or two harbours o' refuge there. But I had reasons for wishing to
stop in my own country--for a bit at any rate. And so, after reckoning
things up, I made for a spot as Mr. Vickers there'll know by name of the
Reaver's Glen."

"Good place, too, for hiding," remarked Vickers with a nod.

"Best place on this coast--seashore and inland," said Spurge. "And as you
two London gentlemen doesn't know it, I'll tell you about it. If you was
to go out o' Scarhaven harbour and turn north, you'd sail along our coast
line up here to the mouth of Norcaster Bay and you'd think there was
never an inlet between 'em. But there is. About half-way between
Scarhaven and Norcaster there's a very narrow opening in the cliffs that
you'd never notice unless you were close in shore, and inside that
opening there's a cove that's big enough to take a thousand-ton
vessel--aye, and half-a-dozen of 'em! It was a favourite place for
smugglers in the old days, and they call it Darkman's Dene to this day in
memory of a famous old smuggler that used it a good deal. Well, now, at
the land end of that cove there's a narrow valley that runs up to the
moorland and the hills, full o' rocks and crags and precipices and such
like--something o' the same sort as Hobkin's Hole but a deal wilder, and
that's known as the Reaver's Glen, because in other days the
cattle-lifters used to bring their stolen goods, cattle and sheep, down
there where they could pen 'em in, as it were. There's piles o' places in
that glen where a man can hide--I picked out one right at the top, at the
edge of the moors, where there's the ruins of an old peel tower. I could
get shelter in that old tower, and at the same time slip out of it if
need be into one of fifty likely hiding places amongst the rocks. I got
into touch with my cousin Jim Spurge--the one-eyed chap at the
'Admiral's Arms,' Mr. Copplestone, that night--and I got in a supply of
meat and drink, and there I was. And--as things turned out, Chatfield had
got his eye on the very same spot!"

Spurge paused for a minute, and picking out a match from a stand which
stood on the table, began to trace imaginary lines on the mahogany.

"This is how things is there," he said, inviting his companions'
attention. "Here, like, is where this peel tower stands--that's a thick
wood as comes close up to its walls--that there is a road as crosses the
moors and the wood about, maybe, a hundred yards or so behind the tower
on the land side. Now