e centre of news. Captain Stubbard employed him for battery
uses, and finding his swing-shutters larger than those of Widow Shanks,
and more cheaply lit up by the glow of the forge, was now beginning, in
spite of her remonstrance, to post all his very big proclamations there.

"Rouse up your fire, Ketch," he said that evening, as he stood at the
door of the smithy, with half a dozen of his children at his heels.
"Bring a dozen clout-nails; here's a tremendous piece of news!"

The blacksmith made a blaze with a few strokes of his bellows, and swung
his shutter forward, so that all might read.

"GREAT AND GLORIOUS VICTORY. Twenty line-of-battle ships destroyed or
captured. Lord Nelson shot dead. God save the King!"

"Keep your fire up. I'll pay a shilling for the coal," cried the
Captain, in the flush of excitement. "Bring out your cow's horn, and
go and blow it at the corner. And that drum you had to mend, my boy and
girl will beat it. Jack, run up to the battery, and tell them to blaze
away for their very lives."

In less than five minutes all the village was there, with the readers
put foremost, all reading together at the top of their voices, for the
benefit of the rest. Behind them stood Polly Cheeseman, peeping, with
the glare of the fire on her sad pale face and the ruddy cheeks of her
infant. "Make way for Widow Carne, and the young Squire Carne," the loud
voice of Captain Zeb commanded; "any man as stands afront of her will
have me upon him. Now, ma'am, stand forth, and let them look at you."

This was a sudden thought of Captain Tugwell's; but it fixed her rank
among them, as the order of the King might. The strong sense of justice,
always ready in Springhaven, backed up her right to be what she
had believed herself, and would have been, but for foul deceit and
falsehood. And if the proud spirit of Carne ever wandered around the
ancestral property, it would have received in the next generation a
righteous shock at descrying in large letters, well picked out with
shade: "Caryl Carne, Grocer and Butterman, Cheese-monger, Dealer in
Bacon and Sausages. Licensed to sell Tea, Coffee, Snuff, Pepper, and
Tobacco."

For Cheeseman raised his head again, with the spirit of a true British
tradesman, as soon as the nightmare of traitorous plots and contraband
imports was over. Captain Tugwell on his behalf led the fishing fleet
against that renegade La Liberte, and casting the foreigners overboard,
they restored her i