omes of living alone in a
place like Saaron; and I'll take care his children don't learn the same
folly. Feels the curb, as you might say. Have you ever seen a horse
broken late in life?"

"You take it very quiet, sir, I must say," protested Sam, admiringly.
"So disrespectful as he was, too--and to the likes of you! Well! I've
known Eli Tregarthen forty year, and if any man had come and told
me----"

"The worst is, we have wasted an afternoon," said Sir Caesar, easily.
"But since we are here, with half-an-hour to spare before sunset, what
do you say to showing me the adit?"

"The adit, sir?"

"There's an old adit hereabouts--eh?--that leads down to a cave....
Come, come, my good man, you don't deceive me by putting on that stupid
face! We don't allow smuggling on the Islands in these days, and I like
to know the secrets of my own property. The cave is called Ogo Vean, or
something like it; and if I must explain more precisely, it is where
you and your father used to go hunting seals."

"Yes, yes, to be sure," Sam admitted; "an adit there is, or used to be.
But," he went on more cheerfully, "you'll find it nothing to look at. I
han't set foot inside it for years, and I doubt but the entrance is
choked."

"Take me to it," said Sir Caesar.

Sam, without further remonstrance, led the way. They scrambled out to
the edge of the Carn, and there, where the last great boulder thrust
itself forward over the sea, Sam scrambled off to the left, and lowered
himself down upon a turfy ledge. Warning his master to leave his gun
behind and beware of the slippery grass, he sidled out alongside the
jutting slab, and suddenly ducked under it. The Lord Proprietor,
following, crawled under the stone, and found himself staring into the
mouth of the adit--a dark hole less than four feet in height, and
overgrown with ivy. Sam had spoken the truth. The passage,
whithersoever it led, had been disused for years.

"Cur'ous old place!" said Sam, reflectively, plucking at the ivy. "I've
a mind to try the inside of it again, one of these days."

"I've a mind to explore it now," said the Lord Proprietor.

Sam stared at him. "You couldn't, sir; not without a lantern. You'd be
breakin' your neck, to a certainty."

"Then fetch a lantern. Look sharp, man! Run back to the farm and fetch
a lantern. I'll wait for you--no, not here: a few minutes on this ledge
would turn my head giddy--but on the Carn above."

Without further words, he worked h