mast-head the moment he is told
to. The coastguards told us tales of Southern ports, and of shipwrecks,
and officers they had _not_ cottoned to, and messmates that they _had_,
but when we asked them about smuggling they said there wasn't any to
speak of nowadays.

"I expect they think they oughtn't to talk about such dark crimes before
innocent kids like us," said Dicky afterwards, and he grinned as he said
it.

"Yes," said Alice; "they don't know how much we know about smugglers,
and bandits, and highwaymen, and burglars, and coiners," and she sighed,
and we all felt sad to think that we had not now any chance to play at
being these things.

"We might play smugglers," said Oswald.

But he did not speak hopefully. The worst of growing up is that you seem
to want more and more to have a bit of the real thing in your games.
Oswald could not now be content to play at bandits and just capture
Albert next door, as once, in happier days, he was pleased and proud to
do.

It was not a coastguard that told us about the smugglers. It was a very
old man that we met two or three miles along the beach. He was leaning
against a boat that was wrong way up on the shingle, and smoking the
strongest tobacco Oswald's young nose has ever met. I think it must have
been Black Jack. We said, "How do you do?" and Alice said, "Do you mind
if we sit down near you?"

"Not me," replied the aged seafarer. We could see directly that he was
this by his jersey and his sea-boots.

The girls sat down on the beach, but we boys leaned against the boat
like the seafaring one. We hoped he would join in conversation, but at
first he seemed too proud. And there was something dignified about him,
bearded and like a Viking, that made it hard for us to begin.

At last he took his pipe out of his mouth and said--

"Here's a precious Quakers' meeting! You didn't set down here just for
to look at me?"

"I'm sure you look very nice," Dora said.

"Same to you, miss, I'm sure," was the polite reply.

"We want to talk to you awfully," said Alice, "if you don't mind?"

"Talk away," said he.

And then, as so often happens, no one could think of anything to say.

Suddenly Noel said, "_I_ think you look nice too, but I think you look
as though you had a secret history. Have you?"

"Not me," replied the Viking-looking stranger. "I ain't got no history,
nor jog-graphy neither. They didn't give us that much schooling when I
was a lad."

"Oh!" replied No