to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank which
abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stonework,
and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is
the manner of graveyards to be. Stockdale did the same, and followed her
in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower door,
which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them.

'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.

'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.

Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which the
minister had not noticed that she carried at all. The light showed them
to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap of
lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework, pews,
panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been removed
from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and replaced by
new.

'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said, holding the
lantern over her head to light him better. 'Or will you take the lantern
while I move them?'

'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon-
wheel.

When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered
what he would say.

'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.

'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply. He was an inland man, the son of
highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the
ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such
articles were there.

'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone of
candour that was not without a touch of irony.

Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving. 'Not smugglers'
liquor?' he said.

'Yes,' said she. 'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come
over in the dark from France.'

In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at
the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these
little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as
turnips. So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm
when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as
ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good