So late one windy and rainy night he stole forth with his unlit lantern, and fought his way in the teeth of half a gale to the familiar place, which he found, however, with some little difficulty. He was neither superstitious nor imaginative, but throughout the journey he was a prey to nameless terrors. Every gust of wind went through his heart like a knife; every sound of wind or sea made that same heart stop and listen. Only supreme greed and miserly anxiety led him on. But at last he gained the cave, within which there was a sound as of clashing legions, clarions shrieking, drums beating, all the storm and stress of the awful waters clashing on the cliffs without, and boiling with unusual screams through the black slit between the cave and the Devil’s Cauldron. Trembling, with perspiration standing in great beads on his face, he searched the cave for the corpse of the murdered man, expecting to find it well advanced in decomposition. Strange to say, however, it had disappeared. William Jones was at once relieved and alarmed; relieved because he was spared a horrible experience; alarmed because he could not account for the disappearance. A little reflection, however, suggested that one of those tidal waves so common on the coast might have arisen well up into the cavern, washed away the body from its place on the shingle, and carried it away in the direction of the Cauldron. “In which case,” he reflected, “them coastguard chaps would find it some day among the rocks or on the shore, and think it had been drowned in the way of natur’.” Satisfied that everything else was undisturbed, he retired as hastily as possible, sealed up the entrance to the cavern, and ran hastily home. The morning of the marriage came--a fine sunny morning. An open dog-cart belonging to Monk, and driven by one of his servants, stood at William Jones’s door, and close to it a light country cart, borrowed by William Jones himself from a neighbouring farmer. The population, consisting of an aged coastguardsman, two coastguardsmen’s wives, and half-a-dozen dejected children, crowded in front of the cottage. The bridegroom, attired in decent black, with a flower in his button-hole, stood waiting impatiently in the garden. Despite the festive occasion, he had a gloomy and hangdog appearance. Presently there emerged from the door William Jones, attired in a drowned seaman’s suit several sizes too large for him, and wearing a chimney-pot hat and a white rosette. Leaning on his arm was Matt, dressed in a dress of blue silk, neatly made for her by one of the coastguard women, out of damaged materials supplied by Jones, a light straw hat with blue ribbons to match, and a light lace shawl. Behind this pair hobbled William Jones’s father, whose costume was nautical like his son’s, but more damaged, and who also sported a chimney-pot hat and a white rosette.