than the Sabbath
school.'

Night fell as we came to the broomy spaces of the links, and ere we had
breasted the slope of the neck which separates Kirkcaple Bay from the
cliffs it was as dark as an April evening with a full moon can be. Tam
would have had it darker. He got out his lantern, and after a
prodigious waste of matches kindled the candle-end inside, turned the
dark shutter, and trotted happily on. We had no need of his lighting
till the Dyve Burn was reached and the path began to descend steeply
through the rift in the crags.

It was here we found that some one had gone before us. Archie was great
in those days at tracking, his ambition running in Indian paths. He
would walk always with his head bent and his eyes on the ground,
whereby he several times found lost coins and once a trinket dropped by
the provost's wife. At the edge of the burn, where the path turns
downward, there is a patch of shingle washed up by some spate. Archie
was on his knees in a second. 'Lads,' he cried, 'there's spoor here;'
and then after some nosing, 'it's a man's track, going downward, a big
man with flat feet. It's fresh, too, for it crosses the damp bit of
gravel, and the water has scarcely filled the holes yet.'

We did not dare to question Archie's woodcraft, but it puzzled us who
the stranger could be. In summer weather you might find a party of
picnickers here, attracted by the fine hard sands at the burn mouth.
But at this time of night and season of the year there was no call for
any one to be trespassing on our preserves. No fishermen came this
way, the lobster-pots being all to the east, and the stark headland of
the Red Neb made the road to them by the water's edge difficult. The
tan-work lads used to come now and then for a swim, but you would not
find a tan-work lad bathing on a chill April night. Yet there was no
question where our precursor had gone. He was making for the shore.
Tam unshuttered his lantern, and the steps went clearly down the
corkscrew path. 'Maybe he is after our cave. We'd better go cannily.'

The glim was dowsed--the words were Archie's--and in the best
contraband manner we stole down the gully. The business had suddenly
taken an eerie turn, and I think in our hearts we were all a little
afraid. But Tam had a lantern, and it would never do to turn back from
an adventure which had all the appearance of being the true sort. Half
way down there is a scrog of wood, dwarf alders and