great breakfast of fried sole.

'How are your blockaders coming forward, sir?' inquired the captain.

'They are very sparsely settled at present, and they are not coming forward. I doubt if there's half-a-dozen preventives betwixt this and St. Ives. It must grow into a considerable force if it is to protect the revenue. They keep their few best men about Folkestone and Ramsgate; and there the fighting is mostly going on. Calais is near; so is Dunkirk. The Goodwins are convenient for dodging.'

'What could have made them construct such caves as Miss Conway and I were locked up in?' asked the captain.

'They probably had an idea. In the middle of it they found that it would not work out, so they dropped it with the dexterity of men accustomed to rapidity of thought and action.'

'I believe there are similar caves some leagues round the coast—Cornwall way—perhaps in Cornwall,' said the captain.

The girl, looking at him a little expressively, said, 'You had better take two candles with you next time.'

He smiled and bowed, whilst she was all geniality and kindness, in arch humour of fair face of gipsy cast.

'I do not believe, madam,' said he, 'that I shall disturb the silence of another smuggler's cell.'

'Booty or no booty?'

'Don't mislead the gentleman, Ada,' exclaimed her father. 'There is no booty. I would not give the value of this button,' said he, fingering one of his coat-buttons, 'for the whole of the booty that you shall find deliberately left, never more to be fetched by these free-traders.'

'I had hoped,' said Ada, whose eyes shone over her mounted colour, 'that you were going to submit a romantic project; I am very romantic myself. I could die for a lovely young man.'

The commander grinned.

'If he was worth dying for. Must he be lovely?' said Captain Jackman, pushing his chair from the table and nursing his knee, and regarding her with obstinate pleasure, for he not only found her a handsome woman; she had saved his life at the risk of her own.

'I had thought,' continued the girl, from the interest you take in these caves, and by your accent, which is slightly American——'

'Ho!' cried the captain, 'that's news to me.'

'That you were going to fit out your brig with some romantic reference to these holes in the rocks. Strange ideas enter one's head.'

'They do indeed, madam.'

They rose from the table. The captain, turning to the commander, said, putting all the graceful bows and courtesy of that age into his demeanour—

'Will you, commander, and Miss Conway, give me the pleasure, the real pleasure—of your company at dinner at the "Faithful Heart"? Say six o'clock.'

The commander seemed to pause. The girl's eyes burnt upon him. He began a little awkwardly—

'As strangers, sir, we really have no claim.'

'Do not speak of me as a stranger, I beg,' said the captain.

The commander looked at his daughter, saw a quarrel in her fine eyes, sulkiness running into days, much discomfort to an elderly widower living with an only child, and so he whipped out—

'Be it so, captain. We will be with you at six o'clock.'

Shortly after this, Captain Jackman left the pretty little house, having stood a few minutes by Miss Conway's side, greatly admiring the spacious view from the lawn. The commander walked to the side of his daughter, who remained on the lawn, watching the departing figure of Captain Jackman.

'What do you think of him, father?' said she, laying her hand upon his square shoulder.

'Think! He is no introduction of yours that we should think,' cried the little seaman.

'You know him through me, and cannot but have thoughts about him, good or bad,' she exclaimed, with an irritable toss of her head, dropping her hand.

'Well, betwixt you and me,' said the commander, turning to take a view of his house, 'I don't like him.'

'Oh, I knew it would be so!' she exclaimed. 'He is much too handsome. Had I appeared in the company of an old man of sixty, with a brown wig down his back, and a yellow nose down his face, you would have found him a welcome presence.'

The commander did not readily lose his temper. 'I do not like this man because I do not like his manner of losing fifteen hundred pounds—the property of others. It is strange. It is peculiar. It is memorable. And I recollected it, as you may have observed, when we were seated.'

'Was it good taste?' said the girl, slightly sneering.

'Oh, we don't live in these parts to cultivate what you call taste! We speak the truth—or should.'

'What do you want to imply, father?'

The commander looked at the ocean and grinned.

'You mean to say,' continued the girl, 'that Captain Jackman knocked himself down and robbed his owners of fifteen hundred pounds?'

'They do not charge him with it; why should I, whatever I may think?' And humming a popular song of that day, the commander turned on his heel and went into his house.

His daughter remained on the lawn—looking at the sea, do you think? No; but at the fast disappearing figure of Captain Jackman, whom, on her own confession, she thought a handsome man. A handsome man was of more interest and rarity than a sea view, which she had gazed at hundreds of times o'er and o'er. The race of the sea flashed in vain; its heavy guns of breakers thundered at deaf ears; that fine frigate abreast, with canvas white as driven snow so leaning as to expose a portion of her bright copper, the long wake bubbling and rushing, swept through the deep before blind eyes. No beauty of cloud, of liquid, or land recess could arrest her; she saw but a figure, and when it vanished, she re-entered the house with a very thoughtful face.

Captain Jackman walked straight into the little town. A little town it was, with one good, and two or three middling streets. It had a row of houses called the Lawn, and most of the important people of the town lived there. Captain Jackman went straight to the 'Faithful Heart,' and entered the darkling bar that had a brightness of reflected oak, and of highly polished pewter, and said to the woman who sat sewing behind—

'You see I have returned, Mrs. Davis!'

'God bless me! Yes,' cried the little woman, starting from her chair, dropping her work, and staring at him. 'We all gave you up for drowned.'

'I was in direr plight—I was entombed.'

Asking for a glass of brandy, he told her the story, whilst the landlord came in from the backyard to listen. He then went upstairs to his bedroom. He looked at himself in the glass, and seemed satisfied. The scars of the night of darkness had worn off, the tunnel stains had vanished. He took a considerable sum of money in gold out of his portmanteau or valise, and went downstairs. He called to Mrs. Davis.

'A word with you in your front parlour, madam.'

She rose, curtseyed, and conducted him to a front room of a fair size.

'This will do,' said Captain Jackman. 'Here's quite room enough. I want to give a dinner to two friends at six o'clock to-night. Can you manage it for me?'

'You shall have the best that is to be had, sir; and I may truly say that my cooking is known far and wide.'

'The guests are Commander Conway and his daughter. Do you know them?'

'By sight and name, sir. They are a little——' And here, not choosing to abase herself, she curtseyed.

Why should worthy Mrs. Davis have told the handsome gentleman that