r Gaylet Pot, down into which Ruby, with great care and
circumspection, led Minnie, is one of the most curious of Nature's
freaks among the cliffs of Arbroath.

In some places there is a small scrap of pebbly beach at the base of
those perpendicular cliffs; in most places there is none--the cliffs
presenting to the sea almost a dead wall, where neither ship nor boat
could find refuge from the storm.

The country, inland, however, does not partake of the rugged nature of
the cliffs. It slopes gradually towards them--so gradually that it may
be termed flat, and if a stranger were to walk towards the sea over the
fields in a dark night, the first intimation he would receive of his
dangerous position would be when his foot descended into the terrible
abyss that would receive his shattered frame a hundred feet below.

In one of the fields there is a hole about a hundred yards across, and
as deep as the cliffs in that part are high. It is about fifty or
eighty yards from the edge of the cliffs, and resembles an old quarry;
but it is cut so sharply out of the flat field that it shows no sign of
its existence until the traveller is close upon it. The rocky sides,
too, are so steep, that at first sight it seems as if no man could
descend into it. But the most peculiar point about this hole is, that
at the foot of it there is the opening of a cavern, through which the
sea rolls into the hole, and breaks in wavelets on a miniature shore.
The sea has forced its way inland and underground until it has burst
into the bottom of this hole, which is not inaptly compared to a pot
with water boiling at the bottom of it. When a spectator looks into the
cave, standing at the bottom of the "Pot", he sees the seaward opening
at the other end--a bright spot of light in the dark interior.

"You won't get nervous, Minnie?" said Ruby, pausing when about halfway
down the steep declivity, where the track, or rather the place of
descent, became still more steep and difficult; "a slip here would be
dangerous."

"I have no fear, Ruby, as long as you keep by me."

In a few minutes they reached the bottom, and, looking up, the sky
appeared above them like a blue circular ceiling, with the edges of the
Gaylet Pot sharply defined against it.

Proceeding over a mass of fallen rock, they reached the pebbly strand at
the cave's inner mouth.

"I can see the interior now, as my eyes become accustomed to the dim
light," said Minnie, gazing up wist