Nicky-Nan had drunk, after long abstinence and upon a fasting stomach, one brandy-and-soda. He was sober as a judge; he walked straight and--bating his weak leg--firmly, yet he trod on air: he looked neither to the right nor to the left, yet he saw nothing of the familiar street through which he steered. For a vision danced ahead of him. Gold in his pockets, golden sunshine now in his veins--thanks to the brandy-and-soda,--a golden vision weaving itself and flickering in the golden August weather, and in his ears a sentence running, chiming, striking upon the word "gold"-- "Ding-a-ding-a-dong! 'Taty-patch a _gold_ mine--'taty-patch a _gold_ mine!" The prosaic Mr Latter had set the chime ringing, as a dull sacristan might unloose the music of a belfry; but like a chime of faery it rippled and trilled, closing ever upon the deep note "gold," and echoed back as from a veritable gong of that metal. "'Taty-patch a gold mine"--How came it that, until Latter put the idea into his head, he had never thought of this, his one firm holding on earth, as a hiding-place for his treasure? His lodging in the old house, hard as he would fight for it, acknowledged another man's will. But the patch of ground by the cliff was his own. He had claimed its virginity, chosen and tamed it, marked it off, fenced it about, broken the soil, trenched it, wrought it, taught the barren to bear. It lay remote, approachable only by a narrow cliff-track, overlooked by no human dwelling, doubly concealed--by a small twist of the coast-line and a dip of the ground--from the telescopes of the coastguard in their watch-house. Folks had hinted from time to time (but always chaffing him) that the land must belong to _some one_--to the Crown, maybe, or, more likely, to the Duchy. But he had tilled it for years undisturbed and unchallenged. The parcel had come to be known as "Nicky-Nan's Chapel," because on fine Sundays, when godlier folks were in church, he spent so much of his time there, smoking and watching the Channel and thinking his thoughts. It was inconceivable that any one should dispute his title now, after the hundreds and hundreds of maundfuls of seaweed under which, first and last--in his later years--he had staggered up the path from the Cove, to incorporate them in the soil.