CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.
SUSPICIONS OF DANGER.
Like all bits of excitement the coming of the cutter was followed by a time of calm.

Bigley seemed to have settled down to a regular life at the cottage, spending part of his days looking out to sea, and the other part up at the mine, where my father seemed now to give him always a very warm welcome.
We saw the revenue cutter off the Gap now and then, and we had reason to believe that the crew had landed and thoroughly examined the caves again, but we saw nothing of them; it was only from knowing that one evening the little vessel lay off the shore about a mile to the west of the Gap, and Bigley went along the shore at next low tide, and said afterwards that he thought he could make out footprints, but the tide had washed over everything so much that he was not sure.
He heard no news of his father as week after week rolled by, till all at once came a letter from Dunquerque, inclosing some money, and telling him that he had got away safely, and was quite well.
"He said," Bigley told me in confidence, for he did not show me the letter; "he said that if your father behaved badly to me I was to go away at once with Mother Bonnet and take lodgings at Ripplemouth, just as he told me; but I don't think I shall have to do that." I laughed as he told me this, and then asked him if he was going to write back to his father.
"No," said Bigley; "he says I am not to write, because it might give people a clue to where he is.

I don't care, now I know that he is quite well." Then the time glided on, with everybody at the mine leading the busiest of busy lives.

I was there every day, and the men won the lead, others smelted it and cast it into pigs, then the pigs were remelted and the silver extracted and ingots cast, which were stored up, after being stamped and numbered, down in the strong cellar beneath the counting-house floor.
I did a great deal: sometimes I was down in the mine, whose passages began to grow longer; sometimes I was entering the number of pigs of lead that were taken over to Ripplemouth, and shipped at the little quay for Bristol; sometimes I was watching the careful process by which the silver was obtained from the lead, and learning a good deal about the art, while Bigley seemed to be growing more and more one of us, and worked with the greatest of earnestness over the various tasks I had to undertake.
"No news of old Jonas, father ?" I said one day as we were walking along the cliff path to the mine, a lugger in the offing having brought him to my mind.
"No, Sep," said my father; "but I'm afraid that we shall have a visit from him some day, and a very unpleasant one." "Why ?" I asked.
"Because he will never forgive me about that cave business.

I saw the look he gave me, my boy.