toil, lay the churning sea. It was a gruesome sight to mark the solid earth--just where a peaceful cornfield met the moorland--thus invaded by its insidious foe, whose horrid pæan seemed to have something of malicious greed as well as exultation in it, as though it lusted to eat the heart of the round world itself away, after the same manner. “The Devil's Cauldron!” exclaimed Ralph excitedly, and then looked round him with a half-shudder, as though he had repeated the statement out of deference to a Great Local Authority, rather than initiated it of his own free-will. Yes, such was the name by which the place was known; he felt certain of that fact; but unless in sober seriousness H. S. M. himself had whispered the information, how did he ever come to be aware of it? He had certainly never been there before, in all his life; it was impossible, having once seen it, to have forgotten so abnormal as well as tremendous a scene. True, there are pits and holes in many cliffs a few yards from their edge which reach like shafts in a tunnel down to the sea; but the distance of this place from the shore might be measured by furlongs, and the pit was so large that it almost resembled a land-locked bay. A Cauldron it might well be called, where the black waters were seething and boiling even now, while in storm-time there would be such wild work as no mere witches could raise, but only the Fiend himself, their master. Did the mad waves, finding themselves thus imprisoned, ever leap up? Yes: now he remembered all. Thirty years ago, last autumn, he had seen those islands once before from shipboard, and had had them in view for a whole day. The wind, which was dead against the vessel, had kept her off and on that dangerous coast, and eventually risen to storm, and sunk her with all on board save him alone. The last time he had seen that little light-house, it had flashed in vain its fiery warning through sheets of blinding foam. The captain had told him, hours before, what sort of shore awaited them, if ever the _North Star_ should be driven upon those pitiless cliffs, on which Derrick himself was now standing; and, in particular, he had mentioned the Devil's Cauldron, which was spouting foam yonder, he said, like Leviathan, a quarter of a mile inland over the standing corn. Ralph lay down at full length upon the thymy moor, and peered over the brink of the abyss with earnest gaze, as though he could fathom its dark depths, and mark what lay beneath them. Then rising, with a sigh, he wandered on, no longer with springy tread, until presently the cliff-top became dotted with white verandaed houses, looking down upon a little bay, that ran up into the land between steep banks, well clothed with trees and shrubs; whereby he knew that he had come to his journey's end, and that this must needs be Coveton. CHAPTER IV. COVETON