patch where the coast-guards had lain. The grass was trampled and
broken, beaten flat in places as though heavy bodies had fallen on it;
there were marks of a struggle all over the patch. Some of the near-by
gorse twigs were broken from their stems; some one had dropped a small
hank of spun-yarn. They had lain there all that night, for the dew was
thick upon them. What puzzled me at first was the fact that there were
marks from only two pairs of boots, both of the regulation pattern.
The men who struggled with the coastguards must have worn moccasins,
or heelless leather slippers, made out of some soft hide.

I felt deeply relieved when I saw no bodies, nor any stain upon the
grass. I began to wonder what the night-riders had done with the
coastguards; and, as I sat wondering, I heard, really and truly, a
noise of the people talking from a little way below me, just beyond
the brow of the cliff. That told me at once that there was a cave,
even as I had suspected. I craned forward eagerly, as near as I dared
creep, to the very rim of the land. I looked down over the edge into
the sea, and saw the little blue waves creaming into foam far below
me.

I could see nothing but the side of the cliff, with its projecting
knobs of rock; no opening of any kind, and yet a voice from just below
me (it seemed to come from below a little projecting slab a few feet
down): a voice just below me, I say, said, quite clearly, evidently
between puffs at a pipe, "I don't know so much about that." Another
voice answered; but I could not catch the words. The voice I should
have known anywhere; it was Marah's "good-temper voice," as he called
it, making a pleasant answer.

"That settles it," I said to myself. "There's a cave, and the