The last case was secured in its sling and ascended slowly into the darkness. The work of the night was finished. In a few minutes Beth would be following the case, seated in the loop, clinging to the rope. Then Jimmy would follow her, and after that---- He hoped that Mrs. Eames had some beer in the vicarage. He believed she had. He thought she must have. No woman would be so foolish as to forget to have beer ready at the end of such a night. Beer! Not since the day when Sir Evelyn first drove down the hill into Hailey Compton had any man wanted beer so much as Jimmy wanted it then. But Beth, it seemed, was not thinking of beer, or even of tea, which for some women takes the place of beer. "Jimmy," she said softly, "do you remember the last time we were here?" "Of course I do. A smuggler's ghost threw stones at us." "And I said----" Beth paused for a while. Then the darkness, a wonderful solvent of maiden modesty, helped her to go on again. "I think I said---- I mean, after you said---- You remember what you said----" "I said what I've been saying for the last two years," said Jimmy. "And what you said was 'No.'" "But I told you why," said Beth. "You've always been telling me why." "Jimmy," she burst out, "are you going to make me propose to you? Don't you see, you silly old dear, that that isn't a why any longer? You've been perfectly splendid to-night. You've thought of things and done things--and---- Oh, Jimmy, only for you where would everybody be to-morrow when the horrid Customs officers come to search the cave?" Then, though very thirsty, Jimmy forgot about the beer. Ben Jonson, a dramatist and a poet who knew something about human nature and could express himself very prettily, says that kisses are to be preferred sometimes "even to Jove's nectar." Jimmy, tired, sore and grimy, in a stuffy cave, at the horrible hour of 4 a.m., found them more to be desired than much beer. Chapter XIX