Clearly perceiving that in the course of a few years more his field-sports would be limited to spinning a tee-totum before his front-door, he engaged the services of an eminent architect and civil engineer to build him a sea-wall to prevent the further encroachments of the enemy. The estimate of expense was five thousand pounds, and, as a matter of course, the work, by the time it was finished, cost ten thousand. This was nearly as much as Sir Valentine Saltear had paid for the building of his house. But the worst part of the business was, that the very next storm which occurred at sea, and only a few weeks after, the waves dashed down, and fairly carried away the whole of this protective wall. In the morning it was clean gone, as though no such structure had been there, and a great additional gap was made in the cliff, plainly showing that the watery monster was quite bent on swallowing up Sir Valentine's house. He brought an action for the recovery of the money he had paid for his wall; but while this was pending, he saw his house being undermined from day to day, and in sheer despair felt himself obliged to apply to a still more eminent civil engineer. The estimate this gentleman made for the construction of a sea-wall--one that would stand--was ten thousand pounds. It might be a few pounds more or less--probably less. But the recent experience of Sir Valentine making him fear that it would probably be double that amount, he hesitated as to engaging the services of this gentleman. He even thought of sending over to Ireland for fifty bricklayers, carpenters, and masons, and superintending the work himself. He was sure he could do it for six thousand pounds. It never once occurred to him to pull down his house, and rebuild it on high ground a quarter of a mile farther off. In this dangerous yet undecided state of affairs, Sir Valentine one morning, breakfasting at his club in Waterloo Place, read in a newspaper a notice of the grand mining operation and explosion that was to take place at Seaford, the object of which was to throw down an immense mass of chalk cliff, the broken fragments whereof would, at a comparatively small cost, form a sea-wall, at an elevation of about one-fifth the height of the parent rock. Why, here was Sir Valentine's own case! His house was upon a very high chalk rock, and a sea-wall of one-fifth the height would answer every purpose. The only difficulty was his present proximity to the edge of the cliff. Still, he thought he could spare thirty feet or so, without losing his door-steps, and this width being exploded down to the base of the cliff, would constitute, by its fall, a very capital mound of protection which might last for a century or more. He therefore determined to see the explosion at Seaford, and if it proved successful, to adopt the very same plan.