ts on regulation. I brought no one
with me because I had no one to bring, having sent, as per regulation,
my one remaining man to give notice to the water service, seeing that
that there schooner has had the impudence to come back, and is at this
very moment cruising quite happy-like just the other side of the bank;
though if ever their cutter overhauls her--well, I'm a Dutchman! You
might have done wiser, perhaps (if I may make so bold as to remark),
to leave the management of this business to them as understands such
things. As to being late, sir, you told me to be in the ruins at
twelve noon, and I beg to insinuate that it's only just past the hour
now."

At this point the preventive man drew from his capacious breeches a
brass time-piece, of congenial stoutness, the face of which he turned
towards the magistrate.

The latter, however, waved the proffered witness impatiently aside.
Furtively watching his cousin, who, leaning against the door-post, her
pale head thrown out in strong relief by the dark stones, stood as if
absolutely detached from her surroundings, communing over troubled
thoughts with her own soul, he said with deliberate distinctness:

"But have I been misled, then, in understanding that you were with the
unfortunate officer who was so ferociously assaulted this morning?
that you and he did come upon this Captain Smith, red-handed as you
call it, loading or unloading his vessel on Scarthey Island?"

"Aye, sir," rolled out the other, unctuously, "there you are again,
you see. Poor Nat Beavor, he was one of your hot-headed ones, and see
what it has brought _him_ to--a crack in his skull, sir, so that it
will be days before he'll know himself again, the doctor says, if ever
he does in this world, which I don't think. Ah, I says to him, when
we started in the dawn this morning agreeable to our arrangement with
you: 'For peeping and prying on the quiet without any running risks
and provoking others to break the law more than they're doing, I'm
your man,' says I; 'but as for attacking desperate individles without
proper warrant and authority, not to speak of being one to ten, I tell
you fair, Nat Beavor, I'll have nothing to do with it.' But Nat, he
went off his head, clean, at the sight of Captain Jack and his men a
trundling the little kegs down the sands, as neat and tidy as could
be; and so he cut out from behind the rocks, and I knew there was
mischief ahead! Ah, poor fellow, if he would only have