While he was speaking Mrs. Eames came up the drive holding the vicar's hand. She was trying to walk much more quickly than he wanted to, and it looked as if she was dragging him after her, a prisoner, but apparently not an unwilling one, for his face expressed a kind of puzzled delight.

"Beth," she shouted, "you naughty girl! And you're just as bad, Lord Colavon. Fancy your knowing all about it for days and days and never saying a word to me, either of you."

"I've just been showing her our little discovery," said the vicar in a tone of mild apology. "You remember, Beth, the passage from the church to the cave."

"Aunt Agatha," said Beth, "I want to tell you——"

"You were a wicked girl not to tell me before," said Mrs. Eames. "It's the most exciting thing that's ever happened in Hailey Compton. We'll get down the Royal Society of Antiquaries—I suppose there is a Royal Society of Antiquaries. If there isn't we'll get down the whole British Association, all sorts of learned men from everywhere. You remember the fuss that there was over that skull they dug up somewhere a few years ago. That will be nothing to what this will be. Hailey Compton will be famous all over the world. I always said you ought to do something for the parish, Timothy, and you have at last."

"I'm so glad you're pleased," said the vicar with a wavering little smile.

"Aunt Agatha——" said Beth again.

"Don't interrupt your uncle, Beth, when he's just going to tell us all about his discovery."

"Mrs. Eames," said Lord Colavon, "I really must speak to the vicar for a minute. It's about a serious business and dashed unpleasant."

Even Mrs. Eames was silenced for a moment by the gravity of his tone. When he began to tell the story of the smuggling she grew excited and indignant.

"So that's what James Hinton had in his mind all the time," she said, "and he was only pretending to be interested in the pageant. Guaranteeing fifty pounds! And all the time I thought—— He has——" here she stamped her foot, "he has had the insolence to make a fool of me, he and that nasty Linker, a man I always hated, though I did deal at his shop. But I never will again, or with Hinton. I'll get any beer I want somewhere else, or I'll do without beer altogether. Lord Colavon, do you mind not having any beer for luncheon to-day? Timothy, you must promise me never to have Hinton for your churchwarden again."

"The worst of it is," said Jimmy, "that the Inland Revenue people have found out."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Mrs. Eames.

"And now," said Jimmy, "I'm very much afraid that there may be arrests."

"The policeman at the mouth of the cave!" said Mrs. Eames. "So that's why he was there. I don't care. I'm glad. Let him arrest James Hinton as soon as he likes. I'd like to see him in prison. After the way he made fools of us all he deserves it."

"Hinton has run away," said Beth, "and the policeman will arrest you."

"That's ridiculous," said Mrs. Eames. "He can't arrest me. I haven't smuggled. They can't touch me, can they, Lord Colavon?"

"I don't think they can arrest you," said Jimmy, "but they may arrest me. And anyhow, there are other things to consider besides arrests. There's your reputation, Mrs. Eames, and Uncle Evie's, and the bishop's, and—well, all the people who've been down here, patrons of the pageant and so forth. When this scandal comes out——"

Even Mrs. Eames, though conscious of complete innocence, saw that a scandal would be most unpleasant for everyone, and very damaging for men like Sir Evelyn and the bishop.

"But Jimmy has a plan," said Beth. "If only Uncle Timothy will agree to it. Jimmy, what is your plan?"

Jimmy explained a simple but promising scheme. The examination of the cave and the seizure of the smuggled goods would not take place until the next day. If, in the meanwhile, all the brandy, wine and silk could be removed from the cave the Customs officers would find no smuggled goods. There would therefore be no evidence that contraband goods had been landed or that any smuggling had actually been done. Whatever suspicions might be entertained there would be no sort of proof.

"But we can't get the things out of the cave with a policeman on guard," said Beth. "Unless—— Oh, Jimmy, the hole from the church into the cave! Could we?"

"We can," said Jimmy, "if the vicar will let us."

"I won't have poor darling Timothy mixed up in it," said Mrs. Eames. "He's never done anything wrong in his life."

"I don't think this is very wrong," said Beth.

"It's helping a fraud," said Mrs. Eames, "and that is wrong. What is it called? Accessory after the fact or something. Anyhow it's wrong and Timothy mustn't do it. They can arrest me if they like and put me in prison, but I won't have Timothy dragged into it."

She put her arm round his neck and stood beside him, her free hand tightly clenched, the fire of defiance in her eyes.

"What do you say yourself, sir?" said Jimmy.

The vicar said nothing for a while. He may have been trying to make up his mind what he ought to say, or it may have been simply that his wife's clasp on his neck was so tight as to make speech impossible.

Jimmy, advocatus diaboli in the matter, put the case for wrong-doing as strongly as he could. The reputations of many eminent men were threatened by a scandal from the defilement of which none of them would ever be able to get wholly clear. The good name of the Church was in peril. The prospects of a great party in the State were in jeopardy. Every man, institution or party has enemies. The enemies of religion, atheists and mockers, would fasten on the bishop and through him would injure the Church and Christianity itself. The enemies of the State, socialists and communists, would swarm round Sir Evelyn and work incalculable mischief. The scandal would give them the opportunity they wanted. He pleaded earnestly. Beth backed his appeal; but Mrs. Eames's eyes still flashed righteous indignation and her fist was still tightly clenched.

"Agatha, dear, do let me speak," said the vicar in a hoarse whisper.

Mrs. Eames slightly relaxed her hold on his neck.

"You've often said," the vicar began addressing his wife, "You've often said that I would be a better man if——"

"You couldn't be better, Timothy darling. I've always said that."

"——that I would be a better man if only I would do something wrong."

"Timothy, dearest one, I never said that."

"You did, Aunt Agatha," said Beth. "I've heard you often."

"I rather think I have, too," said Jimmy, "once or twice."

"I should like to be a better man," said the vicar. "I've always wished to be that."

"And you will be," said Jimmy. "If you help us in this you'll be—— By Jove! you'll be the best man I've ever met."

"And it isn't very wrong," said Beth.

"It isn't wrong at all," said Mary eagerly. "When anyone is wicked enough to make a law against silk stockings it isn't wrong to break it, it's right."

"The wronger it is the better man the vicar will be afterwards," said Jimmy. "That's what Mrs. Eames says, and she knows."

"If I ever said any such thing——" said Mrs. Eames.

"You have," said the vicar. "My dear Agatha, you often have."

"I may have," said Mrs. Eames unwillingly. "But if I did, I certainly never meant the sort of wrong thing you could be put in prison for."

"But he won't be," said Jimmy, "or if he is, we'll all be there with him."

"I've always known you were quite right, Agatha, dear," said the vicar plaintively, "and that I ought to do something wrong. My difficulty was to find out something that I could do. I really didn't want to restore a church or write a book about heretics, and nothing else seemed to offer itself. But now—— Lord Colavon, I'm greatly obliged to you, and I regard this as just the opportunity I wanted. Agatha dearest, don't say anything more."

But that was asking too much of Mrs. Eames. She did say a great deal more, though nothing to dissuade the vicar from his determination to pursue the crown of sainthood through the ways of wrong-doing. Having withdrawn her opposition to Jimmy's plan she flung herself eagerly into a discussion of the best ways of carrying it out. There were a great many details to be arranged. Young Bunce's tackle, for instance, which was still in the church, was plainly insufficient for the work of hoisting things out of the cave. The rope was not long enough. As the police were blocking the ordinary entrance to the cave someone would have to be let down to the cave and afterwards hoisted up. Jimmy volunteered for the work but objected to trusting his life to young Bunce's frayed rope. He proposed to buy a new outfit of ropes and blocks, some materials for the erection of a derrick in the church and perhaps a windlass. It was regarded as undesirable to make such purchases in Morriton St. James, where the suspicions of the police might easily be aroused. Here the Pallas Athene proved its value. With such a car it would be possible to rush off to Southampton, thence to Portsmouth, afterwards, if necessary, to Plymouth, places in which such gear might be purchased, a rope here and a block there, without giving rise to inquiries.

There was the question, a much more difficult one, of the disposal of the smuggled goods after they had been lodged in the church.

"They can be piled up in the old pew in the chancel," said Mrs. Eames, "and the curtains drawn. No one ever goes there."

"But they can't always stay there," said the vicar. "I shouldn't like the feeling that the church was full of brandy."

"I don't see how we could possibly take all that stuff away," said Beth, "or where we could put it if we did."

Here Mary made a suggestion, though not a very helpful one.

"I'll carry my stockings away with me," she said, "and I'll take yours, too, if you like, Beth."

"Couldn't we leave it to Hinton and Linker to take away their own things?" said Beth.

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Eames vindictively. "It was Hinton and Linker who got us into this trouble, and I'll never agree to their being rewarded for it."

"Besides," said Jimmy, "they've both run away and we can't get at them."

It was, oddly enough, the vicar who hit on the solution of the difficulty.

"This is only Tuesday," he said. "As long as the things are taken out of the church before Sunday it will be all right. Suppose we lower them all down into the cave again on Friday or Saturday. The Customs officers will have given up searching by that time."

"Splendid!" said Beth. "No one ever goes into the cave except you, Aunt Agatha. I should think the brandy and other things might stay there for ever without anybody knowing."

"It does seem a pity about the silk," said Mary. "Such waste."

"And I did hope——" said Mrs. Eames, with a deep sigh.

Everyone understood and sympathised with her. She was called upon to renounce her ambition, to surrender a great hope at the very moment of fruition. The cave had been advertised by the pageant, would be re-advertised by the vicar's discovery. Crowds of people would come to see it. Antiquaries would explore its depths. Picnic parties would shout hilariously to its echoing walls. Just one effort, scarcely an effort, merely the allowing of things to take their course and all this would be realised. Hailey Compton would be famous. Wealth would pour in upon its inhabitants. A great and glorious work for the village would be accomplished. But all this, so it seemed, must be given up. The cave must lapse into a solitude again and the village remain as poor and primitive as it had ever been. It was a bitter disappointment to Mrs. Eames; but she bore it bravely, sustained by the thought that her beloved Timothy was at last doing something, though something in itself undesirable.

For the rest of that morning and all the afternoon the Pallas Athene raced at incredible speeds, east and west on the great main roads of the south of England. Jimmy, at the steering-wheel, broke record after record and rejoiced. Beth, beside him, glowed with a satisfaction not unlike her aunt's. Like the Reverend Timothy Eames, Jimmy, her lover, was proving himself a worthy man, actually doing something of real usefulness. He was breaking laws with reckless daring all day long in order to be able to break other laws all night. But—Beth thrilled with the thought, he was saving the honour of men and women, the good name of the church, the constitution of the State, the majesty of the Empire.

At ten o'clock that night, Jimmy, seated in the loop of a carefully tied knot, was lowered slowly, turning giddily round, from the squire's pew in Hailey Compton church into the profound darkness of the cave below. Clinging tightly to the rope, paying it out inch by inch were Mrs. Eames, Mary Lambert, Beth Appleby and the vicar. Their muscles were tense, their faces set with anxious determination. A distant sound of rolling stones and a sharp twitching of the rope told them that the ordeal was safely over. The rope was hauled up again and Beth, with white face and clenched teeth, took her seat in the loop. She grasped the rope above her firmly. The descent began. She bumped against the sides of the hole and was bruised. She grew giddy as the rope swung round and round. But her courage held. She was received at last in Jimmy's arms.

Then began for the whole party a night of desperate toil. Jimmy and Beth, sweating and half smothered in the close air of the cave, dragged the bales and cases to the gaping hole. Their fingers bled where the skin was rubbed off them. Their nails were broken. Their muscles were strained to utter weariness. Far above them, the vicar, Mrs. Eames and Mary hauled at the rope. The slowly raised weights seemed to grow heavier and heavier. They moved uneasily in a space which became gradually narrowed and less sufficient as bales and cases were piled up in the square pew. How fortunate that the eighteenth century lord of the manor, who designed and built the pew, should have liked ample space for his devotions! He planned largely, a room rather than a pew, intending perhaps to use the place not only for worship but for just such purposes as it was used for that night.

All night long—such are the curious inequalities of the human lot—a policeman stood at the mouth of the cave. While others toiled, he wearied of utter idleness. While others gasped for air, the sea breeze blew round him. While others sweated, he stamped his feet and swung his arms to keep himself warm. In the new society of which we dream, for which we strive, things must be better ordered. No longer must our souls be vexed by the contrast between excessive toil and listless idleness.

Yet—and here again we have an instance of the oddness of human affairs—the leisured policeman, yawning and stretching himself, missed something which came to the perspiring toilers in the cave—a thrill, a joy, a rapture which more than compensated for bleeding knuckles, broken nails and aching limbs.

The last case was secured in its sling and ascended slowly into the darkness. The work of the night was finished. In a few minutes Beth would be following the case, seated in the loop, clinging to the rope. Then Jimmy would follow her, and after that—— He hoped that Mrs. Eames had some beer in the vicarage. He believed she had. He thought she must have. No woman would be so foolish as to forget to have beer ready at the end of such a night. Beer! Not since the day when Sir Evelyn first drove down the hill into Hailey Compton had any man wanted beer so much as Jimmy wanted it then.

But Beth, it seemed, was not thinking of beer, or even of tea, which for some women takes the place of beer.

"Jimmy," she said softly, "do you remember the last time we were here?"

"Of course I do. A smuggler's ghost threw stones at us."

"And I said——"

Beth paused for a while. Then the darkness, a wonderful solvent of maiden modesty, helped her to go on again.

"I think I said—— I mean, after you said—— You remember what you said——"

"I said what I've been saying for the last two years," said Jimmy. "And what you said was 'No.'"

"But I told you why," said Beth.

"You've always been telling me why."

"Jimmy," she burst out, "are you going to make me propose to you? Don't you see, you silly old dear, that that isn't a why any longer? You've been perfectly splendid to-night. You've thought of things and done things—and—— Oh, Jimmy, only for you where would everybody be to-morrow when the horrid Customs officers come to search the cave?"

Then, though very thirsty, Jimmy forgot about the beer. Ben Jonson, a dramatist and a poet who knew something about human nature and could express himself very prettily, says that kisses are to be preferred sometimes "even to Jove's nectar." Jimmy, tired, sore and grimy, in a stuffy cave, at the horrible hour of 4 a.m., found them more to be desired than much beer.