TWENTY POUNDS REWARD.

It was the visit to Dan Webster which brought it all about; but for the fact that the handle of Charlie's bicycle got badly bent, so that only the village blacksmith could put it right, the most exciting incident which ever befell the boys would probably never have taken place.

It happened thus.

'Dan,' said Charlie, as he and his brother Sydney were waiting while the blacksmith finished a job he was at work on when they arrived, 'how would you like to earn twenty pounds reward?'

'I should like it amazingly well, sir,' was the reply; 'a third of that sum even would be a G.o.dsend to me.'

'How would you spend it?' asked Sydney, with an amused smile.

A serious look came into old Dan's face. 'I'd send my daughter away to the seaside for a change,' he said. 'The doctor tells me it would do her more good than all his medicines. But what's all this,' he asked, 'about twenty pounds reward? I suppose it's some joke of yours, young gentlemen?'

'It's no joke,' said Charlie; 'at least, Lady Winterton does not think so. She is on a visit to our house, you know; and this morning she discovered that she had lost a valuable necklace. Father was so angry that such a thing should have happened that he at once offered twenty pounds reward for the recovery of the necklace.'

Dan thought seriously awhile. Then he said, 'I wonder if the young chap who roused me up this morning at six o'clock, because his horse had cast a shoe, had anything to do with it?'

Both boys were instantly on the alert. 'What was he like?' they asked, in a breath.

Dan described the stranger as minutely as he could. 'He had a small bag slung round him,' he finished, 'and seemed in a great hurry to be off.'

'That's the thief, you may depend upon it,' said Charlie. 'If we can only track him, Dan, you shall share the profits.'

Dan laughed. 'He didn't look much like a thief, now I come to think of it,' said he. 'He had too honest a face for that.'

'Oh, you never know,' was Sydney's comment. 'I dare say he's a thorough bad 'un, if the truth is known. Which way did he go, Dan, when he left you?'

The blacksmith then told all he knew, and the boys, as soon as Charlie's bicycle was ready, started off, as they fondly hoped, on the track of the thief. After a good long ride, they suddenly came upon the object of their search. He was leisurely taking photographs on the outskirts of a wood. No horse was visible, so he had evidently been home to breakfast, and had started forth again.

As the lads drew near he eyed them with interest, his idea being to photograph them.

Charlie, plucking up all the courage he possessed, went straight to the point. 'I wonder if you would mind,' said he, growing very red, 'if we looked into that case of yours?'

'And what for, young stranger, may I ask?' was the reply, given with a slightly American accent.

'Because--because,' stammered Charlie, 'we think you have something there belonging to Lady Winterton.'

'Upon my word,' laughed the young fellow, 'you are a "cute" chap. As a matter of fact, I have, but how did you know it?'

'We guessed it,' said Sydney, thinking it was time he put a spoke in the wheel; 'and now, if you will give it up to us, without making any fuss about it, we won't give you in charge.'

'Very kind of you, I am sure,' replied the thief. 'How am I to reward you for your goodness?'

'Oh, Father is going to give us the reward!' cried Charlie, very pleased with himself. 'It's twenty pounds, you know.'

'Is it, indeed?' said the young man, looking rather mystified. 'Tell me all about it, and what you are going to do with the money?'

There was something so winning about this innocent-looking criminal that the boys grew quite confidential, telling him the history of the whole morning.

'Dan said you had too honest a face for a thief,' said Sydney, at the close of the recital. 'I wonder what made you do it?'

The stranger was nearly doubled up with laughter, which he turned away to hide. 'Well, you see,' he replied, as gravely as he could, 'Lady Winterton left it about so temptingly that I really couldn't help it.

It's my first offence, though.'

'Yes, so I should say,' Charlie's voice was eager as he spoke, 'and we should like you to get off, awfully. You are much too nice to go to prison.'

'Thanks, old chap, you're very kind,' said the thief; 'if you really mean to let me off scot-free I will be making a move. Take this case'--here drawing forth from his satchel a small package--'to Lady Winterton, with my regrets and apologies.'

'We have got the necklace!' So cried Charlie, as with flushed, triumphant faces the boys entered the dining-room, where the whole family party was a.s.sembled together.

'My dear boy, that's impossible,' replied Lady Winterton, 'for I found it myself, only ten minutes ago, behind a chest of drawers.'

'Then what is this?' cried poor Charlie, looking very surprised. He then told his story, which was certainly a very strange one. However, the mystery was soon cleared up. The case contained nothing but photographs, one of which was a portrait of Lady Winterton taken with her daughter, Alice. Clearly this was the theft to which the stranger (a wealthy, if somewhat eccentric, young American) alluded. He was Alice Winterton's accepted lover, and, half in earnest, half in jest, had taken the photograph for his own use.

The reward was not paid, after all. But when Mr. Hereford and Lady Winterton heard, from Charlie's story, of the blacksmith's trouble, they put their heads together, with the result that Dan Webster's daughter spent a happy time in a seaside home, and came back very grateful, and quite restored to health. The amateur detectives had done some good, after all.

WHY THE SEA SOBS.

The Sea no father has, Nor any mother: A trouble quite enough One's mind to bother.

That's why, my dear, Where'er it be, We sometimes hear A sobbing Sea.

If we no fathers had, Or loving mothers, No little sisters fair, No baby-brothers, We'd shed a tear, (Poor You, poor Me,) And sigh, 'Oh, dear,'

Just like the Sea.

WONDERFUL CAVERNS.

XI.--THE GROTTOES OF ADELSBERG

About twenty miles north-east of Trieste, which stands at the north of the Adriatic Sea, is the little town of Adelsberg. It is a market town, and would have no more claim to notice than thousands of similar places in Europe, had it not chanced to have been built within a mile of one of the natural wonders of the world.

Thousands of years ago, when Europe was covered with dense forests, and savage man was struggling for existence with savage man and yet more savage beast, living in rude huts and ignorant of any kind of civilisation, Nature was hard at work deep below the slopes of those Adelsberg mountains. Age after age, with her simple tools of water, lime, and carbonic acid, she dug, scooped, carved, and built, fashioning by slow degrees vaulted chambers, halls with lofty domes, arches, and galleries, all gleaming like frosted silver set with diamonds, far more wonderful than Aladdin's palace, or the marble halls of the _Arabian Nights_. And all the while, even when Christianity and civilisation spread over the country, no one thought of the beautiful world down below those gra.s.sy slopes; though now and again some one might wonder why a deep basin in the hills, where according to tradition a lake once existed, should have been turned into dry pasture, with only the little river, Poyk or Pinka, running through it; or some more inquiring mind might have been puzzled to know why that little river should suddenly bury itself in the ground and vanish utterly from sight.

At last some enterprising being, a boy most likely, climbed into the fissure down which the waters went, most probably in the summer-time when the stream was low, and there discovered a cavern nearly three hundred feet long, now known as the Old Grotto. For ninety years this was one of the sights of the country; and then a large piece of stalact.i.te was broken from the end, and the entrance to a far more superb cavern, known as the New Grotto, lay bare.

This New Grotto is ten times larger than the old one. It is furnished with stalact.i.tes and stalagmites of huge size and of every imaginable shape, forming arches, pillars, cornices, and fringes of exquisite beauty. The roof and walls are covered with lacework and pendants of crystals, to which great fissures, leading into narrow galleries, form backgrounds of dense shadow. The ornamental work was effected from outside by damp lime and carbonic acid, but the actual excavator was simply the river Poyk, which in time drained the lake and carried its waters through soft spots in the rock below. Every little drop that poured in did something of the digging process, and when the snows on the mountains melted, and great floods came to help, the river was able to tear away the rocks above, beside, and beneath its channel.

Sometimes, for a long time together, it found itself imprisoned and could get no further, and then it would whirl round and round, boiling with anger and beating against its rocky walls, until it had hewn out quite a lofty chamber. Then sooner or later it would reach some softer formation which would yield, and the great volume of water would rush through, tearing down everything in its way, until it last it found itself once again in the sunshine.