he answered.

"Well," I said. "It seems a certain foolishness to set the edifice so
close to the margin."

Again he chuckled.

"It was close, close, as you say; yet none so close as you might think
nowadays. Time hath gnawed here like a rat on a cheese. But the
foolishness appeared in setting the brave mansion between the winds and
its own graveyard. Let the dead lie seawards, one had thought, and the
church inland where we stand. So had the bell rung to this day; and only
the charnel bones flaked piecemeal into the sea."

"Certainly, to have done so would show the better providence."

"Sir, I said the foolishness _appeared_. But, I tell you, there was
foresight in the disposition--in neighbouring the building to the cliff
path. _For so they could the easier enter unobserved, and store their
Tcegs of Nantes brandy in the belly of the organ_."

"They? Who were they?"

"Why, who--but two-thirds of all Dunburgh?"

"Smugglers?"'

"It was a nest of 'em--traffickers in the eternal fire o' weekdays, and
on the Sabbath, who so sanctimonious? But honesty comes not from the
washing, like a clean shirt, nor can the piety of one day purge the evil
of six. They built their church anigh the margin, forasmuch as it was
handy, and that they thought, 'Surely the Lord will not undermine His
own?' A rare community o' blasphemers, fro' the parson that took his
regular toll of the organ-loft, to him that sounded the keys and pulled
out the joyous stops as if they was so many spigots to what lay behind."

"Of when do you speak?"

"I speak of nigh a century and a half ago. I speak of the time o' the
Seven Years' War and of Exciseman Jones, that, twenty year after he were
buried, took his revenge on the cliff side of the man that done him to
death."

"And who was that?"

"They called him Dark Dignum, sir--a great feat smuggler, and as wicked
as he was bold,"

"Is your story about him?"

"Ay, it is; and of my grandfather, that were a boy when they laid, and
was glad to lay, the exciseman deep as they could dig; for the sight of
his sooty face in his coffin was worse than a bad dream."

"Why was that?"

The old man edged closer to me, and spoke in a sibilant voice.

"He were murdered, sir, foully and horribly, for all they could never
bring it home to the culprit."

"Will you tell me about it?"

He was nothing loth. The wind, the place of perished tombs, the very
wild-blown locks of this 'withered apple-john', were eer