"Very well," said Jimmy, "come up to the church."

"The church?"

"You suggested going to the church before we explored the cave. What's wrong about going there now?"

"But what do you want to go to the church for? You said you hated churches."

"The mediÆval knight," said Jimmy, "always went to church before he set out to slay dragons. He generally spent a whole day there, consecrating his sword and that sort of thing. Come on."

"I won't go to the church with you if you're going to do anything profane or make jokes about religion."

"I'm going to discover a ghost," said Jimmy. "You can't call that profane."

They passed through the middle of the rehearsal. Mrs. Eames shouted at them entreating them to stop and give advice about the proper way of handling kegs supposed to contain French brandy. Sir Evelyn descended from his perch and wanted to start a discussion about the rigging of the lugger. Jimmy took no notice of either of them. He waved his hand cheerfully to Mrs. Eames, and when his uncle caught him by the sleeve scarcely allowed himself to be stopped.

"Later on," he said. "I'll go into all that in an hour or so. Just at present I can't. I'm frightfully busy. I've a most pressing engagement. The whole future of the pageant depends on my keeping it. Come on, Beth."

They crossed the beach and reached the green. There they were approached by the two girls who had been left in charge of the horse. Earlier in the day they had been eager enough to be allowed to hold it. Now they were thoroughly tired of the job, and felt that they were missing all the fun that was going on at the mouth of the cave. They wanted to be released.

"Certainly not," said Jimmy. "Life isn't all fun. You ask this lady," he pointed to Beth, "and she'll tell you that the great thing is to be real and earnest and doing some jolly useful kind of work, holding a horse, for instance, or chasing ghosts or anything of that sort which is really hard work and is done for the sake of others. That's it, isn't it, Beth?"

Beth looked at the girls who wanted to be off and hated holding the horse. She looked at the horse, which also wanted to be off and hated being held.

"I really think," she said, "that Aunt Agatha wouldn't mind if they went away."

"Beastly inconsistent of you, Beth," said Jimmy. "I think you ought to tell those girls what you're always telling me. I mean about getting married. Now, listen to me, Millicent Pamela. And you, Gwendoline Irene—those are your names, I suppose."

The girls grinned shamefacedly. With an instinctive knowledge of the taste of village people he had got the girls' names very nearly right. One of them was Auriole Millicent and the other Eunice Gwendoline.

"The lady says that if you don't slay dragons or hold that horse or chase a ghost or do something like that, no nice man will ever marry you. That's it, isn't it, Beth?"

But the girls did not wait to hear what Beth had to say. They were prepared to sacrifice their chance of getting husbands rather than miss the gathering at the mouth of the cave.

Beth and Jimmy climbed the steep path which led to the church. The two Whittles, their flag signalling accomplished, had gone away. Jimmy walked slowly round the churchyard looking at the graves with some attention. The tombstones were all in place and looked as if they had not been disturbed for years. Not a single grave had been recently opened.

"What are you doing?" said Beth.

"Looking for the ghost," said Jimmy, "who's throwing stones through the roof of the cave."

He climbed on the wall of the churchyard and looked down, standing in the very spot which had been occupied by the Whittles an hour before. He saw the green, where the horse, released from bondage, was grazing quietly. He saw the stony beach. He saw the face of the cliff beyond the cave. He peered over and looked straight down. He turned and looked at the cliff behind the church, a precipice of rugged rock.

"Well, I'm hanged," he said.

"What is the matter?" said Beth.

"I'm hanged if I thought that even the ghost of a smuggler would have done it," he said. "What lawless ruffians those fellows were! But even so I'd have expected them to have some regard for the church."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Beth.

"Well, you ought to know. And considering it was you who drove me on to do it I don't see how you can possibly not know."

"Drove you on to do what?"

"Find the ghost of the smuggler who's throwing stones. He must have dug a hole somewhere to throw them through, mustn't he? Even a ghost can't throw stones through solid earth. And he must have done it up here, for the place is right over the cave. My idea was that he was operating through a grave, his own very likely, but he isn't. Nothing could be more peacefully undisturbed than all these graves, not a tombstone so much as knocked sideways. Still there the facts are. Somebody is dropping stones from somewhere into the chimney at the end of the cave and if it isn't from a hole in the graveyard it must be from inside the church. The next thing is to go inside and look."

"But Uncle Timothy's there," said Beth, "and if anybody was digging a hole in the church he'd stop them."

"He might not. It all depends on who was digging. Lots of people would hesitate to interfere with the ghost of a smuggler."

The south door of the church was locked. The small door which led into the vestry was locked, too. The large west door under the tower had not been opened for years. Loud knocking on one door after the other brought no answer.

"Uncle Timothy," said Beth, "must have gone to sleep. I don't wonder. I expect Aunt Agatha keeps him awake most of the night telling him that he really ought to do something for the parish."

"So he ought," said Jimmy. "I quite agree with your aunt. I quite agree with you, too, Beth, when you say that sort of thing. I wonder if we could open a window and climb in."

"Church windows don't open," said Beth.

Perhaps some day they will, if the Modernists get their way. Then all sorts of dangerous draughts will blow the altar hangings about, dissipate the smell of incense and dying flowers, even disturb the heavy stuffiness of centuries of ordered piety. In the meanwhile Beth was right. Church windows are not made to open.

Next to getting in, which appeared to be impossible, the best thing was to look in. But here again there were difficulties. Church windows are set high in walls and cannot easily be reached. But Jimmy was a young man of great determination. He found a shed in a corner of the churchyard. In it the sexton kept a scythe, a mowing machine, some cans and a bier, a four-wheeled vehicle with rubber tyres. Jimmy wheeled it out and set it under a window. Beth protested. She feared that this use of a bier if not actually sacrilege was an offence against decency. Jimmy climbed up on the bier and peered through the window.

He had a clear view of the nave of the church. He could peer down into the pews, could see the pulpit, the font and the lectern. There was no sign that the pavement or flooring had been disturbed anywhere. Worshippers might have entered, had in fact entered, three days before, and sat in their accustomed seats and listened to all that they expected to hear without being struck by anything unusual in the condition of their church.

Jimmy moved the bier to a window in the chancel and climbed up on it again. He found himself looking down into the high-sided square pew, surrounded with curtains, which stood close to the chancel rails. It had been set apart a century before for the use of the lord of the manor. It had been unoccupied for at least fifty years by anyone, except the vicar, when he used it as a study and sat in one of the arm-chairs with the tattered carpet under his feet, reading Epictetus.

When Jimmy looked down into it the arm-chairs had been moved and piled into a corner. The carpet had been rolled up. The flooring had been removed. In a deep hole in the middle of the pew he saw the back of the Reverend Timothy Eames bent low over a spade.

"Well, I'm properly and completely damned," said Jimmy.

Beth was steadying the bier, which had a tendency to run away whenever Jimmy moved. She was very naturally shocked at the use of this language by an unauthorised layman so near the church. The position of the clergy is quite different. They are actually commanded to say "damn" not only near but inside the church.

"Jimmy dear," she said, "do you remember where you are?"

"Get up here," he said, "and peep in. Then you'll forget where you are and either say 'damn' or something worse."

He jumped down, upsetting the bier, a vehicle not designed for the use of active passengers. When it was on its four wheels again he helped Beth on to it and she took her turn at peering through the window.

"Good gracious!" she said. "It's Uncle Timothy."

"There's a Lisping for that Lilith of yours for next week," he said. "'The floor of a parish church dug up by pious vicar.' Such a thing has never been heard of before."

"Jimmy," she whispered, "do you think—— I've heard that the clergy are often buried in the chancels of churches, and he does have a trying time sometimes with Aunt Agatha? Do you think he can be digging his own grave? Oh!"

The exclamation was forced from her by the fact that the vicar, startled by some sound, suddenly stood upright and stared at her. Beth's nerves had already been shaken by the noises and the falling stones in the cave. It was small wonder that the sudden rising of her uncle from what looked like a grave startled her afresh.

The vicar was nearly as frightened as she was. A face appearing at a church window high up in the walls of a chancel is scarcely likely to belong to a human being. In all probability it is an angel, and though we respect angels and like to sing hymns about them we do not want to come into personal contact with one. Their portraits are all very well and can be comfortably admired when painted on the glass of church windows. The actual face pressed against the glass outside is not such a pleasant thing to see.

Mr. Eames recovered his self-possession before Beth regained hers. He recognised his niece, and having recognised her was embarrassed rather than frightened.

"My dear Beth," he shouted, for it is necessary to shout if conversation is to be carried on through a stained glass window. "I didn't expect to meet you here, but I'm very glad, very glad indeed to see you. I'll come out to you and then we can both go down to the vicarage for tea. You're sure to want tea. I know I do. To tell you the truth I forgot to bring up any sandwiches to-day, so I've had no lunch."

He rubbed a little of the clay off his hands, laid the floor boards of the pew over the hole and replaced the carpet. Then he unlocked the south door of the church and greeted Beth. She introduced Jimmy. The Vicar looked first at one and then at the other with a whimsical little smile.

"You young people have caught me," he said. "But I hope——it's rather a humiliating request to make but I hope that you won't find it necessary to tell anyone what I was doing."

"As if we would, Uncle Timothy," said Beth. "Especially Aunt Agatha."

"Yes, yes, especially your aunt. Of course I'm going to tell her all about it in the end. But the fact is—— You know, my dear Beth, how your aunt is always telling me that I ought to do something for the parish."

"Poor Uncle Timothy!" said Beth.

"She's quite right," said Mr. Eames mildly. "I've always admitted that she's quite right. A man ought not to live without doing something."

"That's exactly what Beth says to me," said Jimmy, "and she's quite right, too."

"My difficulty," said Mr. Eames, "was to discover something which I could do, and at the same time something that would please your aunt. Now I think I've found the exact thing."

"Uncle Timothy," said Beth, "I don't believe Aunt Agatha is as bad as that. I know she's really fond of you. She won't be pleased. She really won't. She'll be very sorry, heartbroken, when you tell her that you've dug your grave."

"My grave! My dear Beth! Dug my grave! But I haven't. Nothing of the sort."

"Then what on earth were you digging?" said Beth.

"That," said the vicar, "is quite a long story."

It was; but he told it. Sitting on a flat tombstone with Beth on the grass at his feet, and Jimmy, fairly comfortable, full stretch on the bier.

Years before, soon after coming to Hailey Compton, the vicar had heard that there was some connection between the church and the cave. A legend existed, repeated without conviction by the old people in the parish, that the smugglers, in the irreverent days of the eighteenth century, used to store their goods in the church itself. But such stories are common all over England. There is scarcely an ancient church but rumour speaks of a covered way between it and a cave or the ruins of a monastery or a house which occupies the site of what was once a baron's castle. There is at least one church which tradition insists on connecting with a neighbouring public-house. If that passage could be found—and traces of it were discovered lately by men engaged in making a drain—it might be used as an argument by temperance reformers to demonstrate that an immoral alliance has always existed between the church and the brewery. Or by the advocates of more and better beer, to prove that the church, in the days when its faith was still undefiled by Henry VIII and Elizabeth, was not hostile to the natural joys of life. Such is the peculiar value of arguments based on historical and archÆological research. They can be used with equal force on either side in any modern dispute.

Mr. Eames, knowing the untrustworthy nature of local legends, paid no particular attention to that which connected his church with the smugglers' cave, and might never have investigated the matter if he had not been troubled by a loose board in the floor of the pew to which he had retired to read Epictetus. Day after day this board wobbled and shook under the leg of his chair when he sat down. He remembered the same thing happening when he had retired to the church for a few days during the starting of his wife's plays. Then, since he did not stay long, the thing had not mattered much. On the occasion of the pageant it became a serious annoyance. It was no use moving the chair, for wherever he put it one of its legs stood on a loose board. It appeared that nearly all the boards in the floor of that pew were loose.

Goaded to exasperation he at last took up the well worn and exceedingly dirty carpet to find out what was the matter with the boards. He discovered to his amazement that they were not only loose but movable, and evidently intended to be movable. One of them had a brass ring, by which it could without difficulty be lifted out of its place. Once it was lifted those on each side could be moved too. Mr. Eames, mildly excited, uncovered a square hole into which it was possible to step.

The legend of the existence of a passage connecting the church with the cave came back to his mind. There must, he thought, be some truth in it, for he had lit on what looked like the end of a passage leading from the church to somewhere, perhaps into the cave. With the aid of an ordnance survey map and some measurements which he took, he reached the conclusion that the end of the cave must be directly under the church. He discovered the chimney in the cave's roof which had excited Beth and Jimmy when they found it. It seemed perfectly plain that the hole inside the church and the chimney in the cave were part of one passage. Unfortunately the hole was filled with stones and loose earth. In order to establish the connection, Mr. Eames had to do some excavating. He brought up the spade from the vicarage and afterwards the pickaxe which Mrs. Eames missed and supposed to be lost or stolen. Coming on a large block of stone, one of the main causes of the obstruction, he found that he could not move it with his hands. He went very early in the morning and took young Bunce's tackle from the mouth of the cave. After the removal of that stone he got on rapidly and had almost completed the clearance when Beth and Jimmy visited the cave.

"I have great hopes," he said simply, "that your aunt will be pleased when I show her the hole leading straight down into the cave."

"I'm sure she will," said Beth.

"And she'll never be able to say again that I do nothing for the parish. A discovery like that ought to be quite useful for any parish. Don't you think so?"

"It will make Hailey Compton famous," said Beth, "and Aunt Agatha will be able to get up another pageant to show it off."

Jimmy seemed uninterested in the ultimate value of the hole to the modern parish. He wanted to understand what it was like and how it was originally used.

"Are there any remains of steps?" he asked.

"Oh no," said Mr. Eames, "it's just a hole. In fact I shall have to be very careful not to fall through when I'm finishing off the digging."

"I didn't see any sign of steps at the lower opening," said Jimmy.

"They may have used ladders," said Beth.

"My idea," said the vicar, "is that the men didn't go up and down at all. The passage was only used for hoisting things from the cave into the church. It's just a straight drop like a well, and anything could be pulled up."

"Anyhow," said Jimmy, "it's a most interesting thing and everybody ought to be most grateful to you for finding it."

"You really think so," said the vicar with an anxious little smile. "I should be very happy if I thought my wife would take that view of it."

"Oh, she's sure to," said Beth.

"But don't tell her about it until it's quite finished. It would be so much better if it comes to her as a surprise."

"I won't open my lips," said Beth, "and you can count on Jimmy. He's most reliable."

"And do you really think," said the vicar, appealing to Jimmy, "that I have succeeded at last in doing something for the parish?"

"I can only say, sir," said Jimmy, rising from the bier, "that I wish I'd half your luck. I came up to your church this evening hoping to find something really useful to do, something which would redeem my life from mere fatuity——"

"Oh, do shut up, Jimmy," said Beth. "I never said that."

"Not in those words," said Jimmy, "not in nearly such nice words, though you are an author. But it's exactly what you meant. And now I find——" he turned to the vicar, "that you've been beforehand with me. I congratulate you."

The vicar seemed puzzled. He looked inquiringly at Beth out of his colourless, watery eyes, while Jimmy shook his limp and earthy hand with painful heartiness.