"Sure, that was only my joke," grinned Mr. Giveen; "and if you don't come to-day you'll never come at all, for it's the end of the season, and it's a hundred to one you won't find another day fit to go till next summer; and I'll show you the big sea cave," finished he, "for the tide will be out by the time we've had a look at the seals. It's not foolin' you I am. The boat's on the beach, and it won't take ten minutes to get there."
"I'll come down and look at the sea," said Miss Grimshaw, who could not resist the appeal of the lovely afternoon, "if you'll wait five seconds till I get my hat."
"Sure, I'd wait five hundred years," replied the cousin of Mr. French, propping himself against the house wall, where he stood whistling softly and breaking off every now and then to chuckle to himself, after the fashion of a person who has thought of a good joke or has got the better of another in a deal.
Five minutes later, hearing the girl leaving the house by the front door, he came round and met her.
"This way," said Mr. Giveen, taking a path that led through the kitchen-garden and so round a clump of stunted fir trees to the break in the cliffs that gave passage to the strand. "Now, down by these rocks. It's a powerfully rough road, and I've told Michael time out of mind he ought to have it levelled, but much use there is in talking to him, and him with his head full of horses. Will you take a hold of my arm?"
"No, thanks. I can get on quite well alone."
"Well, step careful. Musha, but I was nearly down then myself. Do you know the name they give this crack in the cliffs?"
"No."
"It's the Devil's Keyhole."