'Smartly, sir. Your ship shall be ready for you by your date.'

'Can you contrive to convert that maintop into a schooner rig on emergency?'

'It can be done, sir.'

As the man spoke these words a messenger came over the gangway and handed the captain a letter. He looked at it, slightly changed colour, and walked right aft, where he was alone. The missive, dated from Commander Conway's house, ran thus—

'My dearest Walter,

'I hasten to communicate what I hope will prove a useful piece of intelligence to you. I have been busily making inquiries about disused smugglers' caves down west, with this result. A sailor named Butler came to me yesterday and said he could produce a man, a rather old man, who could furnish information of a curious cave striking from the roof of the cliff to the wash of the sea. It had not been used since 1807, but you can still at ebb walk from the lower orifice on to the beach, and from the next to the lower orifice you can use a boat whilst the tide is making. I will give you the name and address of the owner on your passing through here, as that you must do, for it is my particular desire to see you.

'How far has been your advance in this tremendous business? Pray do not be communicative to strangers. Are not you apt to be a little candid, and to forget that you were so? The sailor is a character of perfect sensibility, and he has to carefully guard himself against the worldly people he meets ashore—people who will wring his business out of him, and then, if they can make no use of it, fling it to the dogs. Oh, I quite forgot to say in its place that with these subterranean stairs to the sea is associated a little house that stands close to the main entrance, and you can enter it by a manhole in the house itself. This might prove useful.

'The district is very desolate, the old man told me—a livid, gale-swept moor with no habitation within a good drive. Revenue people, I am informed, are occasionally seen on that part of the coast, but at such long intervals that they might as well be viewed as strange objects of interest. The revenue cutter may also be seen plying off the land; but her business would seem to be far higher up.

'I am never weary of admiring your glorious gift. Oh, how beautifully it sparkles by candlelight! My father's mood is as stern and unbending as ever. I believe he would strike me if I even referred to you. I heard Captain Burgoyne asking, in his coarse way, which the commander relishes, "Don't you want your wench to get married at all, Conway? Suppose you pop off on a sudden—and I may tell you I've long viewed with anxiety that stout throat and immense chest of yours—what is your girl to do? She is unmated. Who is to look after her? And she is pre-eminently one of those young parties who need looking after."

'I was listening greedily halfway up the stairs, down which I was coming at the moment of arrest, dressed for a visit. My father answered, "I am not going to have for a son-in-law a man who may end his career at the gibbet within the next month." "Chaw! you dined with him. He was an honourable gentleman then." My father began to bluster. Here stupid Mrs. Dove came creaking downstairs, and called to me to go into the hall and turn that she might admire me.