won't have it."

"Then it's all true, eh?" said the boy, mockingly.

"What's true?" snarled the man.

"You know. What have you got hidden away among the caverns--Hollands
gin or French brandy? Perhaps it's silk or velvet. No, no; I know.
But you can't think that. How do you manage to land the great casks?"

"I dunno what you're talking about, youngster--do you?"

"Thoroughly. But aren't the tobacco casks too big and too heavy to haul
up the cliffs?"

"Look here, young fellow," growled the man; "none o' your nonsense.
You'd better be off before you get hurt. That's your way back."

"Is it?" said Aleck. "Then I'm not going back till I choose. I say,
should you talk like this to one of the Revenue sloop's men if he came
ashore?"

"Oh, we know how to talk to that sort if he comes our way," said the
man, with a chuckling laugh; "and they knows it, too, and don't come."

"Nor the press-gang either, eh?" said Aleck, mockingly.

Up to that moment the man's fierce face had alone been seen, but at the
word press-gang he gave a violent start and rose to his knees, upon
which he hobbled close up to the edge of the shelf upon which he had
perched himself.

"Oh, that's it, is it, my lad, eh?" he growled, shaking his fist
savagely. "Then, look here. If the press-gang--cuss 'em!--ever does
come along here we shall know who put 'em up to it, and if they take any
of our chaps--mind yer they won't take all, and them behind'll know what
to do. I'm not going to threaten, but if someone wasn't sunk in his
boat, or had a bit o' rock come tumbling down on him when he was taking
up his net under the cliffs, it would be strange to me. D'yer hear
that?"

"Oh, yes, I hear that," retorted Aleck. "So you won't threaten, eh?
What do you call that?"

"Never you mind what I call it, youngster; and what I says I means. So
now you know."

"Yes," said Aleck, coolly; "now I know that what people say about you
and your gang up at Eilygugg is quite true."

"What do people say?" shouted the man. "What people?"

"The Rockabie folk."

"And what do they say?"

"That you're a set of smugglers, and, worse still, wreckers when you get
a chance, and don't stop at robbery or murder. One of the fishermen--I
won't say his name--said you were a regular gang of pirates."

"The Rockabie fishermen are a set o' soft-headed fools," snarled the
man. "But what do I care for all they say? Let 'em prove it; and, look
here, if we're as