’Her be running dry, her be,’ said he. ’Poor thing! let me hold’y up and try again.’ He spoke to inanimate objects as though they were endowed with souls as reasonable as his own. ’There!’ said he, as he cast a few drops on the fire, and laughed at the flames that leaped up; ’that be the blue blazes I’ve a swore by all my live and never knowed ’n, to see to, I reckon. Now there bain’t another drop left. What ever shall I do? I have got more money, but no more spirits, and what be I to do all night long? Ah! I be a poor lorn creetur, I be. My old woman, her deserted me first, and a mighty shabby trick that were. Do’y hear me a speaking of ’y, old cat? Then my daughter Joyce, her left me—that is, I sold her when her’d a gone of herself. ’Twere good for me I got some money out of the deal: if I hadn’t, her’d have cut and run all the same.’ He sat and poked the red turves together. ’I wonder,’ he said, ’what there be in thicky barrel I took from Ophir? Like enough there be first-rate drink in her. Old Tramplara weren’t one to do things by halves. Her be hid away under the fern. I reckon I’ll have her out and try.’ He groped beneath the straw to a nether layer of bracken, and from under that rolled a small keg. ’There ain’t much comfort to be got out of she,’ he said, ’her be so gashly small. I wonder what there be in her? Her be hard to open.’ He put the little barrel down by the fire. ’I reckon I could manage a hole wi’ my old stone knife. Then he got the flint tool, and worked it between his palms on the end of the keg. The fire was getting low; he threw on some more turves. Then he ventured on a wisp of straw to make a blaze and assist his eyes. ’Oh, rallaluley!’ he exclaimed, ’I’ve got the hole drilled through at last.’ He had stolen this little barrel from Ophir during the disorder occasioned by the discovery of the imposition. It was the only thing that he thought might possibly be of service to him. He took it away, and hid it under the fern at the back of the dolmen, intending to examine its contents at his leisure. ’Why, there be no drink here at all,’ said he in disgust, when he had put his lips to the hole he had made. ’What be this? I’ve a got my mouth full of grit; it be black as coal. Blast me blue, but I will let my old woman taste it too.’ He let the contents run out in a little stream; then he gathered a handful of the grains and cast it in the fire to his ’old woman.’ The contents of the keg then found their way out in a more expeditious manner than through the hole he had bored. The keg contained blasting powder. Thus it came about that he fulfilled his promise faster than he had intended. Thus also it is that one of the most interesting monuments of a prehistoric age will not appear on the Ordnance Map of Devonshire now in process of execution. *CHAPTER LII.* *THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER.*