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 one spadeful too much in the right place and you'll have a torrent that will sweep away all you have. I have told you that I don't like the locality of your house down in the hollow. If the bog ever moves again, God help you! You seem also to have been tampering with the stream that runs into the Cliff Fields. It is all very well for you to try to injure poor Joyce more than you have done—and that's quite enough, God knows!—but here you are actually imperilling your own safety. That stream is the safety valve of the bog, and if you continue to dam up that cleft in the rock you will have a terrible disaster. Mind now! I warn you seriously against what you are doing. And besides, you do not even know for certain that the treasure is here. Why, it may be anywhere on the mountain, from the brook below the boreen to the Cliff Fields; is the off chance worth the risk you run?" Murdock started when he mentioned the Cliff Fields, and then said suddenly:—

"If ye're afraid ye can go. I'm not."

"Man alive!" said Dick, "why not be afraid if you see cause for fear? I don't suppose I'm a coward any more than you are, but I can see a danger, and a very distinct one, from what you are doing. Your house is directly in the track in which the bog has shifted at any time this hundred years; and if there should be another movement, I would not like to be in the house when the time comes."

"All right! " he returned doggedly, "I'll take me