Transcriber’s Note

The cover image was created from elements of the title page by Thiers Halliwell and is placed in the public domain.

See the [end of this document] for details of corrections and other changes.

JOAN, THE CURATE

JOAN, THE CURATE

BY

FLORENCE WARDEN

AUTHOR OF

“THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “THE INN BY THE SHORE,” ETC.

Toronto

GEORGE J. McLEOD

Publisher

Copyright, 1899

BY

F. M. BUCKLES & COMPANY

Joan, the Curate

CONTENTS.

JOAN, THE CURATE.

CHAPTER I.

THE NEW BROOM.

It was soon after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, had put an inglorious end to an inglorious war, that the Government of the day began to give serious attention to an evil which had been suffered to grow while public attention was absorbed by battles abroad and the doings of the press-gang at home.

This was the practise of plundering wrecked vessels, which had been carried on in combination with the smuggler’s daring and dangerous trade, particularly on the wild marsh coast south of Kent, and the equally lonely Sussex cliffs beyond.

So audacious had the doings of these “free-traders” become, that a brigade of cavalry was sent down into the old town of Rye, for the purpose of overawing them, while, at the same time, a smart revenue cutter, under the command of a young lieutenant of noted courage and efficiency, was despatched to cruise about the coast, to act in concert with the soldiers.

It was on a windy night in early autumn, when the sea was roaring sullenly as it dashed against the sandstone cliffs, and echoed in the caves and hollows worn by the waves, that a sharp knocking at the door of Hurst Parsonage, a mile or two from the sea-coast, made Parson Langney look up from the writing of his Sunday sermon, and glance inquiringly at his daughter.

“Now, who will that be, Joan?” said he as he tilted his wig on to one side of his head, and pursed up his jolly, round, red face with an air of some anxiety.

“Nay, father, you have as many visitors that come for the ills of the body as for the health of the soul!” cried Joan. “I can but hope you han’t another long trudge across the marsh before you, like your journey of a week back.”

At that moment there came another thundering knock at the little front door, and a handful of stones and earth was flung against the window, followed the next moment by a rattling of the panes.

Father and daughter, genial, portly parson, and creamy-skinned, black-eyed maiden, sprang to their feet, and looked once at each other.

There were wild folk in these parts, and lonesome errands to be run sometimes by Parson Langney, who had begun life as a surgeon, and who had been lucky enough to be pitch-forked into a living which exactly suited his adventurous habits, his love of fox-hunting, and his liking for good wine and well-hung game.

Before the importunate summons could be repeated, Parson Langney had come out of the little dining-parlor, and drawn the bolt of the front door.

For Nance, the solitary housemaid of the modest establishment, was getting into years, and inclined to regard a late visitor as a person to be thwarted by being kept as long as possible waiting at the door.

“Hast no better manners than to do thy best to drive the glass from out the panes?” asked he, as soon as he found himself face to face with the intruder, who proved to be a sailor, in open jacket, loose shirt and slops, and flat, three-cornered hat.

“Oons, sir, ’tis a matter of life and death!” said the man, as he saluted the parson with becoming respect, and then pointed quickly back in the direction of the sea, which could be seen faintly glistening in the murky light of a clouded moon. “I’m from the revenue cutter in the offing yonder, where one of my mates lies with a bullet in’s back, sent there by one of those rascally smugglers in a fray we’ve had with them but now. I’ve been in the village for help, but they say there’s no doctor here but yourself. So I beg your honor’ll come with me, and do what you can for him. And could you tell me of a woman that would watch by him? For we’ve all got our hands full, and he’ll be wandering from his wits ere morning.”

The parson, without a moment’s delay, had begun, by the help of his daughter, to get into a rough brown riding-coat that hung from a nail on the whitewashed wall.

“Why, there you have me out,” said he, as he buttoned himself up to the chin, and put a round, broad-brimmed black hat, with a bow and a twisted band of black cloth, tightly on to his somewhat rusty, grizzled bob-wig. “For there’s none in these parts to nurse the sick as well as my daughter Joan.”

“And sure I’m ready to go, father!” cried the girl, who, with the nimbleness of a fawn, had darted back into the parlor and brought out her father’s case of surgical instruments, as well as a diminutive portable chest, containing such drugs and medicines as were in use at the time.

“I’ll have on my hood in a tick of the clock.”

And by the time these words were uttered she had flown up the steep, narrow staircase and disappeared round the bend at the top. The sailor, who had stepped inside the porch, out of the wind and a drizzling rain which had now begun to fall, was full of admiration and astonishment.

“Oons, sir, but ’twill be rough work for the young mistress!” said he. “The water’s washing over the boat yonder, and we shan’t be able to push off without getting wet up to the waist.”

“The lass is used to rough weather,” said Parson Langney, proudly. “She’ll tell you herself that where her father can go she goes.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Joan, wrapped in a rough peasant’s cloak, and wearing a loose hood, came tripping down the stairs.

Not a moment was lost. With a word to Nance, who had put in a tardy appearance, the parson, with his daughter on one side and the sailor on the other, started for the shore.

The wind was at its worst on the top of the hill where the Parsonage stood. A very few minutes’ sharp walking brought them all to a lower level, and within the shelter of a wild straggling growth of bushes and small trees, which extended in patches from the village almost to the edge of the crumbling cliffs.

Here they struck into a rough track made by the feet of the fishermen and less inoffensive characters, and before they had gone far they saw the hulk of the cutter, tossing like a little drifting spar amid the foam of the waves, and showing dark against the leaden, faint moonlight on the sea beyond. The parson asked a few questions, and elicited the usual story—a contraband cargo was being run in a little creek just where the cliffs broke off and the marsh began, when the lookout man on the cutter spied the smugglers, and a boat was sent out to give chase. There had been a smart brush, almost half in and half out of the water, between the smugglers on the one side and the cutter’s men on the other. But, on the whole, as the narrator was forced ruefully to admit, the smugglers had got the best of it, as they all got away, leaving not so much as a keg behind them, while one of the cutter’s men had had to be carried off seriously wounded.

“Zoons, and it was main odd they did get off so well!” went on the sailor, as if in some perplexity; “for the lieutenant himself landed a bullet in the leg of one of the rascals, that should have brought him down, if he hadn’t had the devil himself—saving your presence, mistress—to help him.”

In the momentary pause which followed the man’s words, a sound suddenly came to the ears of them all, above the whining of the wind in the trees and bushes. It made Joan stop short for the space of a second, and turn her eyes hastily and furtively in the direction of a little dell on their left, where the bracken grew high about the trunks of a knot of beeches.

“Eh!” cried the sailor, stopping short, also to listen. “What was that? ’Twas like the groan of a man.”

As he turned his head to listen, the parson and his daughter quickly exchanged a glance expressive both of alarm and of warning. Then the former seized the sailor by the arm, pushing onward towards the shore at a better pace than ever.

“Sure,” said he, in a deep, strong, resonant voice that would have drowned any fainter sound in the ears of his listener; “’tis but the screech of a hawk. This woody ground’s alive with the creatures.”

The man cast at him a rather suspicious look, but said nothing, and allowed himself to be led forward. So they hurried on, increasing their pace when the ground began to dip again, until they followed the course of a narrow and dark ravine, which cut its way through the cliffs to the seashore. Here they had to pick their way over the stones and bits of broken cliff, through which a brook, swollen by recent rains, gurgled noisily on its way to the sea. The tide was going down, and the thunder of the waves, as they beat upon the cliff’s base and echoed in its hollows, grew fainter as they went. It was an easier matter than they had expected to get into the boat which was waiting to take them to the cutter; and though the tiny craft rose like a nutshell on the crest of the waves, and sank into deep dells of dark water, they reached the cutter safely, and scrambled, not without difficulty, up the side of the little vessel, which was anchored not far from the land.

A man’s voice, full, clear, musical, a voice used to command, hailed them from the deck—

“Ho, there! Hast brought a doctor?”

“Ay, capt’n, and a parson to boot!” answered the sailor who had been despatched on this errand. “And a nurse that it would cure a sick man to look at.”

It was at that moment that Joan, who was as agile as a kitten, stepped on deck, and into the light of the lantern which the lieutenant himself was holding. The young man saluted her, with surprise in his eyes, and a thrill of some warmer feeling in his gallant heart. Joan curtsied, holding on to the nearest rope the while.

“You are welcome on board, madam.”

“I thank you, sir.”

And the young people exchanged looks.

What he saw was a most fair maiden, tall and straight, graceful with the ease and freedom of nature and good breeding, with sparkling brown eyes, even white teeth, and a merry gleam belying the demureness of her formal words.

What she saw was a young man only a little above the middle height, stalwart and handsome, with quick eyes gray as the winter sea, and a straight, clean-cut mouth, that closed with a look of indomitable courage and determination.

“And yet, madam,” the lieutenant went on, leaving his subordinates to help Parson Langney, who was portly, and less agile than his daughter, up on to the deck, “they should not have brought you. For, in truth, we are in no state to receive a lady on board. There has been ugly work to do with those rascally smugglers.”

“I come not as a fine lady, sir,” retorted Joan, promptly; “but as a nurse for a sick man. There is no state needed by a woman when she comes but to do her duty.”

“Well said, madam; but I thank God your care will not be needed. The poor fellow who was shot by those ruffians has taken a turn for the better, and if the gentleman, whom I take to be your father, can but perform a simple operation for him——”

“My father, sir, is a most skilled surgeon, and can perform any operation,” answered Joan, interrupting him proudly.

Her look was so full of fire, the carriage of her head, in its graceful hood, so superb, as she uttered the ingenuous words, that Lieutenant Tregenna smiled a little as he saluted her and turned to the parson, who, panting and in some disorder, had at length reached the deck.

The young man introduced himself, and they saluted each other, the parson with some difficulty, since the continual motion of the vessel was somewhat trying to his landsman’s legs. Then they went below, and in a few minutes the young man returned alone.

Joan had been accommodated with a seat by the tiller, and protected from wind and water by a tarpaulin, out of which her bonny face peeped white in the moonlight.

“You have no work for me, sir?” she asked, as the lieutenant came up.

“None, madam; and even less for your good father than we feared might be the case. He has found the bullet, and ’twill be an easy matter to extract it, so he says; and after that, ’tis a mere matter of a few days’ quiet to set the poor fellow on his legs again. So the rascals escaped murder this time; not that one crime more or less would sit hard on the conscience of such villains!”

For a moment Joan said nothing. Then she hazarded, in a very dry, demure voice—

“But, sir, by what I heard, your side went as near committing murder as the other. The man who brought us hither spoke of a bullet in the leg of one of the fishermen.”

“Fishermen! Odds my life, madam, but that’s a very pretty way of putting it! I hope you han’t the same kindness for the rascals that seems to be strong among the country-folk here! Nay, I won’t do you the injustice to suppose you could hold their villainies in aught but abhorrence.”

“Whatever is villainous I hope I abhor very properly,” answered Joan with spirit. “And the shooting down of one’s fellow-men I do hold one of the greatest villainies of all.”

“When ’tis done by smugglers and plunderers of wrecks, no doubt you mean,” retorted the lieutenant tartly.

“Plunderers of wrecks we have none in these parts, or at least none that do the vile things that were done in times past,” said she quickly. “And if you and the soldiers that are come to Rye had had but the punishment of murderers and wreckers in your eye, you would have met with more sympathy than is like to be the case if you mean to repress what they call in these parts free-trade.”

“Well, madam, ’tis in truth the repression of ‘free-trade’ that we have in our minds, and that we intend to carry out by the strength of our arms. And I own I’m amazed to hear a gentlewoman of your sense and spirit speak so leniently of a pack of thievish persons that live by robbing his Majesty, and, indeed, the whole nation to which they belong. I can but trust you speak in more ignorance than you imagine, and that the doings of such ruffians as one Jem Bax, and another wretch called Gardener Tom, of Long Jack and Bill Plunder, Robin Cursemother and Ben the Blast have never come to your ears.”

Lieutenant Tregenna uttered each of these names very clearly, and with solemn emphasis, standing so that he could see the expression of the girl’s face as he mentioned them. To his great disgust, he perceived that, though she kept her eyes down as if to conceal her feelings, she was well acquainted with all these men, and appeared somewhat startled to learn that he knew them so well.

“You have heard of these men?” he asked sharply.

“Yes, I’ve—I’ve heard of them.”

“You know them, perhaps?”

A moment’s pause.

“Ye—es, I know them.”

“I won’t affront you by asking whether you have any sympathy with them and their methods. With men that live by defrauding the revenue, and that scruple not to commit the most violent deeds in the exercise of their unlawful calling?”

The lieutenant’s tone was harsh and arrogant as he asked these questions. Miss Joan still sat with her eyelids down, giving him a new view of her beauty, unconsciously proving to him that her face was as handsome in repose, with the black eyelashes sweeping her rounded cheeks, as it was when her features were animated with the excitement of conversation. She was silent at first, and the lieutenant repeated his last question somewhat impatiently. There was another slight pause, however, and then a ponderous footstep was heard creeping up the companion-ladder.

“There’s my father!” cried Joan, as she started up, in evident relief at the opportune interruption.

Parson Langney, holding on valiantly to such support as came in his way, staggered towards them, and ended by hurling himself against the lieutenant with so much force that it was only by a most dexterous movement that the younger and slimmer man escaped being flung into the sea.

“I ask your pardon, captain,” cried the jolly parson, in good-humored apology, as, with the assistance of the young folk, he reached a place of safety. “Remember, you’re on your element, but I’m not on mine! Come and dine with my daughter and me to-morrow, and you shall see that my feet carry me well enough on the dry land.”

“I thank you, sir, and I would most willingly have accepted your kind offer, but I’m engaged to dine with one who is, I believe, a neighbor of yours—Squire Waldron, of Hurst Court.”

“Why, God bless my soul, so am I!” cried the parson, in amazement at his own momentary lapse of memory. “Then, sir, I shall be happy to meet you there; and I warrant you’ll be happy too, for the squire’s port wine, let me tell you, is a tipple not to be despised by his Majesty himself.”

“Ay, sir, and there at any rate I shall feel comfortable in the thought that the wine has paid duty, which, I give you my word, is what I have not felt in any other house in the neighborhood, public or private, since I arrived here.”

But at these words a sudden and singular alteration had occurred in the parson’s features. He seemed to remember the office of the person to whom he was speaking, and to become more reserved.

“Ay, sir, certainly,” was all he said.

The lieutenant went on, with a return to the bitterness he had shown while discussing the subject of smugglers with Miss Joan.

“And as the squire is a justice of the peace, whose duty it is to punish evil-doers, I may at last hope, under his roof, to meet with some sympathy with the objects of justice, such as one expects from all right-thinking people.”

“Why, sir, certainly,” said Parson Langney again, somewhat more dryly than before. And then, turning to his daughter, he added briskly, “Come, Joan, we must be returning. The lad below will do very well now, sir, with quiet, and the physic I have left for him. And I’ll pay him another visit in a day or two.”

As he addressed these last words to the lieutenant, the parson was already preparing to lower himself into the boat which had brought him. He seemed in haste to be gone.

Lieutenant Tregenna then helped the young lady down into the boat, giving her as he did so a somewhat piqued and resentful glance, which, however, she demurely refused to meet with a return look from her own black eyes until she was safely in the little boat beside her father.

Then, as the small craft was tossing amidst the spray from the larger one, she did look up, with the struggling moonlight full upon her face, at the handsome young commander, on whom a touch of youthful arrogance sat not unbecomingly.

And Lieutenant Tregenna, as he saluted and watched the little boat, and in particular its fair occupant, was irritated and incensed beyond measure by what he took for an expression of merry defiance in her bright eyes.

CHAPTER II.

A STARTLING INCIDENT.

Hurst Court, where Lieutenant Tregenna presented himself next day, by Squire Waldron’s most obliging and pressing invitation, was an ugly Georgian house just outside the village of Hurst, standing in an extensive but little-cultivated park, much of which was in a primitive condition of gorse and tangle and unclipped, undersized trees.

The mansion itself was not in the heart of the park, but was built near the road, with nothing but a little stretch of grass and a wooden fence between.

A great baying of hounds and noise of disputing men-servants were the sounds which greeted the lieutenant when he arrived at the house. Even before entering, he had formed, both from this circumstance and from the extent of the stables, some idea of the sort of rollicking, happy-go-lucky, rough country household he was to expect; and he had scarcely set foot inside the wide and lofty hall when the onrush of half a dozen barking dogs, the crowding into the hall of three or four gawky men-servants, and the entrance of the squire himself, in a scarlet coat, with a loud and hearty greeting on his lips, fully confirmed this impression.

“Welcome, welcome to Hurst Court, lieutenant!” cried his host, seizing him by the hand with a grip like a blacksmith’s, and promptly leading him in the direction of the music-room, across a floor where a couple of stag-hounds were lying lazily stretched out, and between walls laden with antlers and the grinning pates of three or four score foxes. “You should have come a couple of hours sooner; for the ladies have a mind to show you their Dutch garden, and to regale you with some music before we dine. I know not, sir, whether such diversions are to your taste, or whether your liking runs more in the direction of fox-hunting and the shooting of game, as mine does? I have no taste, myself, for your finicking London modes; but I’m told that the young bucks nowadays pride themselves more on cutting a fine figure in the ladies’ drawing-rooms than in sitting a horse well and riding straight to hounds.”

“Nay, squire, it will give me vast pleasure to hear the ladies’ music,” said Lieutenant Tregenna, when his host’s volubility allowed him the chance of answering. “’Tis a diversion one can enjoy but seldom so far from town.”

“Nay, we have better diversions here than those,” said the squire disparagingly. “But my wife and daughters will be prodigious pleased that you are not of my way of thinking. For a stranger in these parts is a mighty welcome arrival, I assure you, and like to be made much of.”

Indeed, it was quite perceptible to the lieutenant that there was a flutter of excitement going on in the music-room up to the very moment of his entrance; and the welcome he got from the squire’s wife and two daughters was quite as sincere, though not so tempestuous, as that of the host himself.

For Mrs. Waldron and the two young misses, her daughters, were quite as much in love with the pleasures of the town as the husband and father was with those of the country. And in dress, manner, conversation, and tone they marked the difference between themselves and him as ostentatiously as possible.

Thus, while the squire wore the old-fashioned Ramillies wig, with its bush of powdered hair at the sides, and long pigtail tied at the top and bottom with black ribbon, and the loosely-fitting scarlet coat which he had worn for any number of years, his good wife and two round-faced, simpering daughters were all attired in the latest modes of the town.

They all three wore the loose sacque or negligee, which was then the height of fashion; they tottered about in slim-heeled shoes, under huge hoops which swayed as they walked; while their hair was all dressed in the same way—knotted up tightly under the smallest and closest of caps, making their heads look singularly small and mean, when compared with the enormous width of their distended skirts.

They all seemed the most amiable of living creatures; and Lieutenant Tregenna found at last the sympathy he wanted when he expressed that horror and hatred of smugglers which was at present the ruling passion of his mind. The squire had left him with the ladies, and he had been entertaining them with an account of the adventure of the preceding night.

“And I can assure you, madam,” he said to his hostess, when they had hung attentively on his words, and cried, “Wretch!” “Villains!” “How monstrous shocking!” at appropriate intervals, “that so deep-rooted has this evil become, that even the parson and his young daughter appeared to grieve more for the smuggler whom I wounded than they did for the poor fellow whom the ruffians shot!”

“His daughter! Oh, do you mean Mistress Joan?” said Mrs. Waldron, pursing her mouth a little. “Sure, sir, what would you expect from a country-bred wench like that, who tramps the villages and moors with her father like a man, and is almost as much among these fearsome wretches, the smugglers, as if she were their own kin?”

“Oh, la, sir; you must know they call her ‘the curate,’” cried one of the young ladies, tittering, and looking languishingly at the visitor out of her little pink-rimmed eyes with the whitish eyelashes; “for she’s quite as useful in his parish as he is.”

“And I’m sure ’tis a very rational diversion for a girl of her tastes,” said her sister. “You must know, sir, that she has never seen a play, nor any of the diversions of the town, and that she fills up her time twittering on a dulcimer to her father, and has barely so much as heard of the harpsichord.”

“I don’t wonder you was affronted by her Gothic behavior,” went on Mrs. Waldron; “but sure ’tis very excusable in a girl who has no polish, no refinement, and who takes no more care of her complexion than if she was a dairymaid.”

Tregenna felt considerable surprise at the storm of reprobation which he had brought down on the head of poor Joan. For he could not know that the young men of the neighborhood, and even Bertram, the squire’s son, all showed a most boorish preference for handsome, straight-limbed Joan, with her free bearing and her ready tongue, over the fine ladies of Hurst Court; and that, at the Hastings assemblies, and at such routs as were given in the neighborhood, Joan had more partners than any one else, though her gown was seldom of the latest mode, and her only fan was one which had belonged to her grandmother.

“Nay; I honor and admire her for helping her father,” said the lieutenant, hastily. “I did but grieve that a young lady of so much spirit should take so wrong-headed a view of the matter.”

“Your consideration is wasted upon her, sir, indeed,” said Mrs. Waldron. “But hush! here comes her father with the squire.”

There was no possibility of mistaking the loud, deep, cheery voice of Parson Langney, which could be heard even above the barking of the hounds, which was the first greeting given to every visitor. The next moment the door opened, and Parson Langney, the squire, and his son Bertram, entered, to be joined a few minutes later by a couple of country gentlemen more clownish than their host.

Bertram Waldron was an unhappy cross between the country breeding of his father and the town airs and graces of the ladies. For while he affected the modish cut of the town in his clothes, swore the latest oaths, and swaggered about with a great assumption of the manners of the beau, his rusticity peeped out every moment in his gait, and in his strong provincial accent.

When they all trooped into the dining-parlor, where a huge sirloin was placed smoking on the table, it was not long before the stranger perceived that the sympathy he had met with from the ladies was not shared by the gentlemen.

Not only did they express but faint interest in his collision with the smugglers, and profess the greatest incredulity as to the alleged magnitude of their operations, but by the time the ladies had retired, it began to be hinted to him pretty freely, as the decanters passed round, that the less zeal he showed in the prosecution of his raids against the “free-traders,” the more his discretion would be respected.

“Gad, sir; I don’t say theirs is an honest trade,” said the squire, whose face assumed a purplish and apoplectic tint as the meal wore on; “but I say that ’tis best to let sleeping dogs lie; and that your soldiers will do a monstrous sight more harm than good by driving the trade into wilder parts, where the fellows can be more daring and more dangerous. And what I say to you, who are but a young man, and hot with zeal, is this: that the easier you take things, the easier things will take you. And if you won’t trust the advice of a man of my experience—why, ask the parson there, and take his.”

“Gad’s my life, sir; but I can take no man’s advice who bids me do aught but what seems to me my duty!” cried the young lieutenant with fire. He was incensed at the laxity of morals, which he now perceived to have permeated to every class of society in the neighborhood. “I’m here, under the orders of his Majesty—the stringent orders—to put down smuggling and the wrecking connected with it. And what I’m sent to do, I’ll do, please God, no matter what the difficulties in my way may be, nor what the dangers!”

His words were followed by a dead, an ominous silence.

The day was dying now, and the red fire that glowed and flickered in the wide hearth showed strange lights and shadows on the painted ceiling, the painted and paneled walls, the long spindle-legged sideboard, where more wine was waiting for the jovial band at the table.

The country gentleman, one and all, looked up at the ceiling during the pause.

Before any one spoke, there came to the ears of all a sound which was easily distinguished as the gallop of horses, accompanied by the loud shouts of men, the cracking of whips, the creaking of heavy wheels. Lieutenant Tregenna who was near the window, jumped up, and looked out, as a wagon, piled high with kegs, and surrounded by a band of half a dozen armed men on horseback, dashed past the house and up the hill towards the village.

“Smugglers, as I live!” cried Tregenna, much excited, and turning to attract the attention of the rest.

But not a man of them moved; not one so much as turned his head in the direction of the window.

The blood flew to the young man’s brain. “Gentlemen!” cried he, as he dashed across the room to the door; “you will excuse me. You, squire, are a justice of the peace; and I must do my best to bring some of these rascals before you, when, I doubt not, you will do your duty towards them—and towards the king!”

With that he swung out of the heated room, seized his hat and his heavy riding-coat which lay in the hall, and dashed down the lawn cutting across to the left, just as a party of soldiers came riding fast up the hill in full pursuit of the smugglers.

“A d——d coxcombical puppy!” cried one of the husky squires, as he watched the stalwart figure of the young lieutenant making his way rapidly past the window. “What does he want setting up his joodgment against ours, and presuming for to think he’s a better subject of his Majesty than what we be?”

“Let ’un be! Let ’un be!” said the third squire, grimly. “There’s no need to worrit ourselves about him. If he doesn’t get a bullet in his head before many days be over, why, you may eat me for a Frenchman, and bury my bones at the cross-roads.”

And the rest of the company, with only one protesting voice, that of Parson Langney, who said the lad had no fault but youth, and he hoped he would come to no hurt, filled up their glasses and smacked their lips over the famous port, and never asked themselves whether it had paid duty; for, indeed, there was no mystery about that.

CHAPTER III.

AN ALLY AT LAST.

The soldiers were rattling on in pursuit of the smugglers at such a good pace that Lieutenant Tregenna only reached the road in time to see them turn the next corner and disappear.

He followed, however, at the best pace he could, hoping to be of use in finding out the direction the smugglers had taken. He had not yet had time to become acquainted with the inland part of the neighborhood, or he would have known that, by dashing across the park in a northerly direction, he could have reached the village before the soldiers, who had to follow the windings of the road.

As it was, when he reached the first of the straggling cottages of the picturesque Sussex village, the horsemen were out of sight; and the women and children of the neighborhood seemed to be all at their doors and windows, evidently discussing the recent invasion with boisterous mirth.

As Tregenna was not in uniform, he flattered himself that he might go up the village unrecognized, and perhaps obtain some scraps of valuable information; but whether they were better posted up than he supposed, or whether the mere sight of a stranger awoke suspicion in the shrewd women-folk, it was certain that as soon as they caught sight of him they checked their volubility, and stood, with their hands on their hips, staring at him with broad amusement still on their faces, or else dropped a curtsey with demure and sudden respectfulness, which was in itself somewhat suspicious.

However, he thought he would make at least an attempt to obtain some information. So he addressed himself to a coarse-featured woman who might have been any age between twenty-five and forty-five, who stood wiping her hands on her apron at the door of one of the cottages, and who, by the curtsey she dropped and the good-humored expression of her face, seemed to promise that she would at least give a civil answer.

“Was that a troop of soldiers I caught sight of coming into the village?” asked he, as indifferently as possible, when he had returned her salutation with deferential courtesy.

“Maybe it were, sir,” replied the woman promptly, with demure cheerfulness; “but I doan’t rightly know. I were out at back yonder when I heard the noise.” She glanced out of the corners of her eyes at an older woman outside the door of the next cottage. “Old Jenny yonder can tell ye more’n me, sir,” added she slyly; “she’s been there all the toime.”

Tregenna, concealing the mortification he felt, turned to Jenny.

But her stolid face offered little hope of success.

“Ay,” said she, in a voice like a man’s, “I’ve been sittin’ an’ standin’ about here, I ’ave, all mornin’; but I han’t seen naught.”

“You haven’t seen a wagon full of smugglers, maybe, coming through at full gallop?” cried Tregenna, losing all patience with the mendacious females. “Nor a troop of soldiers after them?”

But the sarcasm was lost upon the good lady, who was chewing a quid of tobacco, which he well knew to be contraband.

“Noa, I han’t seen aught o’ that,” she replied imperturbably, looking him steadily in the eyes the while. “Maybe I were in a dose, sir, or had the sun in my eyes as they passed.”

He did not trust himself to speak to her again, but went on up the village, between the groups of straggling red cottages with their thatched roofs overgrown with moss or lichen, noting everywhere the sidelong looks cast at him by such of the women as did not shut themselves in their cottages at his approach.

The very urchins, chubby boys of eight and nine, grinned at him maliciously, and helped to give him confirmation of the fact that he was in an enemy’s country.

When the ground began to rise again, at the end of the village, he came to a point where three roads met, and where the high hedges and another patch of wooded ground made it impossible to see far in any direction. As all three roads were in a most villainous condition, with deep ruts and pools and furrows of caked mud, and as all three bore marks of horses’ hoofs the lieutenant knew that it was useless to go further. So he returned through the village in a highly irritated state of mind.

The excitement had subsided a little by this time, and most of the gossips had resumed their household occupations. There was a group of suspicious-looking loafers about the door of each of the two inns; but although it seemed to Tregenna that the word smuggler was writ large across the bloated features of every one, there was nothing to be done but to look as if he ignored their existence.

Thus, in the very worst of humors, he again reached the entrance of the village, and, after a moment’s hesitation, struck up to the left in the direction of the Parsonage, at the garden gate of which he saw handsome Mistress Joan in conversation with another woman.

He was still ostensibly bound on a mission of inquiry, yet it is doubtful whether he hoped to get much information from Joan, who had clearly shown herself to be one of the enemy. Still he strode up the hill with a resolute step, and saluted her in the most abrupt, business-like, and even somewhat offended manner.

“Your pardon, Mistress Joan, for intruding. But ’tis in the performance of my duty. Can you inform me whither the smugglers be gone that rode by just now with the soldiers after them?”

“How should I be able to tell you that, sir? Do you take me for a smuggler myself?” asked Joan, demurely.

He did not at once answer. The girl looked even handsomer, so it seemed to him, in the dying light of day than she had done by the light of moon and lantern on the preceding evening. The creamy tints of her skin melted into bright carnation on her cheeks; and he thought, with a flash of amusement, of the strictures of the powdered and painted ladies of Hurst Court upon her rustic complexion. Her dress, too, pleased his taste better than theirs had done. She wore neither hood nor cap, and her abundant brown hair was rolled back from her forehead in a style which was at that period somewhat old-fashioned, but which gave infinitely more dignity to the head than the tightly screwed-up knot of the fashionable ladies. She wore no hoop or next to none, and her full skirt, of some sort of gray homespun, fell in graceful folds around her. A long fine white apron reached to the hem of her dress, and her bodice was adorned with a frilled kerchief of soft white muslin, and with full gathers of muslin just below the elbow. The dress was neat, simple, eminently fresh and becoming.

Perhaps Tregenna’s masculine eye did not take in all these details; but he was conscious that the whole effect was pleasing beyond anything feminine he had ever seen, and vastly superior to the modish charms of the Hurst Court ladies. He gave himself, however, little time for these reflections before a glance at the house behind her suggested to him a thought which he immediately put into the most matter-of-fact words.

“You stand high here, madam; that tower to the east of your house will give you a view over many miles. Will you favor me with your permission to go up thither for a few minutes, that I may take a reconnaissance of the country?”

By the startled look which instantly came into Joan’s gray eyes, by the crimson flush which mounted to her forehead, Tregenna saw, to his intense annoyance, another proof that her sympathy with his foes went beyond the passive stage.

“Oh, you can’t go into the tower, sir; at least——” She hesitated a moment, evidently looking for an excuse, and then went on—“at least, in my father’s absence. If you will come hither to-morrow, or—or——” Tregenna noticed that at this point she sought the eyes of the woman with whom she had been talking, and who had withdrawn respectfully to a distance of some paces on his approach. “Or the day after. ’Tis a fair view, certainly, when there’s no mist on the marshes; but hardly worth the trouble of climbing our staircase, which is encumbered by much lumber of my father’s,” she ended somewhat lamely, but recovering her composure.

Tregenna did not at once answer, but he glanced at the house with a scrutinizing eye. The western portion of the building, which was most modest in dimensions, had been the banqueting-hall of a mansion as far back as the time of King John. It had since that time gone through many vicissitudes, and was now divided into small chambers, with the ancient king-post of the banqueting-hall spreading its wide beams through the upper story. On the east side of the dwelling an addition had been made, taller than the more ancient portion, and crowned by a gabled roof of red tiles.

Over the whole house there hung a rich mantle of glossy dark ivy, which had grown into a massive tree over the more ancient part, and stretched its twining branches as far as the higher roof of the newer portion, leaving little to be seen of the structure but the windows, the knotted panes of which glistened like huge dewdrops in the setting sun.

Tregenna drew himself up. He took it for granted she did not intend him to use the Parsonage as a watch-tower, to descry the course the smugglers had taken.

“You are afraid, I suppose,” said he sharply, “that I might find out the direction in which lie the haunts of ‘free-trade?’”

Joan drew herself up in her turn. “Nay, sir,” said she quietly, “those haunts are reached by now, I doubt not; and your friends the soldiers will ere long be returning.”

“May be with a few of your friends, the free-traders, at their saddle-bow, madam,” retorted the lieutenant hotly.

“Sir, you are insulting,” said Joan.

“Nay, madam, there is no inference to be drawn from your speech and behavior in this matter but the one I draw.”

“I wish you a good evening, sir,” replied Joan, as, flashing upon him one look of indignant pride from her great brown eyes, she made him a most stately curtsey, with her arms folded across and her head erect, and sailed back into the house between the holly-bushes and the clipped yews.

There was nothing for Tregenna to do but to retire, after having returned her curtsey with a deep bow of corresponding stiffness. As he turned to descend the hill, he had to pass the woman who had been talking with Joan, and who had made way for him to converse with the young lady. He glanced at her in passing, but noted only that she was apparently of the small-farmer class, youngish rather than young, with a quiet, stolid country face, and sinewy, rustic hands and arms.

Her dress was that of her class, consisting of a thick dark stuff skirt drawn through the placket-holes, a coarse white apron, frilled white cap, a kerchief knotted on the breast, and long close mittens. She wore buckled shoes with stout heels, and carried a big basket on her arm.

There was altogether nothing more remarkable about her than an air of extreme cleanliness, neatness, and dignified respectability.

She dropped a curtsey to the gentleman as he went by, which he returned with a touch of the hat and a curt “Good evening.” He was in no mood for any unnecessary exchange of civilities; for he judged by the glance Joan had thrown in the direction of this woman that, demurely respectable as she looked, she shared the universal sympathy with the wrong-doers whom it was his mission to root out of the land.

He had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill by the lane which formed an acute angle with the village street, when the soldiers, with the brigadier at their head, came trooping slowly through the village on their return journey. Alas! they had no captured outlaws at their bridle; they looked tired, hot, dispirited; their commander was swearing lustily, after the military fashion of the times; and the women of the village, keen-witted enough to guess that the squadron would be in an ill-humor, kept within doors, and satisfied their curiosity by furtive peeps from behind the drapery of their windows.

The brigadier perceived the lieutenant, called “Halt,” in a guttural voice, to his men, and proceeded to unfold his grievances, with a plentiful interlarding of strange oaths.

It was the old story that Tregenna knew so well: nobody had seen the smugglers; nobody had heard them; nobody had the least idea that there were such people about, or could give a suggestion as to the way they had gone.

“Ods my life, sir, we got to the river through following what I took for their trail; but there was no bridge, and I knew no means of getting across it, since the water appeared to be high and the stream swift. So, sir, the d——d rascals may e’en be at t’other end of the county by this, and curse me if I see how they’re to be got at, when every wench and every child in the place is on their side—damme!”

While he thus railed on, Tregenna became suddenly aware that he had an attentive listener in the person of the respectable-looking woman with the basket, who had evidently followed the lieutenant down the hill, and who now stood close to the bridle of the brigadier’s charger, whose nose she presently began to caress with her broad brown hand.

The brigadier, incensed by what he considered a piece of gross impertinence on the part of one of the country-folk, drew back his horse with a jerk, and uttered an oath, bursting the next moment into a not very refined reproof for her temerity. The woman remained however entirely unmoved by it, and as the horse retreated, she followed him up, until she again stood close to the bit he was champing.

“May I make so bold as give him a drink of water, sir?” asked she, in a pleasant, deep voice, with less of the rough country accent than one would have expected from her. “Sure you’ve had a long, hard ride, and one should be merciful to one’s beast.”

Tregenna glanced at her with more interest than before. When she spoke, there was a certain quiet authority about her, most proper to the mistress of a farmhouse; and he perceived that she was younger by some years than he had supposed, not more than eight and twenty perhaps, and that her features, though not handsome, had a homely attraction of their own when animated by the action of speaking.

The brigadier, who, true to his profession, looked upon himself as a rake of the first water, cocked his hat, put his hand to his side, and leered at her with a roguish air, which was, in truth, not so fascinating in a gentleman of his portly build and purplish complexion as he fancied.

“You wenches in these parts are kinder to the beasts than to their riders, egad!” said he, with a shake of the head that set his bob-wig wagging merrily. “You don’t offer me a drink; and if I was to beg such a favor of you as a word to tell me where to find the smugglers, I’ll be sworn you’d give me a stare like the rest of ’em, and vow you’d never heard of the creatures!”

The woman listened to him with modest gravity, her face quite stolid, her eyes on the horse. Then she said, in a quiet, even tone, without either prudery or coquetry, but with an air of being much interested by what he said—

“Well, sir, I’m not going to tell you that. I know to my cost the things that go on in these parts, and that there’s many a man ruined for an honest calling by being drawn in with these folks. You see, sir, it be in the air, and they breathe it in from childhood up, so to speak.”

“That’s it; that’s it, my good woman!” cried the brigadier enthusiastically. “Egad, my lass, you’re the first person I’ve met in these parts to admit even so much. Now tell me, think you not ’twould be better for you all if this thing, this free-trade, as they falsely call it, was rooted out?”

“Ay, sir, I do think so,” said the woman earnestly. “And if I thought you’d do your work without too rough a hand, I’d lead you to their haunts myself.”

“You would? You would?” cried the brigadier, with great eagerness. “Well, then, you may rely on me. If you’ll but take me to the spot where they harbor, I’ll be as gentle as a lamb with the ruff—I should say, with the poor misguided fellows.”

“Come, sir, then, with me,” said the woman, as she at once began to lead the way back through the village at a smart pace.

The brigadier turned his horse, and commanded his men to follow, and in a few minutes every horseman was again lost to sight at the bend of the road.

Lieutenant Tregenna, who had heard this colloquy, had been inclined to think, from the woman’s manner, that in her indeed they had got hold of a decent-minded person who had no sympathy with the thieves.

But happening to glance up at the latticed window under the eaves of the nearest cottage he caught sight of two faces, a man’s and a woman’s, in convulsions of laughter. A cursory examination of such other windows as were near enough for him to see revealed similar phenomena.

And the question darted into his mind: Was the respectable-looking woman a friend of the smugglers? And was it her intention to lead the soldiers into an ambuscade?

CHAPTER IV.

FRESH OUTRAGES.

Tregenna debated with himself whether he should run after the brigadier and put him on his guard. But a moment’s reflection convinced him that a word of warning from a young man like himself would be received with resentment rather than with gratitude by the old soldier. After all, the soldiers were well armed, and were presumably prepared for emergencies.

So he turned his back on the village, and made his way over the cliffs to the creek where the gig was lying to take him to the cutter.

It was at the mouth of the little ravine down which Parson Langney and his daughter had gone on the preceding evening.

It was dark in this cleft between the sandstone hills, dark and cool, with a breeze that rushed through from the sea and whistled in the scrubby pines and through the arching briers of the blackberry bushes. The stream which flowed swiftly down, making little trickling waterfalls from rock to rock, was swollen by recent rains, and made little patches of morass and mire at every few steps. The lieutenant found the water over his ankles half a dozen times on his way down. He had just come in sight of the opening where the gig lay when, drawing his right foot out of a mossy swamp that squelched under his tread, he saw, with a sudden chill, that his boot was dyed a deep, murky red.

Scenting another outrage, he uttered an exclamation, and looked about him. Trickling down the side of the ravine into the mud and water of the little patch of swamp was a dark red stream—and the stream was blood.

He uttered a cry, a call; no one answered. The next moment he was scrambling up the side of the ravine.

At the top, lying in a patch of gorse that fringed the edge of the broken cliff, was the body of a coastguardsman, his head nearly severed from his body, and with the blood still oozing from the ghastly wound which had killed him.

The poor fellow’s hands and limbs were ice cold; he had been dead some time. A sheath-knife, such as sailors use, apparently the weapon with which the murder had been effected, lay among the bushes a few paces off.

The lieutenant ground his teeth. Not thieves alone, but murderers, were these wretches with whom the whole country-side was in league. He picked up the knife, with the dried blood upon it; there was a name scratched roughly on the blade, “Ben Bax.” It was a name new to Tregenna, and strong as the clue seemed, it inspired him with but faint hopes of bringing the murderer to punishment. The whole neighborhood would conspire to shield the author of the outrage; the very fact of the knife, with the name on it, having been left behind, showed with what cynical impunity the wretches went about their work.

However, here was at last a deed which not even Squire Waldron could excuse, not even Joan Langney could palliate. The man was dead; there was nothing to be done for him. But information must be given of the murder without delay.

Tregenna was near enough to the gig to hail the men in charge of it, and these hurried up to the spot without delay.

They knew of the raid, but not of the murder. During the lieutenant’s absence a suspicious-looking sloop had been sighted at anchor some little distance away. A watch had been kept upon her from the cutter, and a boat seen to push off and make for the marshes.

The cutter’s crew had manned a boat and given chase, only to find that they had been drawn off in pursuit of a decoy craft, containing nothing contraband, while the men remaining on the cutter had the mortification to see a second boat, piled high with kegs and full of smugglers armed to the teeth, row up the creek, land crew and cargo, and then return to the sloop, exchanging shots with the cutter’s men, without effect on either side.

The cutter’s men, however, had seen nothing of the murder, for the irregularities of the ground and the scrubby undergrowth of gorse and bramble had hidden the struggle from their sight, though, but for this circumstance, the spot would have been within the range of their telescopes.

Lieutenant Tregenna lost not a moment in returning to Hurst, to report the outrage to Squire Waldron, whose lenity could not afford to excuse such a barbarous act as this on the part of his free-traders.

He went by the shortest way this time, taking the foot-track over the hills, by which Parson Langney and his daughter had come on the previous night.

Perhaps the ghastly sight he had just witnessed had sharpened his faculties; for before he had gone far over the worn grass of the path he caught sight of some marks which arrested his attention. Stooping to look at them, and then kneeling on the short turf, peering closely at the ground, he soon satisfied himself that the marks were bloodstains, and that they followed the course he was taking.

Feeling sure that he was on the track of another piece of the free-traders’ sanguinary work, he went back on his steps, and traced the bloodstains to a thicket by the side of the footpath, where there were traces, in broken branches and down-trodden bracken, of the wounded creature, whether man or animal, having hidden or rested.

And then it flashed suddenly across his mind that it was near this spot that the smuggler must have stood at whom he himself had, on the previous evening, fired with what he had believed at the time to be good effect.

If this were so, and if this were the trail of the wounded man, he might be able, by following it up, to find at least one of the guilty fraternity, and bring him to justice.

Fired with this belief, which was like a ray of golden hope in the black despair which had been settling on him, he turned again, and following the track of the bloodstains, which were dry, although evidently recent, he went steadily on in the direction of Hurst, looking always on the ground, and not noticing at first whither the track was leading him.

It was with a start and a sudden chill that he presently recognized, on raising his head when the ground began to rise, that it was to the Parsonage that the marks led.

To the Parsonage—where he had stood talking to Joan Langney that afternoon! For a moment he felt sick, and faltered in his purpose. He did not want to bring shame, disgrace, upon that house of all others. Yet what was to be done? If she and her father were indeed harboring one of the ferocious pack with whom he and his men had been in conflict on the preceding night, why should he hesitate to accuse them of the fact, and to demand that the rascal should be handed over to justice?

He was sorry to have to do it, almost passionately sorry; for even Joan’s prevarication, her defense of the outlaws, her defiance of himself, had not availed to destroy the admiration he felt for the handsome, fearless maiden who was her father’s right hand, and who was ready to dare all dangers in the cause of what she considered her duty.

But, then, there was his own duty to be considered. And that demanded that he should seize the smallest clue to the authors of the outrages which followed one another thick and fast, and showed an almost inconceivable audacity on the part of the smugglers.

He marched, therefore, after a few minutes’ hesitation, boldly upwards, and following the track of the bloodstains still, found himself, in a few minutes, not at the front of the house, where he had been that morning, but at a garden-gate at the back.

He lifted the latch and entered. The bloodstains were faintly visible in the dusk, on the gravel of the path that took him up to the back door of the house.

And there, on the very doorstep, was a keg of contraband brandy.

The sight of this gave Tregenna fresh nerve; and he knocked with his cane loudly at the door.

It was opened by Joan herself.

It was almost dark by this time; but he saw the look of horror and dismay which flashed across her face when she saw who her visitor was. Her glance passed quickly to the keg on the step below, but only for a moment. Then, without appearing to notice that very suspicious article, she addressed Tregenna, not discourteously, but with decided coldness.

“What is your pleasure, sir? Are you come to see my father? He is not yet returned.”

“I am not come to see your father, madam, but another person who is harboring beneath this roof; the smuggler who is taking refuge here from the consequences of his ill deeds.”

She was taken by surprise, and the look which crossed her candid face betrayed her.

“’Tis in vain for you to deny it, madam,” pursued Tregenna, boldly, “for I have proof of what I say.”

There was a short pause, and then Joan said steadily—

“I do not deny it.”

Certain as he had felt of the truth of his surmise, Tregenna felt that his breath was taken away for a moment by this cool confession. He was shocked, grieved, through all the triumph he felt at having, as he thought, at last run his prey to earth.

“You deny not, madam,” he went on, in an altered voice, “that you have beneath your roof a thief, and if not a murderer, at least an associate and accomplice of murderers?”

“A murderer! No, I will not believe that,” cried Joan, warmly.

“Well a smuggler, if that name please you better, though in truth there’s mighty little difference between them. I am come, then, madam, to see this smuggler, and to endeavor to find out whether he is the man that cruelly stabbed to death a poor coastguardsman but a couple or so of hours ago.”

“It was not he,” said Joan, hastily. “He hath been here since last night.”

“Ah! then he was engaged in the fight with us last night; and ’twas he, doubtless, whom I shot in the leg as he got away.”

“And is not the wound, think you, sir, a sufficient injury to have inflicted on him, that you must relentlessly track him down for fresh punishment?”

“Madam, ’tis no matter of personal feeling; ’tis in the king’s name, and on the king’s behalf, I charge you to give him up to justice.”

“Then, in the name of justice and of humanity, I refuse!” said Joan, passionately, as she threw her handsome head back, and fixed upon him a look of proud defiance. “The man who takes shelter in my father’s house, should be safe there, were he the greatest criminal on earth; and how much more when he comes bleeding from a wound inflicted by the men who should be our protectors!”

Exasperated as Tregenna was by the difficulties which she put in his way, he could not help admiring her spirit. He answered more mildly than he would have done had her defiant speech been uttered by another mouth—

“Nay, madam, you will not suffer us to protect you from the wrong-doers and their works; you side with them, against us and the law!”

“Who is that talks of the law?” cried a cheery voice from the narrow hall behind Joan.

And Parson Langney, in a very genial mood, having but just returned from Hurst Court and the merrymakers there, presented himself at the doorway where his daughter made way for him.

“You have a smuggler here, sir, whom I beg you to give up to justice,” said Tregenna. “I can prove that he hath taken a foremost part in a raid and a fight with my men; and sure Miss Joan may rest satisfied with what you have done for him, and let justice take its course now.”

The parson glanced at his daughter with a change of countenance—

“Well,” said he, “the soldiers are at Hurst Court; bring them hither, and make a search of my house, if you please. You will find but a poor fellow that lies sick with a wound in his leg. I fear me poor Tom will never live to take his trial if he be moved from where he lies with the fever that is on him now.”

“He shall be used with all gentleness, sir, I promise you. And sorry am I to have to intrude upon you and your kind charity in this manner. But you are aware, sir, that I must do my duty.”

“Ay, sir, as we do ours,” replied the parson, sturdily. “We ask not what a man has done when he comes to us for help. We ask but what we can do for him, be he friend or be he foe.”

“I know it, sir. I have experienced your kindness—and Mistress Joan’s.”

The young lady now stood a little in the background, looking anxious and perturbed. She hardly glanced at him when he uttered her name.

“You will pardon me, sir, for being forced to incommode you thus.”

“You must do your duty, sir,” retorted Parson Langney, dryly.

“And you will admit us when we come with a warrant?”

“Ay, sir.”

Tregenna bowed and withdrew. Halfway down the garden path he heard a noise behind him, and turned. Parson Langney was busy rolling the keg of brandy into his house. On meeting the lieutenant’s eyes, the parson, hardly pausing in his labor, sang out with much simplicity—

“’Tis but the physician’s fee, sir. And sure, the laborer is worthy of his hire!”

And with that, he gave the keg a final roll, got it within doors, and drew the bolt.

CHAPTER V.

A LOAD OF HAY.

Lieutenant Tregenna was quite prepared to find the gentlemen at Hurst Court in a very merry mood, after the hours which they had spent at the dinner-table since his abrupt departure.

He sent in his message that his business was urgent, and chose to wait in the great hall, with the staghounds sniffing about his ankles, rather than have to discuss small-talk with the ladies, as the old butler wished him to do.

In a few minutes Squire Waldron, not very steady as to gait, or clear as to utterance, came out of the dining-parlor, followed by the brigadier, who was less coherent still.

The news of the murder of the coastguardsman, however, startled them both into sobriety; and the squire made less difficulty than Tregenna had expected about making out a warrant for the apprehension of the one man whom he had tracked down.

“What’s his name, say you?” asked the squire, who had conducted his companions into the study, through the walls of which they could hear the stertorous snoring of the other guests, who had fallen asleep, whether upon or under the table Tregenna could only guess.

“I know only that he is called Tom,” replied Tregenna, who remembered that the parson had uttered that name.

“Ah, then ’twill be ‘Gardener Tom,’ as they call him, as fine a lad as ever you clapped eyes on,” almost sighed the squire, as he began to make out the warrant, not without erasures, in a decidedly ‘after-dinner’ handwriting. “Poor Tom, poor Tom! You will not have him moved to-night, general, and jolt a man in a fever across the marshes to Rye?”

“Egad, squire, since he will certainly be hanged, what signifies a jog more or less to his rascally bonesh?” retorted the brigadier ferociously.

The warrant made out, and the soldiers summoned from the servants’ hall, where they had been regaled by the squire’s command, the lieutenant and the brigadier took leave of their host, and started from the house without loss of time, Tregenna keeping pace on foot with the officer’s charger, while the soldiers followed.

The brigadier was in the highest spirits, and was inclined to look down upon Tregenna’s capture, and upon his methods of work.

“’S’no use, my lad, no mortal use,” he said, laying down the law with vigor, and trying to sit straight upon the saddle so that his gesticulating arm should not overbalance him, “to try t’ get on in anything without th’ women! Now, I alwaysh make up to th’ women!” he went on, with a wink and a roguish leer; “and they’re going to pull me through thish time, as they’ve done a hundred timesh afore! Did you see me with that lass?” he went on, resting his hand upon his hip, and cocking his hat knowingly. “That lass that went up the village with me?”

“A decent-looking woman, that has the appearance of a farmer’s wife or daughter?” said Tregenna, somewhat dryly.

“Ay, that’s she. Name’s Ann Price, keepsh house for her brother, who’s a farmer living a little way inland yonder. Forget name of place. Squire told me all about her. Fine woman, sir; doosed fine woman; sh’perior woman, too, monstrous sh’perior. She’s going to put me on the track of the beggars; took me up the hill, and showed me the way to one of their haunts, that she did, sir. Though in these parts one wouldn’t have thought she’d ha’ dared do it, sir; and she wouldn’t if I hadn’t known how to wheedle it out of her!”

“You don’t think, general, she was playing you false?”

“False! No, sir. I’m too devilish artful to be played tricks with. No, sir; I played with her as a cat plays with a mouse, and led her on so far that she can’t draw back. She is to come and see me at my quarters in Rye next market day, and—” he paused a moment to give a fatuous chuckle—“if I don’t get out of her afore she goes back every damned thing I want to know, why, sir, then they may court-martial me for a d-d-d-damned blunderer, sir!”

Tregenna did not attempt to betray further his doubts as to the woman’s good faith. But when they reached the angle where the road through the village was joined by the by-road up to the Parsonage, and he saw a woman’s figure which he thought he recognized at the door of one of the cottages, he dropped behind, and let the brigadier, who had the warrant, and the soldiers, go up to the Parsonage without him.

As he had supposed, the woman who had attracted his attention proved indeed to be Ann Price, who now wore a long round cloak of full pleats, with a hood attached to it, and who appeared to be waiting for some one.

It was so dark by this time that the poor oil-lamp over the door of the little thatched inn opposite made a small patch of light in the miry roadway; into this patch, while the woman still stood waiting, and Tregenna watched her, came, reeling from the inn-door, a tall, brawny, muscular man, in a rough fisherman’s dress, wearing on his head the long, knitted, tasseled cap of his kind. He had a couple of huge pistols stuck in his belt, which showed under the flaps of his loose, open coat; and his whole appearance betrayed the unmistakable fact that he was no peaceful seafarer, but an active participator in the contraband trade of the neighborhood.

Crossing the road with an unsteady gait, and uttering the while a chuckling, coarse laugh, he made his way towards the woman, who, by a quick movement, avoided his close approach.