Never, since the bygone days at Katterley, had Robert Hunter deserved the character; but in this brief holiday he could but give himself up to his perfect happiness. He made excursions to Jutpoint; he explored the cliffs; he went in at will to Captain Copp's and the other houses on the heath; he put out to sea with the fishermen in the boats; he talked to the wives in their huts: everybody soon knew Robert Hunter, and especially his coat, which had become the marvel of Coastdown; a few admiring it--a vast many abusing it. Miss Thornycroft was his frequent companion, and they went out unrestrained. It never appeared to have crossed the mind of Mr. Thornycroft or his sons as being within the bounds of possibility that this struggling young engineer, who was not known to public repute as an engineer at all, could presume to be thinking of Mary Anne, still less that she could think of him; otherwise they had been more cautious. Anna Chester was out with them sometimes, Cyril on occasion; but they rambled about for the most part alone in the cold and frost, their spirits light as the rarefied air. The plateau and its superstition had no terror for Mr. Hunter, rather amusement: but that he saw--and saw with surprise--it was a subject of gravity at the Red Court, he might have made fun of it. Mary Anne confessed to him that she did not understand the matter; her brothers were reticent even to discourtesy. That some mystery was at the bottom of it Mr. Hunter could not fail to detect, and was content to bury all allusion to the superstition. He stood with Miss Thornycroft on the edge of the plateau one bright morning--the brightest they had had. It was the first time he had been so far, for Mary Anne had never gone beyond the railings. Not the slightest fear had she; for the matter of that, nobody else had in daylight; but she knew that her father did not like to see her there. In small things, when they did not cross her own will, the young lady could be obedient. "I can see how dangerous it would be here on a dark night," observed Robert Hunter in answer to something she had been saying, as he drew a little back from the edge, over which he had been cautiously leaning to take his observations. "Mary Anne! I never in all my life saw a place so convenient for smuggling as that Half-moon below. I daresay it has seen plenty of it." Before she could make any rejoinder Mr. Kyne came strolling up to them in a brown study, and they shook hands. Robert Hunter had dined with him at the Red Court. "I was telling Miss Thornycroft that the place below looks as if it had been made for the convenience of smuggling," began Robert Hunter. "Have you much trouble here?" "No; but I am in hopes of it," was the reply. And it so completely astonished Mr. Hunter, who had spoken in a careless manner, without real meaning, as we all do sometimes, that he turned sharply round and looked at the supervisor. "I thought the days of smuggling were over."