, "Whist now! Where are you? Come
out o' that, young feller, and have done with your foolin'!" he did so
in an awed tone but little above a whisper.

"All right; stay where you are then!" he added, after listening vainly
for a reply. "If it's a game of hide-and-seek ye want, I can soon
accommodate you, seeing as how you've been so kind as to leave me a
couple of glims, though it's only one of them I'll need."

Thus saying, the new-comer removed one of the two lanterns that had
been hung out as a warning to the smugglers, and unwittingly changed
the danger-signal into one of safety and invitation by so doing. With
the lantern thus acquired to light his footsteps, he began a careful
survey of the cavern, hoping to discover either an exit from it or his
vanished guide.

With his previous knowledge of the principal industry of that region,
it did not take him long to conjecture the meaning of the bales and
boxes upon which he soon stumbled.

"Holy smoke!" he cried; "it's a cave of smugglers you've broke into,
Mike Connell, no less, and a sorrowful time ye'll have of it if the
folks comes home and catches you at the trespassing! Where the divil
is the back door, I wonder, for the one in front is no good at all?
Saints preserve us! What's that?"

With this last exclamation the frightened Irishman began to retreat
slowly backward, holding his lantern so that, while it revealed his
own terror-stricken face, its light also fell full on the form of
Richard Peveril standing before him and staring in blankest amazement.

"Plaze, good Mister Spook--I mean yer Honor--Oh, Holy Fathers! what
will I say?" stammered the poor fellow, in such faltering accents that
Peveril broke into a roar of laughter.

"Mike Connell!" he cried; "wherever did you come from? and what has
happened? You look as though you had seen a ghost!"

"And haven't I?" retorted the other, still staring dubiously. "Is it
yourself, lad? But sure it must be, seeing you have a voice of your
own, which is a thing never yet given to a spook. Glory be to
goodness, Mister Peril, that I've found you just as I'd lost you
entirely, and meself as well!"

"But how do you happen to be here?" asked the still bewildered
Peveril.

"Sure I just came, thinking you might want me."

"Which way did you come?"

"Through the front door, the same as yourself."

"But I came in by a back entrance."

"Then we'd best be getting out that way, for I'm afeard there'll soon
be other