Now the concealed chamber had also another way by which it could be entered, and this was through a hole in the floor of a bedroom above. A plank of the floor could be lifted, when an opening was disclosed by which anyone might pass under the wall through a sort of door, and down steps into this apartment, which was entirely without light. Of what use was this singular concealed chamber? There could be little question. It was a place in which formerly kegs of smuggled spirits and tobacco were hidden. The place lies some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boscastle, a dangerous little harbour on the North Cornish coast, and about a mile off the main road from London, by Exeter and Launceston, to Falmouth. The coach travellers in old days consumed a good deal of spirits, and here in a tangle of lanes lay a little emporium always kept well supplied with a stock of spirits which had not paid duty, and whence the taverners along the road could derive the contraband liquor, with which they supplied the travellers. Between this emporium and the sea the roads--parish roads--lie over wild moors or creep between high hedges of earth, on which the traveller can step along when the lane below is converted into the bed of a stream, also on which the wary smuggler could stride whilst his laden mules and asses stumbled forward in the concealment of the deep-set lane. [Illustration: MOUNT’S BAY] A very curious feature of the coasts of the West of England, where rocky or wild, is the trenched and banked-up paths from the coves along the coast. These are noticeable in Devon and Cornwall and along the Bristol Channel. That terrible sea-front consists of precipitous walls of rock, with only here and there a dip, where a brawling stream has sawn its course down to the sea; and here there is, perhaps, a sandy shore of diminutive proportions, and the rocks around are pierced in all directions with caverns. The smugglers formerly ran their goods into these coves when the weather permitted, or the preventive men were not on the look-out. They stowed away their goods in the caves, and gave notice to the farmers and gentry of the neighbourhood, all of whom were provided with numerous donkeys, which were forthwith sent down to the _caches_, and the kegs and bales were removed under cover of night or of storm. As an excuse for keeping droves of donkeys, it was pretended that the sea-sand and the kelp served as admirable dressing for the land, and no doubt so they did. The trains of asses sometimes came up laden with sacks of sand, but not infrequently with kegs of brandy. Now a wary preventive man might watch too narrowly the proceedings of these trains of asses. Accordingly squires, yeomen, farmers, alike set to work to cut deep ways in the face of the downs, along the slopes of the hills, and bank them up, so that whole caravans of laden beasts might travel up and down absolutely unseen from the sea, and greatly screened from the land side.