"Tis a right down pity as ye hadn't hed a touch of the fever yerselves, ye howlin' young shrimpgrigs, to quieten ye a bit," screamed Nance.

The house Den was taken to belonged to his mother's people. It had been built a couple of hundred years before by some of the foreign traders that had settled in Marshton. Quite a mansion it was, in the Dutch style. The large courtyard was paved with flagstones; at one corner of it a spring of pure water supplied a big stone cistern, and the stream flowed from there to the tideway. The spacious kitchen was also paved. The owners of the house at one period of its history had been lobster merchants. At that time the market supply and demand for that shell-fish was very limited compared with what it is now. The fish comes in from many quarters at the present day. Norway supplied the market then, and these people imported them. Here the great boiling-coppers stood, under the gear for lowering the large baskets of fish into them. Directly the lobsters were brought to the right condition they were sluiced with cold water, and then laid out all over the paved courtyard to get properly cold.

From a door in the yard you passed to the stables

and cowhouses, and beyond these was a large garden well stocked with all kinds of fruit-trees and vegetables. From this garden a path led to one of the largest orchards in North Kent. This, of all places about Marshton, was the spot where the invalid lad might regain his wonted health and vigour.

On the garden side of the house, parted from it only by a low wall, was the pond belonging to the old mill close at hand. Here moor-hens croaked and clicked, and dabchicks dived all the day long; the scene being varied by the flight of wild-duck or the spring of snipe.

As to the house itself, it was spacious and airy. The rooms were lofty, and panelled from skirting to ceiling, like the rest of those substantial old dwellings in the marshlands. Where the oak was not left in its natural state, the panelling had been painted. It was built to stand the wear and tear of many generations. There were innumerable large cupboards with circular tops and folding-doors let into the massive walls. Even the roomy attic floor was supplied with them. Some of the attic rooms Den knew as a boy were as large and far more convenient than many of the drawing-rooms of the present day.

From one of these, in that old Dutch house, a stepladder, permanently fixed, led out on the leads to a flat place about six feet square. Right in front of this rose a massive stack of chimneys. No one outside, down below, would have suspected the existence of that square "coigne of vantage."

Now on the flat side the edges of the chimneystack had been splayed off, or bevelled, leaving a space of about a foot as a point for observation between the chimney-stack and the roof that rose on either side of it. The men who built that mansion knew well what they were about. From the flat square of leads those two bevelled-out spaces gave the looker-out a complete survey seawards and landwards. Securely screened from view, as it was the highest house in the district, gazing seawards, he overlooked, first, the long street leading down to the flushing sluice. Beyond the street stood the quays, the warehouses, and farther on the shipping. Past these his eye lighted on the sea-wall, the creek, and the marshes, with the Isle of Sheppy and the open sea in the distance. Any boat coming up the creek from open water was visible to him, and a signal given could be distinctly understood if he used a

glass; there was a rest fixed on each side of the chimney-stack for that purpose.

The view landward commanded all the roads that led into Marshton, or out of it. Nothing could be more perfect as a point of observation.

This was a delightful retreat for our invalid. Whenever the weather was congenial his friends carried him up there, and, supported by pillows, he sat for hours in his large chair, where he dozed and dreamed away the time, unless Scoot or Winder was beside him. At that height the noises of the lower world were softened, and the air was cooler and purer. His two friends were the only lads ever allowed to go up to the top of the house with him. Their respective fathers knew all the secrets of that dwelling, and the lads dared not have told anything pertaining to their parents' business transactions. They dared not have faced the penalties for so doing. Wonderful stories, however, did Scoot and Winder pour into Den's ears of what they had heard whispered by their fathers and grandfathers of scenes that had taken place, in which the space on the leads had figured significantly; of dark and stormy nights, they told, when a flash of fire had been seen to rise