The Mystery of Crocksands by Fred M. White

The first stage in the passage to the goal was passed and Ellen was back at Crocksands once more. Just at first the mere joy of living the old scenes over again sufficed, and Ellen revelled in the ancient house that had stood in the golden valley long before the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth--for there was no more ancient family in Devon than the Blands and they had made history there. They had had their ups and downs, too, sometimes on top of the wave and again on the verge of ruin. A hundred years ago they had been noted as smugglers of the most daring type with an evil repute almost equal to that of the Doones; then the head of the house had allied himself to money made in trade, and since then the Blands and Bland-Mertons had come back into the fold of probity and respectability. Still the legends remained, and Ellen had absorbed them in her childhood's days with all the eagerness of a boy reading his first copy of 'Robinson Crusoe.' She knew the history of the Hundred Steps that led up from the beach to the ledge on the cliffs where the smuggled treasures were hidden, and the perilous path above that, which finished five hundred feet higher up in the old tower, which had once been a beacon light for ships passing up and down the Bristol Channel. The path was still more or less intact, and plain enough for anybody who once knew its secret, and more than once in days gone by Ellen had climbed it herself. It was a dangerous and hazardous undertaking requiring a cool head and a firm nerve, for one slip would have meant destruction on the rocks below. And once since she had been here this time Ellen had ventured to make that climb again. She saw by the moss and undergrowth straggling over the half obliterated path that it had not been used probably since she had essayed the climb herself, and she had been quite thankful when she came to the top.

She had counted up all the risks in her mind before she answered the advertisement that Wrath had more or less cunningly placed in her way, and it seemed to her that they were negligible. To begin with, she had found out that not one of the old servants, man, woman, or boy, remained at Crocksands, for Wrath had quarrelled with them all in the early days of his reign, and had dismissed them as a set of lazy incompetents, replacing them by a staff which he had engaged through an agency in London. There was no chance, therefore, that she would be recognised by any one on the premises. Moreover, it had been nearly five years since she had seen Crocksands last, and in that time she had altered almost out of recognition. She judged, too, that few of the old country families would call on the new owner of Crocksands, knowing his past reputation as they did, and in this Ellen was right.