Through a misty morning, made silver bright by the risen sun, Sabina and
Raymond started for their August holiday. They left Bridetown, passed
through a white fog on the water-meadows and presently climbed to the
cliffs and pursued their way westward. Now the sun was over the sea and
the Channel gleamed and flashed under a wakening, westerly breeze.

To West Haven they came, where the cliffs break and the rivers from
Bridport flow through sluices into the little harbour.

Among the ancient, weather-worn buildings standing here with their feet
in the sand drifts, was one specially picturesque. A long and lofty mass
it presented, and a hundred years of storm and salt-laden winds had
toned it to rich colour and fretted its roof and walls with countless
stains. It was a store, three stories high, used of old time for
merchandise, but now sunk to rougher uses. In its great open court,
facing north, were piled thousands of tons of winnowed sand; its vaults
were barred and empty; its glass windows were shattered; rust had eaten
away its metal work and rot reduced its doors and sashes to powder. Rich
red and auburn was its face, with worn courses of brickwork like wounds
gashed upon it. A staircase of stone rose against one outer wall, and
aloft, in the chambers approached thereby, was laid up a load of sweet
smelling, deal planks brought by a Norway schooner. Here too, were all
manner of strange little chambers, some full of old nettings, others
littered with the marine stores of the fishermen, who used the ruin for
their gear. The place was rat-haunted and full of strange holes and
corners. Even by day, with the frank sunshine breaking through boarded
windows and broken roof, it spoke of incident and adventure; by night it
was eloquent of the past--of smugglers, of lawless deeds, of Napoleonic
spies.

Raymond and Sabina stood and admired the old store. To her it was
something new, for her activities never brought her to West Haven; but
he had been familiar with it from childhood, when, with his brother, he
had spent school holidays at West Haven, caught prawns from the pier,
gone sailing with the fisher folk, and spent many a wet day in the old
store-house.

He smiled upon it now, told her of his childish adventures and took her
in to see an ancient chamber where he and Daniel had often played their
games.

"Our nurse used to call it a 'cubby hole,'" he said. "And she was
always; jolly thankful when she could pilot