People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1894 — MATT. A TALE OF A CARAVAN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

MATT. A TALE OF A CARAVAN

By ROBERT BUCIANAN.

CHAPTER IX—Continued. The result of the information thus ■ommunicated was to leave the young man of the caravan far more curious than ever. He determined to turn the tables on William Jones, and to watch his movements, not in the daytime, but during the summer night, waiting for his appearance in the immediate neighborhood of the Devil’s Caldron. The first night he saw nothing—it was stormy, with wild gusts of rain. The second night was equally uneventful. Nothing daunted, he went for a third and last time, and lay in the moonlight on the cliffs, looking toward the village. The night was dark and cloudy, but from time to time the moon came out with sudden brilliance on the sea, which was gently stirred by a breeze from the land. He waited for several hours. About midnight he rose to go home. As he did so he was startled by the sound of oars, and, lying down, perceived a small boat approaching on a silver patch of moonlit sea. The moon came out, and he saw that the occupant of the boat was a solitary man. It approached rapidly, making direct for the Devil’s Caldron. Lying down on his face and peeping over, Brinkley saw it stop just outside the foaming passage, while the man stood up, stopped, lifted something heavy from the bottom and threw it overboard. Then, after watching for a moment a dark object which drifted shoreward,

right into the Caldron, he rerwed away until he reached a sheltered creek, close to the scene of the swimming adventure. Here he ran the boat ashore and leaped out. The next minute Brinkley heard him coming up the cliffs. Trembling with excitement, he lay town flat on his face and waited, presently the man emerged on the top of the cliffs, within a few yards of Brinkley’s hiding-place. Just then the moon flashed brightly out, and Brink\ey recognized him. It was William Jones, carrying on his shoulders something like a loaded sack, and dangling from his left wrist a horn lantern. He looked round once or twice and then hurried toward the sand hills. Brinkley foHowed stealthily. The moon now went in, and it became pitch dark. Presently Jones paused, set down the load and lit the lantern; then he hurried on.

For fifty or sixty yards a coarse carpet of greensward covered the cliffs; then the sand hills began. Passing over the first sand hill, Jones disappeared. Quick as thought the young man foHowed, and, peering over, saw the light in the hollow beneath; it rose higher and higher till it reached the top of the next sand hill, where it paused. Crawling on hands and knees, Brinkley slipped down into the hollow, and then crept upward half way up the mound; he found a huge rock, behind which he crouched and peeped. As he did so William Jones, light in hand, seemed to dive down into the solid earth and disappear. chapter X. THE SECRET OT THE CAVE. For a minute after the disappearance Charles Brinkley lay as if petrified, and, indeed, he was altogether lost in wonder. What had happened? Had an earthquake swallowed the mysterious one, or had he tumbled down in a fit? Brinkley waited and watched; five minutes bad passed, ten minutes »nd f.till the light did not re-emerge. At last, overcome by curiosity, Brinkley rose, iMd. stooping close to the ground, crept from the rock behind which he had lain concealed, and •nwled acroo* tbe summit of the sand

MH Suddenly he stopped abort and went down on hands and knees, for he now clearly discerned, coming out of the solid earth or sand, the glimmer of the light It glimmered, then disappeared again. Just then the moon slipped out of her cloud, illuminating the hillocks with vitreous rays, and he perceived, close by nim, a dark hole, opening in the very heart of the hillock. He crept closer and looked down, but could see nothing. He held his head over the hole and listened; all he heard was a dull, hollow moaning, like the souad of the sea. The light of the moon, however, enabled him to perceive that the hole had been covered with a loose piece of wood, or lid, about four feet square, and with an iron ringbolt in the center; which lid was now lying by the side of the opening, ready to be replaced. A number of large pieces of stone, such as were strewed everywhere about the sand hills, lay piled close by. He lay for some time waiting and listening. All at once, far beneath him, the light glimmered again. Quick as thought he rose and crept away, only just in time; for he had no sooner regained the shelter of the rock and crouched there watching than he saw the light re-emerge, accompanied by a human head; a human body followed, and then he clearly discerned William Jones standing in the moonlight without the burden he had previously carried, and holding in his hand a lan tern.

Setting the lantern down, William busied himself for several minutes, and finally, having concealed the work on which he was engaged, extinguished the light. Then, after glancing suspiciously round him on every side, he walked rapidly down the sand hill and disappeared in the direction of the sea. Not until he distinctly heard the plash of oars, and saw the black sihouette of the boat pass out from the shadow of the rock on to the moonlit sea, did Brinkley again begin to stir, and even then he did so very cautiously lest his figure should be perceived against the moonlight by the lynx-eyed rower. Creeping on hands and knees, he again crawled to the mysterious spot, and found, as he had indeed anticipated, that the hole was covered up, and the wooden lid or trap-door so carefully covered with stones and loose sand as to be completely hidden. His first impulse was to displace the debris and at once to explore the mysterious place; but reflecting that he was unprovided with lights of any kind, and that the cavity below would most certainly be in total darkness, he determined to postpone his visit of inspection until daylight. By this time there was no sight or sound of the boat. Rising to his feet, he mused. It was all very well to talk of returning auother time, but how was he to find the spot? The sea of sandy hillbcks stretched on every side, and he knew by experience how difficult it was to distinguish one hillock from another. As to the cairns of loose stones, such cairns were nearly as numerous as the hillocks themselves. At last he thought of the rook where he had first concealed himself. Such rocks were numerous too, but, pulling out his case of crayons, he marked the base of the rock with a small streak of color. Finally, remembering that the drift sand might cover this mark, he made a large cross in the hard sand. Having taken these precautions, he made the best of his way down the cliffs, and following the open greensward which fringed the crags wandered back to the caravan. At daybreak the next day he strolled back along the Crags, first taking a bird’s-eye view of the village, and perceiving no sign of William Jones, who had doubtless no suspicion that he would rise so early. He soon found the spot where he had stood overnight watching the approach of the boat, and, first reconnoitering the neighborhood, struck off among the sand hills. At first he was guided by footprints, but as the sand grew harder these disappeared. At length, after a somesomewhat bewildering search, he found the sand hill he sought, the rock with his mark upon it, the cross marked in the ground, and finally the well-con-cealed mouth of the hole. He looked keenly to right and left. No one was visible. Stooping down he disclosed the trap-door with its iron ring. A long pull, a strong pull, and up eame the trap. Open sesame! Beneath him was a dark cavity, with a slanting path descending into the bowels of the earth. Anxious to lose no time, he squeezed himself through the aperture and began descending. While he did so he heard the hollow roaring he had heard the night before. As he proceeded he drew out a box of matches and a candle, which he lit. Proceeding cautiously on his back, and restraining himself with his elbows from too rapid descent, he found himself surrounded, not by sand, but by solid rock, and, peering downward, saw that he was looking down into a large subterranean cave. Just beneath him was a flight of steps cut in the solid rock. Descending these carefully, for they were as slippery as ice, he reached the bottom, and found it made of sea gravel and loose shells, forming, indeed, a decline like the seashore itself, to the edge of which, filling about half the cavern, the waters of the sea crept with a long, monotonous moan. Approaching the water’s edge he saw facing him the solid back of the cliff, but just at the base there was an opening, a sort of slit, almost touching the waves at all times, quite touching them when the swell rose, and through this opening crept beams of daylight, turning the waves to a clear malachite green. The mystery was now clear enough. The cave communicated directly with the sea. but in such a way as to make an entrance for any large object impossible from that direction. Turning his back upon the water, and holding up the candle, he examined ‘he interior. The damp, black rocks rose on every side, and from the room hung spongy and hideous weeds, like those fungi to be seen in snadees

VMlta et wine; but piled against the inner wall was a hoard of treasures to make a smuggler’s mouth water or turn a wrecker’s brain. Puncheons of rum and other spirits, bales of wool, planks of mahogany and pine, oars, broken masts, coils of rope, tangles of running rigging, flags of all nations and articles of such material as is used on shipboard, swinging tables, brass swinging lamps, masthead lanterns and hammocks; enough, and to spare, in short, to fit out a small fleet of vessels. Lost in amazement, Brinkley examined this extraordinary hoard, the accumulation, doubtless, of many years. All at once his eye fell upon a large canvas bag, rotten with age, and ganing open. It was as full as it could hold of pieces of gold, bearing the superscription of the mint *»f Spain. O William Jones! William Jones! And all this was yours, at least by right <*f

plunder, upon the queen’s seaway; all this which, turned into cash, would have made a man rich beyond the dreams of avarice, was the possession of one who lived like a miserly beggar, grudged himself and his flesh and blood the common necessaries of life, and had never been known, from boyhood upward, to give a starving fellowcreature so much as a crust of bread or to drop a penny into the poor box! O William Jones! O William Jones! William Jones! The above reflection belongs, not to the present writer, but to my adventurous discoverer, the captain of the caravan. As Brinkley proceeded on his tour of inspection he became more and more struck with wonder. Nothing seemed too insignificant or too preposterously useless for secretion in that extraordinary ship’s cavern. There were mops and brooms, there were holystones, there were “squeegees,” there were canisters of tinned provisions, there were bags of weevil’d biscuits, there were sacks of potatoes (which esculents, long neglected, had actually sprouted and put forth leaves), there were ring-bolts, there were tin mugs and pannikins, and, lastly, mirabile dictu, there were books—said books lay piled on the top of a heap of sacks and were in the last stage of mildew and decay.. For what purpose had they been carried there? Certainly not to form a library, for William Jones could not read. As curiosity deepened, Brinkley opened some of the forlorn volumes covered with mildew and full of hideous crawling things. Most were in foreign tongues, but there were several English novels half a century old, and a book of famous “Voyages,” also in English. Near to them were some large paper rolls —ships charts, evidently, and almost falling to pieces. And on the top of the charts was a tiny prayerbook, slime-covered and dripping wet! What possessed Brinkley to examine the prayerbook I cannot determine, but in after years he always averred that it was an inspiration. At any rate he did open it, and taw that the flyleaf was covered with writing, yellow, difficult to decipher, fast fading away. But what more particularly attracted his attention was a loose piece of parchment, fastened to the title-page with a rusty pin, and covered also with written characters.

Fixing the candle on a nook in the damp wall he inspected the title-page, and deciphered these words: “Christmas-eve, 1864, on board the ship ‘Trinidad,’ fast breaking up on the Welsh coast. If any Christian soul should find this book and these lines where I place them, If they sink not with their bearer (on whom I leave my last despairing blessing) to the bottom of the sea, or if God in His infinite mercy should spare and save the little child.” (The book trembled in his hand as he read. The writing went on:) “I cast her adrift in her cradle in sight of shore, on a little raft made by my own hands. ’Tis a desperate hope, but He can work miracles, and if it is His will she may be saved. Attached to this holy book are the proofs of her poor dead mother’s marriage and my darling's birth. May she live to inherit my name. Signed, Matthew Thobpe Monk, Colonel Fifteenth Cavalry, Bengal.” The mystery was deepening indeed! At last Brinkley thrust the book and its contents into his pocket and, after one look round, took the candle and made his way up the rocks and out of the cave. When he saw the light of day above him he blew out the light and crawled up through the aperture. Then, standing on the lonely sand hill, he surveyed the scene on every side. There was no sign of any living soul. Carefully, but rapidly, he returned the trapdoor to its place, covered it with the stones and liberal handfuls of loose sand and walked away, taking care for the first hundred yards to obliterate his footprints as he went. CHAPTER XL MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOR Of THU YOCJKI GENTLEMAN. About this time Matt noticed a eurlous change come over her artist friend. He was more thoughtful and consequently less entertaining. Often when she appeared and began chatting to him about affairs in which she thought ha take some interest she had

Um mortification not merdiy at dfctt ing no reply, but of finding that ha had not heard a word of her conversation. Now this style of proceeding would •ertainly have caused her some annoyance, but for one oompensating fact which put the balance entirely on the other side. It was evident that, despite the change, Brinkley’s interest was not lessening, nay, it rather seemed to be on the increase—and thia fact Matt, very woman as she was, was quick to perceive. Very often on looking suddenly at him she found his eyes fixed wonder* ingly and sympathetically upon her. She asked him on one occasion what ho was thinking about. “You, Matt,” he answered, promptly. “I was trying to imagine,” be continued, seeing her blush and hang her head, “how you would look in silka and velvets; got up, in fact, Uke a grand demoiselle. What would you say, now, if a good fairy were to find you out some day and were to offer to change you from what you are to a fine young lady—would you say yes?” Matt reflected for a moment, then she followed her feminine instinct and nodded her head vigorously. “Ah—by the way, Matt, can you read?” “Print, not writing.” “And write?” “Just a bit!” “Who taught you? William Jones?" “No, that he didn’t; I learned off Tim Penrenn down village. William Jones, he can’t read and he can’t write; no more can William Jones’ father." This last piece of information set the young man thinking so deeply that the rest of the interview became rather dull for Matt. When she rose to go, however, he came out of his abstraction, and asked her if she would return on the following day. “I don’t know—p’raps!” she said. “Ah,” returned the young man, assuming his flippant manner, “you find me tedious company, I fear. The fact is, I am generally affected in this manner in the present state of the moon. But come to-morrow, Matt. Your presence does me good.” However, the next day passed and the next again, and there was no sign of Matt. He began to think the child had taken offense, and that he would have to seek her in her own home, when her opportune appearance prevented the journey. He was taking his breakfast one morning inside the caravan, when he suddenly became conscious that Matt was standing outside watching him. “Oh, you are there,are yon?” he said, coolly. “Come in and have some break* fast, Matt.” [TO BE CONTINUED.]

IT WAS WILLIAM JONES, CARRYING ON HIS SHOULDERS A LOADED SACK.

THE BOOK TREMBLED IN HIS HAND.