e words:

"Now if you are a gentleman, you must go, and never come near this place
again."

Not a moment too soon he plunged into the gill, and hurried up its
winding course; but turning back at the corner, saw a sweet smile in the
distance, and a wave of the hand, that warmed his heart.

CHAPTER XXIII

LOVE MILITANT

So far so good. But that noble and exalted condition of the youthful
mind which is to itself pure wisdom's zenith, but to folk of coarse
maturity and tough experience "calf-love," superior as it is to words
and reason, must be left to its own course. The settled resolve of a
middle-aged man, with seven large-appetited children, and an eighth
approaching the shores of light, while baby-linen too often transmitted
betrays a transient texture, and hose has ripened into holes, and
breeches verify their name, and a knock at the door knocks at the
heart--the fixed resolution of such a man to strike a bold stroke, for
the sake of his home, is worthier of attention than the flitting fancy
of boy and girl, who pop upon one another, and skip through zigzag
vernal ecstasy, like the weathery dalliance of gnats.

Lieutenant Carroway had dealt and done with amorous grace and attitude,
soaring rapture, and profundity of sigh, suspense (more agonizing than
suspension), despair, prostration, grinding of the teeth, the hollow and
spectral laugh of a heart forever broken, and all the other symptoms of
an annual bill of vitality; and every new pledge of his affections
sped him toward the pledge-shop. But never had he crossed that fatal
threshold; the thought of his uniform and dignity prevailed; and he was
not so mean as to send a child to do what the father was ashamed of.

So it was scarcely to be expected that even as a man he should
sympathize deeply with the tender passion, and far less, as a
coast-guardsman, with the wooing of a smuggler. Master Robin Lyth, by
this time, was in the contraband condition known to the authorities
as love; Carroway had found out this fact; but instead of indulging
in generous emotion, he made up his mind to nab him through it. For he
reasoned as follows; and granting that reason has any business on such
premises, the process does not seem amiss.

A man in love has only got one-eighth part of his wits at home to govern
the doings of his arms, legs, and tongue. A large half is occupied
with his fancy, in all the wanderings of that creature, dreamy, flimsy,
anchoring with gossa