e track is not canny even in the
broad of the day. Mickle worse is it when the light of the stars and the
glimmer o' the sea three hunder feet below are all that ye hae to guide
ye! But the man that had been hidden in our 'ben' room was aye for going
on faster and faster. He stopped only to look down now and then for a
riding light of some boat. And I made so bold, seeing him that anxious,
as to tell him that if it were a canny cargo for the Co'en lads, waiting
to be run into Portowarren, never a glim would he see."

"'You trust a man that kens,' I said to him, 'never a skarrow will wink,
nor a lantern swing. The Isle o' Man chaps and the Dutchmen out yonder
have their business better at their fingers' ends than that. But I will
tell ye what ye may hear when we get down the hill by the joiner's
shop--and that's the clink o' the saddle irons, and the waff o' their
horses' lugs as they shake their necks--them no liking their heads tied
up in bags.'

"'Get on,' he said, 'I wish your head were tied up in a bag!' And he
tugged at my tail-coat like to rive it off me, your honour. 'Set me on
the shore there at Portowarren before the hour of two, or maybe ye will
get something for your guerdon ye will like but ill.'

"This was but indifferent talk to a man whose bread you have been eating
(it is mostly porridge and saps, but no matter) for weeks and weeks!

"We climbed down by the steep road over the rocks--the same that Will of
the Cloak Moss and Muckle Sandy o' Auchenhay once held for two hours
again the gaugers, till the loaded boats got off clear again into deep
water. And when we had tramped down through the round stones that were
so hard on the feet after the heather, we came to the edge of the sea
water. There it is deep right in. For the tide never leaves
Portowarren--no, not the shot of a pebble thrown by the hand. Bending
low I could see something like the sail of a ship rise black against the
paler edge of the sea.

"Then it was that I asked the man for something that might clear me if I
was held in suspicion for this night's work--as also my wife Bridget.

"After at first denying me with oaths and curses, he threw down this bit
paper that I have communicated to your worship, and in a pet trampled it
into the pebbles among which the sea was churning and lappering. He
pushed off into the boat, sending it out by his weight.

"'There,' he cried back, 'let them make what they will of that if ye be
called in questi