el; "but what I really meant was, were you ever a pirate
or anything?"

"Never in all my born," replied the stranger, now thoroughly roused;
"I'd scorn the haction. I was in the navy, I was, till I lost the sight
of my eye, looking too close at gunpowder. Pirates is snakes, and they
ought to be killed as such."

We felt rather sorry, for though of course it is very wrong to be a
pirate, it is very interesting too. Things are often like this. That is
one of the reasons why it is so hard to be truly good.

Dora was the only one who was pleased. She said--

"Yes, pirates _are_ very wrong. And so are highwaymen and smugglers."

"I don't know about highwaymen," the old man replied; "they went out
afore my time, worse luck; but my father's great-uncle by the mother's
side, he see one hanged once. A fine upstanding fellow he was, and made
a speech while they was a-fitting of the rope. All the women was
snivelling and sniffing and throwing bokays at him."

"Did any of the bouquets reach him?" asked the interested Alice.

"Not likely," said the old man. "Women can't never shy straight. But I
shouldn't wonder but what them posies heartened the chap up a bit. An
afterwards they was all a-fightin' to get a bit of the rope he was hung
with, for luck."

"Do tell us some more about him," said all of us but Dora.

"I don't know no more about him. He was just hung--that's all. They was
precious fond o' hangin' in them old far-away times."

"Did you ever know a smuggler?" asked H.O.--"to speak to, I mean?"

"Ah, that's tellings," said the old man, and he winked at us all.

So then we instantly knew that the coastguards had been mistaken when
they said there were no more smugglers now, and that this brave old man
would not betray his comrades, even to friendly strangers like us. But
of course he could not know exactly how friendly we were. So we told
him.

Oswald said--

"We _love_ smugglers. We wouldn't even tell a word about it if you would
only tell us."

"There used to be lots of smuggling on these here coasts when my father
was a boy," he said; "my own father's cousin, his father took to the
smuggling, and he was a doin' so well at it, that what does he do, but
goes and gets married, and the Preventives they goes and nabs him on his
wedding-day, and walks him straight off from the church door, and claps
him in Dover Jail."

"Oh, his poor wife," said Alice, "whatever did she do?"

"_She_ didn't do nothing," said t