f only to be able to cheer mother when I came back.
So, albeit with my heart in my mouth, I drew back the bolt--that
surely, for all my care, never creaked so loudly before or since--and
stepped out into the cool air. The fresh breeze that smote my cheeks
as I sat down outside to put on my boots brought me back to the
everyday world--a world that seemed to make the events of the night
unreal and baseless, so that I had, with boyish elasticity of temper,
almost forgotten all fear as I began to descend the cliff towards
Ready-Money Cove.

Before I go any further, it will be necessary to describe in a few
words that part of the coast which is the scene of my story.
Lantrig, as I have said, looks down upon Ready-Money Cove from the
summit of Pedn-glas, its northern arm. The cove itself is narrow,
running in between two scarred and rugged walls of serpentine, and
terminating in a little beach of whitest sand beneath a frowning and
precipitous cliff. It is easy to see its value in the eyes of
smugglers, for not only is the cove difficult of observation from the
sea, by reason of its straitness and the protection of its projecting
arms, but the height and abruptness of its cliffs also give it
seclusion from the land side. For Pedn-glas on the north rises sheer
from the sea, sloping downwards a little as it runs in to join the
mainland, but only enough to admit of a rough and winding path at its
inmost point, while to the south the cove is guarded by a strange
mass of rock that demands a somewhat longer description.

For some distance the cliff ran out as on the north side, but,
suddenly breaking off as if cleft by some gigantic stroke, left a
gloomy column of rock, attached to it only by an isthmus that stood
some six or seven feet above high-water mark. This separate mass
went by the name of Dead Man's Rock--a name dark and dreadful enough,
but in its derivation innocent, having been but Dodmen, or "the stony
headland," until common speech perverted it. For this reason I
suppose I ought not to call it Dead Man's Rock, the "Rock" being
superfluous, but I give it the name by which it has always been
known, being to a certain extent suspicious of those antiquarian
gentlemen that sometimes, in their eagerness to restore a name, would
deface a tradition.

Let me return to the rock. Under the neck that joins it to the main
cliff there runs a natural tunnel, which at low water leads to the
long expanse of Polkimbra Beach,