s own out of
the house, Gillon! He might have wanted it at any moment; he must have
been ready for the worst most nights of his life; for I may tell you
they would have hanged him in the end if he hadn't been too quick for
them with his own horse-pistol. You didn't know he was as bad as that?
It's not a thing the family boasts about, and I don't suppose your
Estate people would hold it out as an attraction. But I've read a thing
or two about the bright old boy, and I do believe we've struck the site
of some of his brightest moments!"

"I should like to have explored that tunnel."

"So you shall."

"But when?"

We had gobbled our luncheon, and I had drained the jug that my
unconventional host had carried all the way from the Mulcaster Arms; but
already I was late for a most unlucky appointment with prospective
tenants, and it was only a last look that I could take at my not ignoble
handiwork. It was really rather a good hole for a beginner, and a
grave-digger could not have heaped his earth much more compactly. It
came hard to leave the next stage of the adventure even to as nice a
fellow as young Delavoye.

"When?" he repeated with an air of surprise. "Why to-night, of course;
you don't suppose I'm going to explore it without you, do you?"

I had already promised not to mention the matter to my Mr. Muskett when
he looked in at the office on his way from the station; but that was the
only undertaking which had passed between us.

"I thought you said you didn't want Mrs. Delavoye to see the pit's
mouth?"

It was his own expression, yet it made him smile, though it had not made
me.

"I certainly don't mean either my mother or sister to see one end till
we've seen the other," said he. "They might have a word too many to say
about it. I must cover the place up somehow before they get back; but
I'll tell them you're coming in this evening, and when they go aloft we
shall very naturally come out here for a final pipe."

"Armed with a lantern?"

"No, a pocketful of candles. And don't you dress, Gillon, because I
don't, even when I'm not bound for the bowels of the globe."

I ran to my appointment after that; but the prospective tenants broke
theirs, and kept me waiting for nothing all that fiery afternoon. I can
shut my eyes and go through it all again, and see every inch of my
sticky little prison near the station. In the heat its copious varnish
developed an adhesive quality as fatal to flies as bird-lime, and