ve heard, there must have been twenty cargoes run in that time."

"All that, sir, all that; nigher thirty, I should say. There is three
luggers at it reg'lar."

"Are they French or English?"

"Two of them is French and one English, but the crews are all mixed.
They carry strong crews all of them, and a longish gun in their sterns,
so that in case they are chased they may have a chance of knocking away
a spar out of anything after them. They would not fight if a cutter came
up alongside them--that might make a hanging matter of it, while if none
of the revenue chaps are killed it is only a case of long imprisonment,
though the English part of the crew generally have the offer of entering
on a king's ship instead, and most of them take it. Life on board a
man-of-war may not be a pleasant one, but after all it is better than
being boxed up in a prison for years. Anyhow, that is the light in which
I should look at it myself."

"I should think so," Julian agreed. "However, you see there is no great
risk in landing the kegs, for it is very seldom you get so nearly caught
as you did at Lulworth. Let me know when the next affair is coming off,
Bill, and if it is anywhere within a moderate distance of Weymouth I
will go with you if you will take me. Anyhow, whether I go or not, you
may be quite sure that I shall keep the matter to myself."

"The most active chap about here," Bill said after he had hauled his
nets, and the boat was making her way back to Weymouth, "is that
Faulkner. He is a bitter bad one, he is. Most of the magistrates about
here don't trouble their heads about smuggling, and if they find a keg
of first class brandy quite accidental any morning on their doorstep,
they don't ask where it comes from, but just put it down into their
cellars. Sometimes information gets sworn before them, and they has to
let the revenue people know, but somehow or other, I can't say how it
is," and the fisherman gave a portentous wink, "our fellows generally
get some sort of an idea that things ain't right, and the landing don't
come off as expected; queer, ain't it? But that fellow Faulkner, he
ain't like that. He worries hisself about the smugglers just about as
much as Captain Downes does. He is just as hard on smugglers as he is on
poachers, and he is wonderful down on them, he is. Do you know him,
sir?"

"I know him by sight. He is a big, pompous man; his place is about two
miles up the valley, and there are some large woo