now old men; and their father had kept it before
them; probably his father before that. People remembered it as an
old-fashioned dwelling-house, with a sort of supplementary shop with
unglazed windows projecting from the lower story. These openings had
long been filled with panes of glass that at the present day would
be accounted very small, but which seventy years ago were much
admired for their size. I can best make you understand the
appearance of the place by bidding you think of the long openings in
a butcher's shop, and then to fill them up in your imagination with
panes about eight inches by six, in a heavy wooden frame. There was
one of these windows on each side the door-place, which was kept
partially closed through the day by a low gate about a yard high.
Half the shop was appropriated to grocery; the other half to
drapery, and a little mercery. The good old brothers gave all their
known customers a kindly welcome; shaking hands with many of them,
and asking all after their families and domestic circumstances
before proceeding to business. They would not for the world have had
any sign of festivity at Christmas, and scrupulously kept their shop
open at that holy festival, ready themselves to serve sooner than
tax the consciences of any of their assistants, only nobody ever
came. But on New Year's Day they had a great cake, and wine, ready
in the parlour behind the shop, of which all who came in to buy
anything were asked to partake. Yet, though scrupulous in most
things, it did not go against the consciences of these good brothers
to purchase smuggled articles. There was a back way from the
river-side, up a covered entry, to the yard-door of the Fosters, and
a peculiar kind of knock at this door always brought out either John
or Jeremiah, or if not them, their shopman, Philip Hepburn; and the
same cake and wine that the excise officer's wife might just have
been tasting, was brought out in the back parlour to treat the
smuggler. There was a little locking of doors, and drawing of the
green silk curtain that was supposed to shut out the shop, but
really all this was done very much for form's sake. Everybody in
Monkshaven smuggled who could, and every one wore smuggled goods who
could, and great reliance was placed on the excise officer's
neighbourly feelings.

The story went that John and Jeremiah Foster were so rich that they
could buy up all the new town across the bridge. They had certainly
begun to have