ints, but the tide
had washed over everything so much that he was not sure.

He heard no news of his father as week after week rolled by, till all at
once came a letter from Dunquerque, inclosing some money, and telling
him that he had got away safely, and was quite well.

"He said," Bigley told me in confidence, for he did not show me the
letter; "he said that if your father behaved badly to me I was to go
away at once with Mother Bonnet and take lodgings at Ripplemouth, just
as he told me; but I don't think I shall have to do that."

I laughed as he told me this, and then asked him if he was going to
write back to his father.

"No," said Bigley; "he says I am not to write, because it might give
people a clue to where he is. I don't care, now I know that he is quite
well."

Then the time glided on, with everybody at the mine leading the busiest
of busy lives. I was there every day, and the men won the lead, others
smelted it and cast it into pigs, then the pigs were remelted and the
silver extracted and ingots cast, which were stored up, after being
stamped and numbered, down in the strong cellar beneath the
counting-house floor.

I did a great deal: sometimes I was down in the mine, whose passages
began to grow longer; sometimes I was entering the number of pigs of
lead that were taken over to Ripplemouth, and shipped at the little quay
for Bristol; sometimes I was watching the careful process by which the
silver was obtained from the lead, and learning a good deal about the
art, while Bigley seemed to be growing more and more one of us, and
worked with the greatest of earnestness over the various tasks I had to
undertake.

"No news of old Jonas, father?" I said one day as we were walking along
the cliff path to the mine, a lugger in the offing having brought him to
my mind.

"No, Sep," said my father; "but I'm afraid that we shall have a visit
from him some day, and a very unpleasant one."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because he will never forgive me about that cave business. I saw the
look he gave me, my boy. He does not seem to have any very great ideas
of the meaning of the word honour, and he evidently could not see then
that I was bound to state what I had seen."

"But do you think he will owe you a grudge for that, father?"

"I am sure of it, my boy. He never forgave me for buying the Gap, and
now I'm afraid this exposure of his smuggling tricks has made matters
ten times worse."

"Oh, I hope not