal of bass could be seen feeding; but they got no nearer, for so sure as the boat went farther from land, so did the fish, and in spite of fresh and tempting baits being tried there was no seizure made.
"That there one as got away has told all the others to look out," said Hezz, with a chuckle. "You won't get another bite."
"Stuff and nonsense! Just as if fish could talk! Let's go out farther."
The boat glided on, with the current growing less swift, and at last Lance drew in his line, sat down, and between them they rowed slowly in against the sharp current.
"It's no good now," said Hezz. "Let's go along yonder by the mouth of the caves, and try for a pollack among the rocks. If we don't get one we may ketch a rock-fish or two."
"Or a conger in one of the deep holes."
"Nay, you won't ketch none o' them till it's getting dark."
"Dark enough in the holes," said Lance.
"Very well; you try."
So the boat was rowed out of the sharp current, and then away towards the west under the cliffs, and about a hundred yards from the shore, where the tide ran slowly. Here Lance gave up his oar and began to fish again, trying first one and then another kind of bait, but with no greater result than catching a grey gurnard—"tub" Hezz called it—and soon after a couple of gaily-coloured wrasse, not worth having.
"Oh, this is miserable work!" cried the boy, drawing in his line and covering a large hook with half a pilchard. "Pull a little farther along, and I'll throw out in that dark quiet part. There'll be a conger there, I know."
Hezz uttered a croak, and his eyes said plainly, "No conger there"; but he rowed to the spot, which was where a rock rose up out of the water like a little island, on which a dusky cormorant which had been fishing sat drying its wet wings, paying no heed to the approaching boat till it was some twenty yards away, when the bird took flight and went off close to the surface.
"Now put her just in yonder," said Lance, "and be as gentle as you can, so as to keep her there without splashing."
Hezz obeyed cleverly enough; and his companion, afterseeing that the line lay in rings free from obstruction, sent the heavy sinker and bait right away to where the water looked blackest, making Hezz chuckle loudly.