Nobody ever visits this place, I suppose?'

'Only you,' said she; 'and it's my business to save you.'

'How sorry I am that you should be here I can't say, yet it is natural to want to get out.'

'But it seems so mad to come into this smuggler's hole with a dream of booty, with no further provision than a candle; and it is wonderful that you should not know by that same light that you had been entombed, and spent a whole night underground!'

'Time flies and time loiters under wild conditions. I can tell you that, for I'm a sailor.'

'Are you?' she ejaculated. 'What rating?'

'I lately commanded a merchantman. I have lain awake all night sick in hospital, and have heard the quarters and halves strike with the rapidity of chimes. I could not have sworn that three hours have passed. I shall look the time, I suspect, when I get out. I am beginning to feel a bit weary of this blackness, and long for that one round of light that offered me a leap as an escape.'

As he spoke these words they made a step, and lo! on their left, at the extremity of the passage, glowed, within fifty feet, the cheery star of day.

'Hurrah!' shouted the man.

The girl, in a single sob, unheard by her companion, expressed her pent-up feelings.

'Yes, there's the port-hole right enough,' said the man. 'Now you know the way.'

'Come along straight,' she said.

She led him as before, and touching the wall, made a true course for the opening. But as she advanced she grew very uneasy on observing that no light fell through the hatch-hole, and that the short flight of steps was not visible in any definition of colour. Her companion, stumbling slowly alongside of her, presently noticed this.

'How did you get in?' said he.

'By a trap which I left open.'

'It isn't night again, I hope,' said he, with a ghastly laugh.

'I see no light,' she answered, 'and this is the corridor of the entrance. Oh, my God! I fear some meddlesome wretch, whilst I've been talking to you, instead of hastening above, has shut us down.'

'So that we can't get out?'

'Not from within.'

'Well,' said he, after a pause, and with a tone of courage in his voice, 'what we've got to do is to go to that light-hole yonder and wait for something to pass, and make our case known. Somebody is sure to pass.'

'Let me see if I can feel the steps with my foot,' said the girl. 'But hold on to me.'

He had brought out a large metal tinder-box—but empty; and in his fit of distraction let it fall. She shrieked as if she had been stung. The nerves of even stout-hearted girls soon yield to blackness, to the association of strange invisible men, and to the probability of a frightful fate. He laughed to encourage her, said what the thing was, and groped and picked it up. She took him to the steps, felt with her foot, and said, 'Feel for yourself. The trap-door is immediately overhead.'

'Well, if we mean to preserve our lives,' said the man—'and God knows how sorry I am that you should be here sharing my imbecile fate—we must walk to that round hole yonder, and keep a smart look-out on the sands below. But I'll try first if this stone can be lifted by shoving.'

He left her and got upon the short set of steps, and strained with his hands. He could not bring his shoulder to bear. In vain. He toiled and groaned. He came down, and feeling for her, said, 'No; the sight-seers have made it easy from above; but it is not easy to thrust up from under, and if I were twenty men I could not do it with my hands in that narrow circumference.'

'Let's walk to that hole,' said the girl, hooking him. 'It is our only chance.'

'Another sight-seer may descend,' said he.

'Few dream of booty in this age,' she answered. 'It is pretty well known,' she continued, 'that all are dry bones here.'

They gained the orifice. It framed a noble picture of Channel ocean afternoon. The seas ridged in glittering ranks, smoke burst from their curtseying heads, and they raced in groans upon the hidden beach beneath, whitening out back to half a mile of foam. Ships were in sight, blowing upwards, blowing downwards, rendered somewhat prismatic in the airy lens of that smuggler's window. The tide was making fast, and they could see nothing but white water.

'Look at that,' cried the man, pointing down.

The shuddering girl drew a foot or two closer, and peered below. 'There is no escape!' she exclaimed.

Now they looked at each other. The girl has been described. The man was the sailorly-looking fellow you would expect to see in him, after his confession of his calling. The light shone very well here, and sank for a distance of twenty or thirty feet into the gloom, then went out in utter suddenness into black blankness. Miss Conway saw standing beside her a man of about thirty years of age. He was dressed in the style of the day when Peace had newly lighted on the land, when the billows of our home waters were no longer vexed by the keels of contending cruisers, nor by their thunder. He was decidedly handsome. Hair cut short behind. He had lost his hat, and she could see that his hair in front was bushy and plentiful, coming over the forehead in the 'fine' style of that age. He had very striking features, but they looked ashen and sunken now. He bowed to the young lady when their gaze met, and said, raising his hand—

'You perceive I have lost my hat.'

'We will not seek it,' she exclaimed.

He was dressed in a dark green cloth coat, a coloured waistcoat and metal buttons. He was covered with dust, had scratched himself on the hands and face, and could not have looked in a more sorry plight had he been newly enlarged after a week's imprisonment in the great Pyramid.

'Do no persons but you ever walk along these sands when they are bare?' said the man.

'At long intervals,' said she, finding some faint reassurance in his presence and in the light. 'A boatman or a stranger in the place might stroll as far as this from the town. The tide is ugly, and it makes fast.'

'At that rate we are entombed, and must die in the full sight of life,' cried the man, leaning against the wall, and folding his arms with a scowl. 'It is bad enough that I should be here, cursed idiot that I am! But that I should have drawn you into a living grave!'

'I desire you will act as a man,' she interrupted passionately. 'We must husband our strength and preserve our voices. In to-day or in to-morrow'—but her tones failed her as she spoke—'a man may pass within reach of our voice, and learning who I am, deliver us.'

He gazed at her with a sudden admiration. She certainly made a noble heroic figure as she stood viewing him in that strange tunnel-like light, bright on the left, in gloom on the right. Her eyes sparkled. She looked down the corridor where the steps lay, then sat down, placing her back against the wall. It was clear that an under-dread possessed her, but not so as to master her. The thought of being locked down with a strange man in a lonely cavern for an afternoon and night—and for how much longer, who could tell?—was horrible; it kept her soul shuddering, so to speak. But the man's own consternation was too excessive to take notice of anything but this: that he was entombed in a smugglers' cave where, as things stood, there was every chance of their leaving their bones. He squatted in a most disconsolate posture opposite to her, and they both had the light on them.

'This,' said the man, meaning the light, 'is worth something, anyhow.'

'Continual darkness is frightful,'