t of the Lord's Day, seemingly.
Bathin', f'r instance."

"Indeed!" The Collector eyed his companion reflectively. "You honoured
me with your observation this morning?"

Mr. Banner grinned. "Better say the whole of Port Nassau was hon'rin'
you. Oh, there'd be no lack of evidence!--but I guess the magistrates
were lookin' the other way. They allowed, no doubt, that even a
Sabbath-breaker might be havin' friends at Court!"

The Collector could not forbear smiling at the youth's impudence.

"May I ask what punishment I have probably escaped by that advantage?"

"Well," said Mr. Banner, "for lighter cases it's usually the stocks."

Still the Collector smiled. "I am trying to picture it," said he, after
a pause. "But you don't tell me they would put a young girl in the
stocks, merely for firing a gun on the Lord's Day, as you call it?"

"Wouldn't they!" Mr. Banner chuckled. "That, or the pillory."

"You are a strange folk in Port Nassau." The Collector frowned, upon a
sudden suspicion, and his eyes darkened in their scrutiny of Mr.
Banner's unpleasant face. "By the way, you told me just now that you
were here upon some sort of a dispensation. Forgive me if I do you
wrong, but was it by any chance that you might play the spy upon this
girl?"

"Shadbolt asked me to keep an eye liftin' for her."

"Who is Shadbolt?"

"The Town Beadle. He's watchin' somewhere along the cliffs."
Mr. Banner waved a hand towards the neck of the headland.
"It's a scandal, and by all accounts has been goin' on for weeks."

"So that is why you called me to witness? Well, Mr. Banner, I have a
horsewhip lying on the turf yonder, and I warn you to forget your
suggestion. . . . Shall we resume our measurements?--and, if you please,
in silence. Your presence is distasteful to me."

They turned from the cliff and went back to their work, in which--for
they both enjoyed it--they were soon immersed. It may have been, too,
that the wind had shifted. At any rate they missed to hear, ten minutes
later, a second shot fired on the beach, not more distant but fainter
than the first.

Chapter IX.

THE SCOURGE.

Next morning, at ten o'clock, the Collector's coach-and-six stood at the
Inn gate, harnessed up and ready for the return journey. In the
road-way beyond one of the grooms waited with a hand on Bayard's bridle.

The Collector, booted and spurred, with riding-whip tucked under his
arm, came up the pebbled pathway, draw