madness and that wretched woman, who was Ned Gunning's wife, it was
pitiful to see.

The other scoundrels had got away; and all at once we found that Gunning
had discharged himself from the hospital; and by that time the house
over the way was put straight, the builder telling me in confidence that
he thought Sir John must have been mad to attempt to make such a passage
as that to connect his property without consulting a regular business
man. That was the morning when he got his cheque for the repairs, and
the passage--which he called "Drinkwater's Folly"--had disappeared.

Time went on, and the golden incubus went on too--that is, to a big bank
in the Strand, for we were at Dorking now, where those young people
spent a deal of time in the open air; and Mr Barclay used to say he
could never forgive himself; but his father did, and so did some one
else.

Who did?

Why, you don't want telling that. Heaven bless her sweet face! And
bless him, too, for a fine young fellow as strong--ay, and as weak, too,
of course--as any man.

Dear, dear, dear! I'm pretty handy to eighty now, and Sir John just one
year ahead; and I often say to myself, as I think of what men will do
for the sake of a pretty face--likewise for the sake of gold: "This is a
very curious world."

STORY THREE, CHAPTER ONE.

IN A GOWT.

Looks ominous, don't it, to see nearly every gate-post and dyke-bridge
made of old ships' timber? Easy enough to tell that, from its bend, and
the tree-nail holes. Ours is a bad coast, you see; not rocky, but with
long sloping sands; and when the sea's high, and there's a gale on
shore, a vessel strikes, and there she lies, with the waves lifting her
bodily, and then letting her fall again upon the sands, shaking her all
to pieces: first the masts go, then a seam opens somewhere in her sides,
and as every wave lifts her and lets her down, she shivers and loosens,
till she as good as falls all to pieces, and the shore gets strewn with
old wreck.

Good wrecks used to be little fortunes to the folk along shore, but
that's all altered now; the coastguard look-out too sharp. Things are
wonderfully changed to what they were when I was a boy. Fine bit of
smuggling going on in those days; hardly a farmer along the coast but
had a finger in it, and ran cargoes right up to the little towns inland.
The coast was not so well watched, and people were bribed easier, I
suppose; but, at all events, that sort of thing h