eat, and I promise thee a _goutte_ of brandy will not be amiss to
prepare thee for what is before thee."

"Is there, then, so much of danger in the descent?"

"Not if a man's head be steady and his hand firm; but he must have both,
and a stout heart to guide them, or the journey is not over-pleasant.
Art thou cool enough in time of peril to remember what has been told
thee for thy guidance?"

"Yes; I hope I can promise so much."

"Then thou art all safe; so eat away, and leave the rest to me."

Although the sailor's words had stimulated my curiosity in the highest
degree, I repressed every semblance of the feeling, and ate my supper
with a well-feigned appearance of easy indifference; while he questioned
me about the hopes of the Bourbon party in their secret machinations,
with a searching inquisitiveness that often nearly baffled all my
ingenuity in reply.

"Ah! _par Saint Denis!_" said he, with a deep sigh, "I see well thou
hast small hope now; and, in truth, I feel as thou dost. When George
Cadoudal and his brave fellows failed, where are we to look for success?
I mind well the night he supped here."

"Here, said you?"

"Ay, where you sit now,--on the same seat. There was an English
officer with him. He wore a blue uniform, and sat yonder, beneath that
fishing-net; the others were hid along the shore."

"Was it here they landed, then?"

"Yes, to be sure, at the Falaise; there is not another spot to land on
for miles along the coast."

The old sailor then began a circumstantial account of the arrival of
George and his accomplices from England; and told how they had one by
one scaled the cliffs by means of a cord, well known in these parts,
called the "smuggler's rope." "Thou shalt see the spot now," added he,
"for there's the signal yonder."

He pointed as he spoke to an old ruined tower, which crowned a cliff
about half a mile distant, and from a loophole in which I could see a
branch of ivy waving, as though moved by the wind.

"And what may that mean?"

"The cutter is in sight; as the wind is off shore, she 'll be able to
come in close to-night. Indeed, if it blew from the westward, she dared
not venture nearer, nor thou, either, go down to meet her. So, now let's
be moving."

About twenty minutes' walking brought us to the old signal-tower, on
looking from the window of which I beheld the sea plashing full three
hundred feet beneath. The dark rocks, fissured by time and weather, were
abrupt as