Major Wardlaw certainly knew better than anyone else of what Dover Castle Hill was capable. The military authorities were very chary of rehearsing its possible performances, because, in the vulgar parlance of an earlier period, it would give the show away. It was a "show" that must be closely reserved and kept dark in times of international peace and quietness. Meanwhile, the hillside showed but few signs of life; the winds of heaven blew over it, the rains descended, or the sun shone. Birds hopped about, and people came and went. Often there was hardly a sound to break the silence of the hill. A visitor who had climbed the heights could gaze over the town of Dover and the hills and valleys behind it, or look right across the Channel to the coast of France, quite undisturbed by human voice or sound of busy life. But Major Wardlaw could have told that visitor that on the instant, at a signal, this placid scene could be converted into one of awful violence and furious sound; that in a flash the hill would vomit forth, as if from many avenues of hell, wholesale, fiery death and indiscriminate destruction. On every side would rise the roar of monster ordnance, the ceaseless rattle of machine guns, the deafening crack of musketry. Woe betide the foe that dared to rouse the sleeping monster of the hill! Such were Wardlaw's Works, as they were called throughout the British army. When the Major retired from active service, he still lingered in the neighbourhood of his _magnum opus_. In a charming bungalow, perched on the hillside of Folkestone Warren, he and Miss Flossie spent unruffled days amid eminently healthy surroundings. The Warren, a bay of much natural beauty, had been rescued from neglect. A station on the line from Folkestone proper to Dover afforded easy access to the Bay; trees had been planted and roads cut in the hillside. Everywhere on summer nights the lights gleamed from villas and bungalows, and down below on the new jetty, and at the mastheads of scores of pleasure craft. The place suited Major Wardlaw admirably, and even little Miss Wardlaw, who was by way of being exacting, seemed quite satisfied with her surroundings. Her father kept a small cutter in the bay, and frequently took the young lady for health-giving sails upon the dancing sea. Usually their port of call was Dover. The Major was always going to Dover. He couldn't keep away from it. When the cutter was laid up for the winter, he went by train, or sometimes walked across the wind-swept downs. Dover town itself had no particular attractions for him. The magnet lay on Castle Hill. In short, Wardlaw could not keep away from Wardlaw's Works. Even when he was not visiting the Works, he was always thinking about them. When military friends of his came over from the Castle or from Shorncliffe, they seemed to talk of nothing else but Fort Warden--all that it was, and all that it would be if the critical hour of conflict or invasion ever came.