o are most obstinate people--and with
the opinion of the public, I suppose, a young lady worth more than all
the goods I ever ran, or ever could run, if I went on for fifty years.
By name she is Mistress Mary Anerley, and by birth the daughter of
Captain Anerley, of Anerley Farm, outside our parish. If your reverence
could only manage to ride round that way upon coming home from Sessions,
once or twice in the fine weather, and to say a kind word or two to my
Mary, and a good word, if any can be said of me, to her parents, who are
stiff but worthy people, it would be a truly Christian act, and such as
you delight in, on this side of the Dane-dike.

"Reverend sir, I must now say farewell. From you I have learned almost
everything I know, within the pale of statutes, which repeal one another
continually. I have wandered sadly outside that pale, and now I pay the
penalty. If I had only paid heed to your advice, and started in business
with the capital acquired by free trade, and got it properly protected,
I might have been able to support my parents, and even be churchwarden
of Flamborough. You always told me that my unlawful enterprise must
close in sadness; and your words have proved too true. But I never
expected anything like this; and I do not understand it yet. A
penetrating mind like yours, with all the advantages of authority, even
that is likely to be baffled in such a difficult case as this.

"Reverend sir, my case is hard; for I always have labored to establish
peaceful trade; and I must have succeeded again, if honor had guided all
my followers. We always relied upon the coast-guard to be too late for
any mischief; and so they would have been this time, if their acts had
been straightforward. In sorrow and lowness of fortune, I remain, with
humble respect and gratitude, your Worship's poor pupil and banished
parishioner,

"ROBIN LYTH, of Flamborough."

"Come, now, Robin," Dr. Upround said, as soon as he had well considered
this epistle, "I have put up with many a checkmate at your hands, but
not without the fair delight of a counter-stroke at the enemy. Here you
afford me none of that. You are my master in every way; and quietly you
make me make your moves, quite as if I were the black in a problem.
You leave me to conduct your fellow-smugglers' case, to look after your
sweetheart, and to make myself generally useful. By-the-way, that touch
about my pleading his cause in my riding-boots, and with a sessiona