at justifies the name of a cave, though there are
several fissures about the stones, in which possibly beasts might be
sheltered, but hardly human beings. To render the cave itself large
enough for the pair that once inhabited it, the earth must have been dug
from under the stone, so as to make a covered pit; and even then, it was
hardly so good a place as is said to have been made for "a refuge to the
conies," being much fitter for wild-cats or tigers. I could scarcely
persuade myself, that English law could ever have driven a man three
thousand miles over the sea, and then into such a burrow as this! But so
it was; and it was retribution and justice too.

Bad as it was, it looked more agreeable Goffe and Whalley, than a
cross-beam and two halters, or even than apartments in the Tower of
London. They had it fitted up with a bed, and other "creature-comforts"
of a truly Crusoe-like description. The mouth of the cave was screened
by a thick growth of bushes, and the place was in several other respects
well suited to their purposes. The parallelopiped, of which I have
spoken, was easily climbed, being furnished with something like stairs,
and its top commands a fine view of the town, the bay, and the country
for miles around. It served them, therefore, as a watch-tower, and must
have been very useful as a means of protection, and as an observatory
for amusement. I mounted the stone myself, and tried to fancy how
different was the scene two hundred years ago. There the exile would sit
hour after hour, not as one may sit there now, to see sails and steamers
entering and leaving the harbour, and post-coaches and railroad cars
passing and re-passing continually; but to gaze in astonishment and
fear, if one lone ship might be descried coming up the bay, or if a
solitary horseman was to be seen or heard pursuing his journey in the
valley below.

While the fugitives lived in this den, they were regularly supplied with
daily bread and other necessaries of life, by a woodman, who lived at
the foot of the rock. A child came up the mountain daily with a supply
of provisions, which he left on a certain stone, and returned without
seeing any body, or asking any questions of Echo. In this way he always
brought a full basket and took back an empty one, without the least
suspicion that he was becoming an accessory in high treason, and, as it
is said, without ever knowing to whom, or for what, he was ministering.
As a Brahmin sets rice b