ly to be
heard of again. No," continued the speaker, "it's not being drowned
I'm so much afraid of now as there being just enough sea running to
prevent us getting out. These fools don't realize what a ticklish job
it is except in still water. Let them try it in a stiff sou'-easterly
breeze, and see how far they get! I'll wager my neck not one of them
would ever set foot on shore again."

I stood gazing anxiously at that distant semicircle of light beyond
which the sea was sparkling in the wintry sunshine. As I did so a
fresh salt breeze swept through the cavern, and a miniature wave rolled
up and spent itself against the mass of rock on which we stood. I was
on the point of making some further remark to Lewis, when, in a sharp,
peremptory manner, a voice behind us exclaimed,--

"Hark!"

The hum of conversation going on round the fire instantly ceased, while
Lewis and I involuntarily turned sharp round to see who had spoken.

"Hist! D'ye hear anything?"

It was the blind man who spoke. His name was Mogger, and he sat a
little apart from his companions, with his back against the rock wall
of the cavern. From chance remarks let drop by the others, I gathered
that he had been accustomed to beg for his bread with a dog,
leading-string, and tin can. Associating with a set of rogues and
vagabonds, he had at length become concerned in a robbery, and had been
found guilty of receiving and concealing stolen goods. His loss of
sight appeared to have been in a measure made up to him by an
abnormally keen sense of hearing; in fact, the fellow's ears were as
sensitive to sound as a dog's. Walking down the middle of a road, he
declared that he could tell whenever he passed a house, or when he
emerged from between two rows of buildings into the open country, and
this simply by the change in the sound of his own footsteps. I mention
this as giving additional interest to the incident which I am about to
describe.

There was a moment of dead silence. The picture of that scene rises in
my mind now as I write--the blind man sitting bolt upright against the
rock with closed eyes, and his pale, expressionless face raised at an
unusual angle, as though an unseen hand had gripped him beneath the
chin; the group round the fire, for the instant rigid and alert, with
heads half turned and mouths opened in the attitude of listening; while
Rodwood's hand closed instinctively on a pistol which he had been
cleaning, and had laid