e music of a belfry; but like a chime of
faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold,"
and echoed back as from a veritable gong of that metal.

"'Taty-patch a gold mine"--How came it that, until Latter put the
idea into his head, he had never thought of this, his one firm
holding on earth, as a hiding-place for his treasure? His lodging in
the old house, hard as he would fight for it, acknowledged another
man's will. But the patch of ground by the cliff was his own.
He had claimed its virginity, chosen and tamed it, marked it off,
fenced it about, broken the soil, trenched it, wrought it, taught the
barren to bear. It lay remote, approachable only by a narrow
cliff-track, overlooked by no human dwelling, doubly concealed--by a
small twist of the coast-line and a dip of the ground--from the
telescopes of the coastguard in their watch-house. Folks had hinted
from time to time (but always chaffing him) that the land must
belong to _some one_--to the Crown, maybe, or, more likely, to the
Duchy. But he had tilled it for years undisturbed and unchallenged.
The parcel had come to be known as "Nicky-Nan's Chapel," because on
fine Sundays, when godlier folks were in church, he spent so much of
his time there, smoking and watching the Channel and thinking his
thoughts. It was inconceivable that any one should dispute his title
now, after the hundreds and hundreds of maundfuls of seaweed under
which, first and last--in his later years--he had staggered up the
path from the Cove, to incorporate them in the soil.

At the turn of the street he fetched up standing, arrested by another
bright idea. Why, of course! He would carry up a part of his wealth
to the 'taty-patch and bury it. . . . But a man shouldn't put all his
eggs in one basket, and--_why_ hadn't he thought of it before?
The money had lain those many years, safe and unsuspected, under the
false floor of the cupboard. Simplest thing in the world, now that
Pamphlett had given him a respite, to plank up the place again with a
couple of new boards, plaster up the ceiling of the sitting-room, and
restore a good part of the gold to its hiding!--not all of it,
though; since Pamphlett might change his mind at any time, and of a
sudden. No, a good part of the gold must be conveyed to the
'taty-patch. He would make a start, maybe, that very night--or
rather, that very evening in the dusk when the moon rose: for (now he
came to remember) the moon