“Ladies and Gentlemen,” said Mr. Leveson, in his most ingratiating manner, “I think we have had a most delightful evening, and–”

“No, we ain’t,” cried a new and nastier voice from a corner of the room. “Where is it?”

“That’s what we got a right to know,” said the law-abiding George. “Where is it?”

“Where is what?” cried the nearly demented secretary in the chair. “What do you want?”

The law-abiding Mr. George made a half turn and a gesture towards the man in the corner and said:

“What’s yours, Jim?”

“I’ll ’ave a drop of Scotch,” said the man in the corner.

Lady Enid Wimpole, who had lingered a little in loyalty to Joan, the only other lady still left, caught both her wrists and cried in a thrilling whisper,

“Oh, we must go to the car, dear! They’re using the most awful language!”

Away on the wettest edge of the sands by the sea the prints of two wheels and four hoofs were being slowly washed away by a slowly rising tide; which was, indeed, the only motive of the man Humphrey Pump, leading the donkey cart, in leading it almost ankle deep in water.

“I hope you’re sober again now,” he said with some seriousness to his companion, a huge man walking heavily and even humbly with a straight sword swinging to and fro at his hip–“for honestly it was a mug’s game to go and stick up the old sign before that tin place. I haven’t often spoken to you like this, Captain, but I don’t believe any other man in the county could get you out of the hole as I can. But to go down there and frighten the ladies–why there’s been nothing so silly here since Bishop’s Folly. You could hear the ladies screaming before we left.”

“I heard worse than that long before we left,” said the large man, without lifting his head. “I heard one of them laugh… Christ, do you think I shouldn’t hear her laugh?”

There was a silence. “I didn’t mean to speak sharp,” said Humphrey Pump with that incorruptible kindliness which was the root of his Englishry, and may yet save the soul of the English. “But it’s the truth I was pretty well bothered about how to get out of this business. You’re braver than I am, you see, and I own I was frightened about both of us. If I hadn’t known my way to the lost tunnel, I should be fairly frightened still.”

“Known your way to what?” asked the Captain, lifting his red head for the first time.

“Oh, you know all about No More Ivywood’s lost tunnel,” said Pump, carelessly. “Why, we all used to look for it when we were boys. Only I happened to find it.”

“Have mercy on an exile,” said Dalroy, humbly. “I don’t know which hurt him most, the things he forgets or the things he remembers.”

Mr. Pump was silent for a little while and then said, more seriously than usual, “Well, the people from London say you must put up placards and statues and subscriptions and epitaphs and the Lord knows what, to the people who’ve found some new trick and made it come off. But only a man that knows his own land for forty miles round, knows what a lot of people, and clever people too, there were who found new tricks, and had to hide them because they didn’t come off. There was Dr. Boone, up by Gill-in-Hugby, who held out against Dr. Collison and the vaccination. His treatment saved sixty patients who had got small-pox; and Dr. Collison’s killed ninety-two patients who hadn’t got anything. But Boone had to keep it dark; naturally, because all his lady patients grew mustaches. It was a result of the treatment. But it wasn’t a result he wishes to dwell on. Then there was old Dean Arthur, who discovered balloons if ever a man did. He discovered them long before they were discovered. But people were suspicious about such things just then–there was a revival of the witch business in spite of all the parsons –and he had to sign a paper saying where he’d got the notion. Well, it stands to reason, you wouldn’t like to sign a paper saying you’d got it from the village idiot when you were both blowing soap-bubbles; and that’s all he could have signed, for he was an honest gentleman, the poor old Dean. Then there was Jack Arlingham and the diving bell–but you remember all about that. Well, it was just the same with the man that made this tunnel–one of the mad Ivywoods. There’s many a man, Captain, that has a statue in the great London squares for helping to make the railway trains. There’s many a man has his name in Westminster Abbey for doing something in discovering steamboats. Poor old Ivywood discovered both at once; and had to be put under control. He had a notion that a railway train might be made to rush right into the sea and turn into a steamboat; and it seemed all right, according as he worked it out. But his family were so ashamed of the thing, that they didn’t like the tunnel even mentioned. I don’t think anybody knows where it is but me and Bunchy Robinson. We shall be there in a minute or two. They’ve thrown the rocks about at this end; and let the thick plantation grow at the other, but I’ve got a race horse through before now, to save it from Colonel Chepstow’s little games, and I think I can manage this donkey. Honestly, I think it’s the only place we’ll be safe in after what we’ve left behind us at Pebblewick. But it’s the best place in the world, there’s no doubt, for lying low and starting afresh. Here we are. You think you can’t get behind that rock, but you can. In fact, you have.”

Dalroy found himself, with some bewilderment, round the corner of a rock and in a long bore or barrel of blackness that ended in a very dim spot of green. Hearing the hoofs of the ass and the feet of his friend behind him, he turned his head, but could see nothing but the pitch darkness of a closed coal cellar. He turned again to the dim green speck, and marching forward was glad to see it grow larger and brighter, like a big emerald, till he came out on a throng of trees, mostly thin, but growing so thickly and so close to the cavernous entrance of the tunnel that it was quite clear the place was meant to be choked up by forests and forgotten. The light that came glimmering through the trees was so broken and tremulous that it was hard to tell whether it was daybreak or moonrise.

“I know there’s water here,” said Pump. “They couldn’t keep it out of the stone-work when they made the tunnel, and old Ivywood hit the hydraulic engineer with a spirit level. With the bit of covert here and the sea behind us we ought to be able to get food of one kind or another, when the cheese has given out, and donkeys can eat anything. By the way,” he added with some embarrassment, “you don’t mind my saying it, Captain, but I think we’d better keep that rum for rare occasions. It’s the best rum in England, and may be the last, if these mad games are going on. It’ll do us good to feel it’s there, so we can have it when we want it. The cask’s still nearly full.”

Dalroy put out his hand and shook the other’s. “Hump,” he said, seriously, “you’re right. It’s a sacred trust for Humanity; and we’ll only drink it ourselves to celebrate great victories. In token of which I will take a glass now, to celebrate our glorious victory over Leveson and his tin tabernacle.”

He drained one glass and then sat down on the cask, as if to put temptation behind him. His blue ruminant bull’s eye seemed to plunge deeper and deeper into the emerald twilight of the trees in front of him, and it was long before he spoke again.

At last he observed, “I think you said, Hump, that a friend of yours–a gentleman named Bunchy Robinson, I think–was also a habitue here.”

“Yes, he knew the way,” answered Pump, leading the donkey to the most suitable patch of pasturage.

“May we, do you think, have the pleasure of a visit from Mr. Robinson?” inquired the Captain.

“Not unless they’re jolly careless up in Blackstone Gaol,” replied Pump. And he moved the cheese well into the arch of the tunnel. Dalroy still sat with his square chin on his hand, staring at the mystery of the little wood.