have been ill paid for my service among the Redgauntlets--have
scarce got dog's wages--and been treated worse than ever dog was used. I
have the old fox and his cubs in the same trap now, Nanty; and we'll see
how a certain young lady will look then. You see I am frank with you,
Nanty.'

'And I will be as frank with you,' said the smuggler. 'You are a d--d
old scoundrel--traitor to the man whose bread you eat! Me help to betray
poor devils, that have been so often betrayed myself! Not if they were
a hundred Popes, Devils, and Pretenders. I will back and tell them their
danger--they are part of cargo--regularly invoiced--put under my charge
by the owners--I'll back'--

'You are not stark mad?' said Nixon, who now saw he had miscalculated in
supposing Nanty's wild ideas of honour and fidelity could be shaken
even by resentment, or by his Protestant partialities. 'You shall not go
back--it is all a joke.'

'I'll back to Redgauntlet, and see whether it is a joke he will laugh
at.'

'My life is lost if you do,' said Nixon--'hear reason.'

They were in a clump or cluster of tall furze at the moment they were
speaking, about half-way between the pier and the house, but not in a
direct line, from which Nixon, whose object it was to gain time, had
induced Ewart to diverge insensibly.

He now saw the necessity of taking a desperate resolution. 'Hear
reason,' he said; and added, as Nanty still endeavoured to pass him, 'Or
else hear this!' discharging a pocket-pistol into the unfortunate man's
body.

Nanty staggered, but kept his feet. 'It has cut my back-bone asunder,'
he said; 'you have done me the last good office, and I will not die
ungrateful.'

As he uttered the last words, he collected his remaining strength, stood
firm for an instant, drew his hanger, and, fetching a stroke with both
hands, cut Cristal Nixon down. The blow, struck with all the energy of
a desperate and dying man, exhibited a force to which Ewart's exhausted
frame might have seemed inadequate;--it cleft the hat which the wretch
wore, though secured by a plate of iron within the lining, bit deep into
his skull, and there left a fragment of the weapon, which was broke by
the fury of the blow.

One of the seamen of the lugger, who strolled up attracted by the firing
of the pistol, though being a small one the report was very trifling,
found both the unfortunate men stark dead. Alarmed at what he saw,
which he conceived to have been the consequence of