have been carried
on; therefore, even well-to-do people favoured the men who brought these
luxuries to their doors, at a mere fraction of the price that they would
otherwise have had to pay for them. Then, too, there was an element of
romance in the career of a smuggler who risked his life every day, and
whose adventures, escapes, and fights with the revenue men were told
round every fireside. The revenue officer was not far wrong when he said
that the greater portion of the population round the coast, including
all classes, were friendly to, if not in actual alliance with, the
smugglers. Julian was well aware that many of the fishermen with whom he
went out often lent a hand to the smugglers in landing their goods and
taking them inland, or in hiding them in caves in the cliffs known only
to the smugglers and themselves. He had heard many stories from them of
adventures in which they had been engaged, and the manner in which, by
showing signal lights from the sea, they had induced the revenue men to
hurry to the spot at which they had seen a flash, and so to leave the
coast clear for the landing of the goods.

"It must be great fun," he said one day. "I must say I should like to
take part in running a cargo, for once."

"Well, Master Julian, there would not be much difficulty about that, if
so be you really mean it. We can put you up to it easy enough, but you
know, sir, it isn't all fun. Sometimes the revenue men come down upon us
in spite of all the pains we take to throw them off the scent. Captain
Downes is getting that artful that one is never sure whether he has been
got safely away or not. A fortnight ago he pretty nigh came down on a
lugger that was landing a cargo in Lulworth Cove. We thought that it had
all been managed well. Word had gone round that the cargo was to be run
there, and the morning before, a woman went on to the cliffs and got in
talk with one of the revenue men. She let out, as how her husband had
been beating her, and she had made up her mind to pay him out. There was
going, she said, to be a cargo run that night at a point half way
between Weymouth and Lyme Regis.

"I know she did the part well, as she acted it on three or four of us
afterwards, and the way she pretended to be in a passion and as spiteful
as a cat, would have taken any fellow in. In course the revenue chap
asked her what her name was and where she lived, and I expect they did
not find her when they looked for her afterwar