trap.  Coming as they did in a company, all mounted and conspicuous, the watchman (who was posted now on the top of the hill, almost every day since John Fry’s appearance) could not help espying them, miles distant, over the moorland.  He watched them under the shade of his hand, and presently ran down the hill, and raised a great commotion.  Then Simon Carfax and all his men came up, and made things natural, removing every sign of work; and finally, sinking underground, drew across the mouth of the pit a hurdle thatched with sedge and heather.  Only Simon himself was left behind, ensconced in a hole of the crags, to observe the doings of the enemy.

Captain Stickles rode very bravely, with all his men clattering after him, down the rocky pass, and even to the margin of the slough.  And there they stopped, and held council; for it was a perilous thing to risk the passage upon horseback, between the treacherous brink and the cliff, unless one knew it thoroughly.  Stickles, however, and one follower, carefully felt the way along, having their horses well in hand, and bearing a rope to draw them out, in case of being foundered.  Then they spurred across the rough boggy land, farther away than the shaft was.  Here the ground lay jagged and shaggy, wrought up with high tufts of reed, or scragged with stunted brushwood.  And between the ups and downs (which met anybody anyhow) green-covered places tempted the foot, and black bog-holes discouraged it.  It is not to be marvelled at that amid such place as this, for the first time visited, the horses were a little skeary; and their riders partook of the feeling, as all good riders do.  In and out of the tufts they went, with their eyes dilating, wishing to be out of harm, if conscience were but satisfied.  And of this tufty flaggy ground, pocked with bogs and boglets, one especial nature is that it will not hold impressions.

Seeing thus no track of men, nor anything but marsh-work, and stormwork, and of the seasons, these two honest men rode back, and were glad to do so.  For above them hung the mountains, cowled with fog, and seamed with storm; and around them desolation; and below their feet the grave.  Hence they went, with all goodwill; and vowed for ever afterwards that fear of a simple place like that was only too ridiculous.  So they all rode home with mutual praises, and their courage well-approved; and the only result of the expedition was to confirm John Fry’s repute as a bigger liar than ever.

Now I had enough of that underground work, as before related, to last me for a year to come; neither would I, for sake of gold, have ever stepped into that bucket, of my own goodwill again.  But when I told Lorna—­whom I could trust in any matter of secrecy, as if she had never been a woman—­all about my great descent, and the honeycombing of the earth, and the mournful noise at eventide, when the gold was under the crusher and bewailing the mischief it must do, then Lorna’s chief desire was to know more about Simon Carfax.