s
path before the heavy door of the cellar. Rust had eaten into the iron
latch and the padlock that secured it, but the woman produced a key and
opened the ring of the lock and took him into a chamber about twelve
feet square, in which props of decaying beams held up the earth of the
walls and roof. The place was cold, smelling strongly of damp earth and
decaying roots; but, so far, there was nothing remarkable to be seen;
just such a cellar was used on his father's farm to keep stores of
potatoes and turnips in when the frost of winter made its way through
all the wooden barns. In three corners remains of such root stores were
lying; in the fourth, the corner behind the door, nearest the sea, some
boards were laid on the floor, and on them flower-pots containing stalks
of withered plants and bulbs that had never sprouted.

"They're mine," she said. "Day dursn't touch them;" and saying this, she
fell to work with eager feverishness, removing the pots and boards. When
she had done so, it was revealed that the earth under the boards had
broken through into another cellar or cave, in which some light could be
seen.

"I always heard the sea when I was in this place, and one day I broke
through this hole. The man that first had the farm made it, I s'pose, to
pitch his seaweed into from the shore."

She let her long figure down through the hole easily enough, for there
were places to set the feet on, and landed on a heap of earth and dried
weed. When Caius had dropped down into this second chamber, he saw that
it had evidently been used for just the purpose she had mentioned. The
seaweed gathered from the beach after storms was in common use for
enriching the fields, and someone in a past generation had apparently
dug this cave in the soft rock and clay of the cliff; it was at a height
above the sea-line at which the seaweed could be conveniently pitched
into it from a cart on the shore below. Some three or four feet of dry
rotten seaweed formed its carpet. The aperture towards the sea was
almost entirely overgrown with such grass and weeds as grew on the
bluff. It was evident that in the original cutting there had been an
opening also sideways into the chine, which had caved in and been grown
over. The cellar above had, no doubt, been made by someone who was not
aware of the existence of this former place.

To Caius the secret chamber was enchanted ground. He stepped to its
window, framed in waving grasses, and saw the h