in."

"Go back again," I said laughing. "Why, they'll never come."

"Get out, lad! You're too young to understand they things. You wait a
bit, and you'll see that they will come and find us ready for them too."

"With six-foot two of trench, eh, Sam?" I said.

"Eh? What? What do you mean?"

"Why, weren't you singing something about burying them all. Here, sing
us the rest."

"Nay, nay, nay, my lad; I can't sing."

"Why, I heard you, Sam."

"Ay, but that's all I know; and I must get on with my job afore they
come."

"Before they come, Sam! Why, they'll never come. Go and hoe up your
cabbages and potatoes and you'll be doing some good."

"Nay, lad, this be no time for hoeing up cabbage and 'tater. Why, what
for?--ready for the French?"

"French!" I said with a laugh as I leaned over the low wall and looked
down the perpendicular cliff at the piled-up masses of fallen fragments.
"No French will ever trouble us."

For it looked ridiculous to imagine that a foreign enemy would ever
attempt to make a landing anywhere beneath the grand wall of piled-up
rock that protected our coast from a far more dangerous enemy than any
French fleet, for the sea was ready to attack and sweep away even the
land, and this a foreign fleet could never do.

I sat on the edge looking down at the ivy, and toad-flax, and saxifrage,
and ferns that climbed and clustered all over the steep cliff-face; and
as I sat looking and enjoying the sea-breeze and the rest from all
school labours, old Sam went on cleaning out the guns and expressing in
his way the feelings of nearly everybody round the coast.

"Is my father over at the mine?" I said.

"Ay, my lad; he's always there. Going over?"

"Yes, Sam, when I'm rested. They're very busy now, I suppose."

"Wonderful, Master Sep, wonderful. Who'd ha' thought it?" he exclaimed,
sticking the mop handle on the path and resting his bare brown arms upon
the wet woollen rags that formed the top.

"Who'd have thought what, Sam?"

"Why, as there'd be lead and silver under they slates down at the Gap.
Always looked to be nothin' but clatter, and old massy rock and no
soil."

"Ah, it was a discovery, Sam," I said.

"Discovery, my lad! Why, when they said as the Captain had bought the
old place I went into my tool-shed and sat down on a 'tater heap and
'most cried."

"'Most cried, Sam--you?"

"Ay, my lad, for I thought the Captain had gone off his head and
everything would b