may regret it, I should not think of trying to turn you from
it. Very well, then, I will endeavour to get you apprenticed. It is a hard
life, but not harder than that of a fisherman, to which you are
accustomed."

When William returned to his foster-father he informed him that he did not
mean to have anything more to do with the smuggling.

The old man looked at him in astonishment. "Are you mad?" he said. "Don't
I get five shillings for every night you are out, generally four or five
nights a month, which pays for all your food."

"I am sorry," the lad said, "but I never knew that it was wrong before,
and now I know it I mean to have nothing more to do with it. What good
comes of it? Here we have three empty cottages, and five or six others
from which the heads will be absent for years. It is dear at any price. I
work hard with you, father, and am never slack; surely the money I earn in
the boat more than pays for my grub."

"I can guess who told you this," the old man said angrily. "It was that
parson's daughter you are always with."

"Don't say anything against her," the boy said earnestly; "she has been
the best friend to me that ever a fellow had, and as long as I live I
shall feel grateful to her. You know that I am not like the other boys of
the village; I can read and write well, and I have gathered a lot of
knowledge from books. Abuse me as much as you like, but say nothing
against her. You know that the terms on which you took me expired a year
ago, but I have gone on just as before and am ready to do the same for a
time."

"You have been a good lad," the old man said, mollified, "and I don't know
what I should have done without you. I am nigh past work now, but in the
ten years you have been with me things have always gone well with me, and
I have money enough to make a shift with for the rest of my life, even if
I work no longer. But I don't like this freak that you have taken into
your head. It will mean trouble, lad, as sure as you are standing there.
The men here won't understand you, and will like enough think that the
revenue people have got hold of you. You will be shown the cold shoulder,
and even worse than that may befall you. We fisher-folk are rough and
ready in our ways, and if there is one thing we hate more than another it
is a spy."

"I have no intention of being a spy," the boy said. "I have spoken to none
of the revenue men, and don't mean to do so, and I would not peach even if
I w