id Aleck, feeling a bit puzzled at the
man's words. "In the meantime I'll go on looking for him. He must be
somewhere close by."

"No, he isn't," said the man, grimly.

"How do you know?"

"'Cause I do," was the reply, and then, actively as a goat, the smuggler
sprang up the rocks and was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

Eben Megg had only just disappeared when the faint, monotonous cry of
"Ahoy!" rose once more from below, setting the thoughts buzzing and
throbbing about in Aleck's brain in a most extraordinary way. For the
lad felt utterly puzzled--he knew not why. He felt that there was
something he ought to know, and yet he did not know it, and he failed to
grasp the reason why he could not understand it. There was some mystery
that he ought to clear up, he felt; but, all the same, simple as it was,
he could not find it out.

Like the children playing at a nursery game, he was so close that he was
burning, and at one moment he was on the point of being as wise as the
smuggler, but just then a loud piercing whistle rang out, followed by
answering shouts, and he did grasp at once from whence they came, and
waited anxiously, fully expecting to hear more shouts, some of a
triumphant character, telling that the fugitive was in view or perhaps
caught.

"I oughtn't to mind, of course," he muttered, as he strained his ears to
catch the next sound; "but somehow I do, and, as I said, for that poor
woman's sake. Ah! They've caught him now. No; it was only an order
shouted. Why, they're coming right up here--I can hear them plainly!"

The lad listened excitedly, for though he could see nothing of the
sailors he could follow them by the sounds they made and tell that they
had spread out over a good deal of ground in their hunt for the escaped
man.

Nearer and nearer they came till Aleck felt that they must have reached
the ledge from which he had watched the rippling sea, while directly
after they were so near to the hiding-place that he could catch a good
deal of what was said, the voices ascending and then seeming to curl
over and drop down the steep rockside where he stood.

"They haven't caught him yet," thought Aleck, after some few minutes'
beating of the cliff-top and slopes had taken place. "Perhaps they
won't catch him, after all, for he must be as cunning as a fox about
hiding-places. Why, they must be coming here!" he thought, excitedly,
as the voices began to come nearer and nearer. "They'll