whistle. He listened a moment and than repeated it still
louder. He was answered by a similar signal, and four men in sailor's
garb, issuing from behind one of the boats, advanced to meet him.

"All right, Bill?" inquired Cuttance.

"All right, sur," was the reply.

"Didn't I tell 'ee to leave them things behind?" said Cuttance sternly,
as he pointed to the butt of a pistol which protruded from the
breast-pocket of one of the men; "sure we don't require powder and lead
to overcome an old man!"

"No more do we need a party o' five to do it," replied the man doggedly.

To this Cuttance vouchsafed no reply, but, plucking the weapon from the
man, he tossed it far into the sea, and, without further remark, walked
towards the fishing village, followed by his men.

By this time the thunder and rain had abated considerably, but the gale
blew with increased violence, and, as there were neither moon nor stars,
the darkness was so intense that men less acquainted with the locality
would have been obliged to proceed with caution. But the smugglers knew
every foot of the ground between the Lizard and the Land's End, and they
advanced with rapid strides until they reached the low wall that
encompassed, but could not be said to guard, old Mr Hitchin's
garden-plot.

The hour was suited for deeds of darkness, being a little after
midnight, and the noise of the gale favoured the burglars, who leaped
the wall with ease and approached the back of the cottage.

In ordinary circumstances Hitchin would have been in bed, and Cuttance
knew his habits sufficiently to be aware of this; his surprise,
therefore, was great when he found lights burning, and greater still
when, peeping through a chink of the window-shutter, he observed two
stout fellows seated at the old man's table. Charles Tregarthen he had
never seen before, and, as Oliver Trembath sat with his back to the
window, he could not recognise him.

"There's company wi' the owld man," said Cuttance, returning to his
comrades; "two men, young and stout, but we do knaw how to manage they!"

This was said by way of an appeal, and was received with a grin by the
others, and a brief recommendation to go to work without delay.

For a few minutes they whispered together as to the plan of attack, and
then, having agreed on that point, they separated. Cuttance and the man
whom he had called Bill, went to the window of the room in which Hitchin
and his guests were seated, and stat