f his family, used
his influence so successfully that the Lieutenant was presently granted
the position of Collector of Customs in the place of Captain Maull, who
had lately deceased.

The Lieutenant, somewhat to the surprise of his patrons, filled his new
official position as Collector not only with vigor, but with a not
unbecoming dignity. He possessed an infinite appreciation of the
responsibilities of his office, and he was more jealous to collect
every farthing of the royal duties than he would have been had those
moneys been gathered for his own emolument.

Under the old Collectorship of Captain Maull, it was no unusual thing
for a barraco of superfine Hollands, a bolt of silk cloth, or a keg of
brandy to find its way into the house of some influential merchant or
Colonial dignitary. But in no such manner was Lieutenant Goodhouse
derelict in his duties. He would have sacrificed his dearest friendship
or his most precious attachment rather than fail in his duties to the
Crown. In the intermission of his duties it might please him to relax
into the softer humors of conviviality, but at ten o'clock in the
morning, whatever his condition of sobriety, he assumed at once all the
sterner panoply of a Collector of the Royal Customs.

Thus he set his virtues against his vices, and struck an even balance
between them. When most unsteady upon his legs he most asserted his
integrity, declaring that not a gill or a thread came into his port
without paying its duty, and calling Heaven to witness that it had been
his hand that had saved the life of a noble young gentleman. Thereupon,
perhaps, drawing forth the gleaming token of his prowess--the gold
snuffbox--from his breeches-pocket, and holding it tight in his brown
and hairy fist, he would first offer his interlocutor a pinch of
rappee, and would then call upon him to read the inscription engraved
upon the lid of the case, demanding to know whether it mattered a fig
if a man did drink a drop too much now and then, provided he collected
every farthing of the royal revenues, and had been the means of saving
the son of the Earl of Clandennie.

Never for an instant upon such an occasion would he permit his precious
box to quit his possession. It was to him an emblem of those virtues
that no one knew but himself, wherefore the more he misdoubted his own
virtuousness the more valuable did the token of that rectitude become
in his eyes. "Yes, you may look at it," he would say, "