she answered; 'it drives men mad.'

'Who the deuce could figure that those sands would be covered at flood?' he cried. 'What an enormous waste they offer when the water is low!'

'You must have slept, otherwise you would surely know that you had already spent a night in this place.'

'When I found I couldn't get out,' he answered, 'I took to wandering in the darkness, and lost the light, and losing that, lost this corridor. I turned and plied and groped, and then my candle being burnt out, I sat down as I now sit, and I have no doubt I slept. I awoke, and began to grope my way along again, and after a long time my hands brought me to some entrance just down yonder, clear into the view of this orifice.'

'Was it daylight?' she asked.

'Bright.'

'When you get out,' said she, smiling faintly, 'you will have had enough of the Devil's Walk.'

'I shall thank God for my escape, madam,' cried he, with real fervour, 'if it is only for your preservation. May I venture to ask the name of the good and heroic lady who has come at the risk of her life to release a man from a living tomb?'

'My name is Ada Conway,' she answered.

He stood up and made her a low bow.

'My father is Commander Conway, late of the Royal Navy—what he will think—what he will fear—the fruitless searches he will be making—I am his only child—he will suppose I have been overtaken by the tide and drowned. Yet they should still be looking for me there,' she exclaimed, gazing out to sea.

'No, madam, they wouldn't creep in the surf,' said he; 'they'd watch for the breakers to strand you. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Captain Jackman, late of the ship Lovelace, which arrived home a week or two ago. I left her, and having heard much of these parts, thought I would make a cruise to your neighbourhood, and a pretty cruise it has been.'

'Are you an American?' she asked.

'No. I am supposed to descend from a good old English family.'

'You have had no food since yesterday?'

'Not a pinch of biscuit.'

'Well, God must help us out. He must help us out, for it is too, too awful,' she cried, burying her face.

'If people don't pass to-day, they will come along to-morrow,' said Captain Jackman; 'and I have got the voice of a lion.' Saying which, he stood up and sent 'Ship ahoy! For God's sake, help us,' slinging in ringing echoes across the troubled breast of the sea.

'Ay!' she exclaimed; 'but think what must pass between now and to-morrow.' She looked at her watch. 'Do you know the time?' she inquired.

'By the light in the west, I should say it is not far from six,' he answered.

'It is six,' she said, replacing her watch, 'and we have the night before us.'

'It must be borne,' said the man, with a note of sulky sympathy, clasping his knees, and fixing his eyes upon the sea.

CHAPTER II. CAPTAIN JACKMAN.

It was about two o'clock in the morning, as they came afterwards to know, when Ada Conway sprang, with a violent ringing shriek, to her feet. She had been sitting close to the sphere in the cliff. Opposite to her squatted the man, apparently in slumber. The disc framed a scene of midnight heavens full of palpitating stars, and slowly moving snow-white clouds sailing northwards, and a corner of moon like a silver spear-head nestling in and visibly departing from the top arch of the orifice.

The girl shrieked, and the man also sprang to his feet.

'We are saved!' he shouted.

He caught her by the hand, and began to run. In the direction of the steps there was glowing a considerable glare of torchlight, amidst which the forms of several figures were clearly distinguishable, and whilst the pair ran, a voice, loud as a trumpet, came in echoes down through the hollow vault.

'Is Miss Ada Conway below here?'

'Yes,' screamed the girl.

'God Almighty! Come to your father! What are you doing in these vaults?' And the figure that was speaking started on perceiving, by the strong torchlight, that the girl approached with a male companion.

The commander was a little square man of the 'Boarders away!' type, equal, in his heyday, when in charge of a boat and crew, to a French or Spanish gunboat. He had been one of the most gallant officers in the service, and had quitted it as commander on an income of his own.

Ada, recognising him by the light, threw herself upon his breast in a wild storm of weeping. She sobbed; the commander stood silent, surveying the handsome bareheaded stranger, who was very visible in the flashes the torch-bearers waved about him. Then collecting herself with a sudden sense of rapture at the thought that she was safe, and with her father, she lifted her head, and holding her father's arm, exclaimed—

'Father, this is Captain Jackman. I was passing along the sands yesterday morning——'

'So! Yesterday morning! How many yesterday mornings do you mean?' groaned the commander.

'When,' continued the girl, 'I heard this gentleman crying for help out through that hole there. I came on to the green and got between the rails, and managed to lift the stone and descended. We forgot ourselves in talk; we lost ourselves in deviating from right to left. When we came to this place it was in total blackness; the stone was on, and we were entombed.'

'Let's get on deck,' said Commander Conway.

They passed up through the trap, five of them, lighting the land for a mile around. How gloriously sweet and fresh and boundless was the night! The piece of silver moon shone over the sea and shed a little light upon the earth. The stars sparkled, and the white clouds floated with a majesty that befitted their domain. Ada passed her hand through her father's arm on rising out of the earth, and exclaimed—

'Who could have put the hatch down upon me, father? There was no man in sight when I went to let Captain Jackman out.'

'He was that fellow Goldsmith,' answered the commander. 'He is one of the torch-bearers. He instantly came to apprise me, on recollecting. He said he fell asleep after walking from Spenpoor, just past a brow of land where you couldn't see him. No sooner had you gone down than he must have got up, and finding the cover off, put it on, according to the custom of these rogues.'

'The wretch,' cried the girl, turning and straining her eyes at the three men in their rear. 'Couldn't you have guessed, you savage, by sign of that stone being off,' she shouted at Goldsmith, 'that there must be people in the caves below?'

'I vow to Peter, then,' cried Goldsmith, waving his torch furiously so that the figures of the people came and went in a cannibal dance of glow, 'that I thought it was some wicked trick of a boy, or that it had been forgotten, and so I put it on again. God forgive me.'

'Who are you?' said Captain Jackman, addressing the other torch-bearer.

'My name is Herman, and I am a poor boatman,' answered the man. 'I've got nothing to do with this job.'

'Here,' said the captain, in the brisk tone of the sea; and he slipped a sovereign into his hand. 'Here, you Goldsmith,' and he also slipped a sovereign into the hand of the excited torch-bearer. 'See here,' said he, 'you pinned this lady down, and you might have killed us both. You might for sixpence, some ten years hence, have gone below and started back at beholding two skeletons lying athwart the entrance corridor. But you did not mean it. You were quick in your