Transcriber’s Note

In this transcription, italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Small
capitals in the original text have been replaced by ALL CAPITALS.

See the end of this document for details of corrections and other
changes.

              ————————————— Start of Book —————————————




                           JOAN, THE CURATE




                                  BY

                            FLORENCE WARDEN

                               AUTHOR OF

        “THE HOUSE ON THE MARSH,” “THE INN BY THE SHORE,” ETC.




                             [Illustration]




                                TORONTO

                           GEORGE J. McLEOD

                               PUBLISHER




                            Copyright, 1899

                                  BY

                        F. M. BUCKLES & COMPANY




 _Joan, the Curate_




                               CONTENTS.

         CHAPTER                                        PAGE

             I. The New Broom                              7

            II. A Startling Incident                      25

           III. An Ally at Last                           36

            IV. Fresh Outrages                            52

             V. A Load of Hay                             65

            VI. A Collision                               84

           VII. An Ugly Customer                          94

          VIII. Rede Hall                                106

            IX. Traitress or Friend?                     126

             X. The Mystery of the Gray Barn             143

            XI. In The Lion’s Mouth                      155

           XII. Settling Accounts                        174

          XIII. A Late Visitor                           187

           XIV. A Perilous Ride                          203

            XV. The Smugglers’ Ship                      218

           XVI. A Traitress                              233

          XVII. An Innocent Rival                        250

         XVIII. A Prisoner                               265

           XIX. A Very Woman                             280

            XX. The Free-Traders’ Farewell               297




                           JOAN, THE CURATE.

                                ———————

                              CHAPTER I.

                            THE NEW BROOM.


It was soon after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, had put an
inglorious end to an inglorious war, that the Government of the day
began to give serious attention to an evil which had been suffered to
grow while public attention was absorbed by battles abroad and the
doings of the press-gang at home.

This was the practise of plundering wrecked vessels, which had been
carried on in combination with the smuggler’s daring and dangerous
trade, particularly on the wild marsh coast south of Kent, and the
equally lonely Sussex cliffs beyond.

So audacious had the doings of these “free-traders” become, that a
brigade of cavalry was sent down into the old town of Rye, for the
purpose of overawing them, while, at the same time, a smart revenue
cutter, under the command of a young lieutenant of noted courage and
efficiency, was despatched to cruise about the coast, to act in concert
with the soldiers.

It was on a windy night in early autumn, when the sea was roaring
sullenly as it dashed against the sandstone cliffs, and echoed in the
caves and hollows worn by the waves, that a sharp knocking at the door
of Hurst Parsonage, a mile or two from the sea-coast, made Parson
Langney look up from the writing of his Sunday sermon, and glance
inquiringly at his daughter.

“Now, who will that be, Joan?” said he as he tilted his wig on to one
side of his head, and pursed up his jolly, round, red face with an air
of some anxiety.

“Nay, father, you have as many visitors that come for the ills of
the body as for the health of the soul!” cried Joan. “I can but hope
you han’t another long trudge across the marsh before you, like your
journey of a week back.”

At that moment there came another thundering knock at the little front
door, and a handful of stones and earth was flung against the window,
followed the next moment by a rattling of the panes.

Father and daughter, genial, portly parson, and creamy-skinned,
black-eyed maiden, sprang to their feet, and looked once at each other.

There were wild folk in these parts, and lonesome errands to be run
sometimes by Parson Langney, who had begun life as a surgeon, and who
had been lucky enough to be pitch-forked into a living which exactly
suited his adventurous habits, his love of fox-hunting, and his liking
for good wine and well-hung game.

Before the importunate summons could be repeated, Parson Langney had
come out of the little dining-parlor, and drawn the bolt of the front
door.

For Nance, the solitary housemaid of the modest establishment, was
getting into years, and inclined to regard a late visitor as a person
to be thwarted by being kept as long as possible waiting at the door.

“Hast no better manners than to do thy best to drive the glass from out
the panes?” asked he, as soon as he found himself face to face with
the intruder, who proved to be a sailor, in open jacket, loose shirt
and slops, and flat, three-cornered hat.

“Oons, sir, ’tis a matter of life and death!” said the man, as he
saluted the parson with becoming respect, and then pointed quickly back
in the direction of the sea, which could be seen faintly glistening in
the murky light of a clouded moon. “I’m from the revenue cutter in the
offing yonder, where one of my mates lies with a bullet in’s back, sent
there by one of those rascally smugglers in a fray we’ve had with them
but now. I’ve been in the village for help, but they say there’s no
doctor here but yourself. So I beg your honor’ll come with me, and do
what you can for him. And could you tell me of a woman that would watch
by him? For we’ve all got our hands full, and he’ll be wandering from
his wits ere morning.”

The parson, without a moment’s delay, had begun, by the help of his
daughter, to get into a rough brown riding-coat that hung from a nail
on the whitewashed wall.

“Why, there you have me out,” said he, as he buttoned himself up to
the chin, and put a round, broad-brimmed black hat, with a bow and a
twisted band of black cloth, tightly on to his somewhat rusty, grizzled
bob-wig. “For there’s none in these parts to nurse the sick as well as
my daughter Joan.”

“And sure I’m ready to go, father!” cried the girl, who, with the
nimbleness of a fawn, had darted back into the parlor and brought out
her father’s case of surgical instruments, as well as a diminutive
portable chest, containing such drugs and medicines as were in use at
the time.

“I’ll have on my hood in a tick of the clock.”

And by the time these words were uttered she had flown up the steep,
narrow staircase and disappeared round the bend at the top. The sailor,
who had stepped inside the porch, out of the wind and a drizzling rain
which had now begun to fall, was full of admiration and astonishment.

“Oons, sir, but ’twill be rough work for the young mistress!” said he.
“The water’s washing over the boat yonder, and we shan’t be able to
push off without getting wet up to the waist.”

“The lass is used to rough weather,” said Parson Langney, proudly.
“She’ll tell you herself that where her father can go she goes.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when Joan, wrapped in a rough
peasant’s cloak, and wearing a loose hood, came tripping down the
stairs.

Not a moment was lost. With a word to Nance, who had put in a tardy
appearance, the parson, with his daughter on one side and the sailor on
the other, started for the shore.

The wind was at its worst on the top of the hill where the Parsonage
stood. A very few minutes’ sharp walking brought them all to a lower
level, and within the shelter of a wild straggling growth of bushes and
small trees, which extended in patches from the village almost to the
edge of the crumbling cliffs.

Here they struck into a rough track made by the feet of the fishermen
and less inoffensive characters, and before they had gone far they saw
the hulk of the cutter, tossing like a little drifting spar amid the
foam of the waves, and showing dark against the leaden, faint moonlight
on the sea beyond. The parson asked a few questions, and elicited the
usual story—a contraband cargo was being run in a little creek just
where the cliffs broke off and the marsh began, when the lookout man on
the cutter spied the smugglers, and a boat was sent out to give chase.
There had been a smart brush, almost half in and half out of the water,
between the smugglers on the one side and the cutter’s men on the
other. But, on the whole, as the narrator was forced ruefully to admit,
the smugglers had got the best of it, as they all got away, leaving not
so much as a keg behind them, while one of the cutter’s men had had to
be carried off seriously wounded.

“Zoons, and it was main odd they did get off so well!” went on the
sailor, as if in some perplexity; “for the lieutenant himself landed
a bullet in the leg of one of the rascals, that should have brought
him down, if he hadn’t had the devil himself—saving your presence,
mistress—to help him.”

In the momentary pause which followed the man’s words, a sound suddenly
came to the ears of them all, above the whining of the wind in the
trees and bushes. It made Joan stop short for the space of a second,
and turn her eyes hastily and furtively in the direction of a little
dell on their left, where the bracken grew high about the trunks of a
knot of beeches.

“Eh!” cried the sailor, stopping short, also to listen. “What was that?
’Twas like the groan of a man.”

As he turned his head to listen, the parson and his daughter quickly
exchanged a glance expressive both of alarm and of warning. Then the
former seized the sailor by the arm, pushing onward towards the shore
at a better pace than ever.

“Sure,” said he, in a deep, strong, resonant voice that would have
drowned any fainter sound in the ears of his listener; “’tis but the
screech of a hawk. This woody ground’s alive with the creatures.”

The man cast at him a rather suspicious look, but said nothing, and
allowed himself to be led forward. So they hurried on, increasing their
pace when the ground began to dip again, until they followed the course
of a narrow and dark ravine, which cut its way through the cliffs to
the seashore. Here they had to pick their way over the stones and
bits of broken cliff, through which a brook, swollen by recent rains,
gurgled noisily on its way to the sea. The tide was going down, and
the thunder of the waves, as they beat upon the cliff’s base and echoed
in its hollows, grew fainter as they went. It was an easier matter
than they had expected to get into the boat which was waiting to take
them to the cutter; and though the tiny craft rose like a nutshell on
the crest of the waves, and sank into deep dells of dark water, they
reached the cutter safely, and scrambled, not without difficulty, up
the side of the little vessel, which was anchored not far from the land.

A man’s voice, full, clear, musical, a voice used to command, hailed
them from the deck—

“Ho, there! Hast brought a doctor?”

“Ay, capt’n, and a parson to boot!” answered the sailor who had been
despatched on this errand. “And a nurse that it would cure a sick man
to look at.”

It was at that moment that Joan, who was as agile as a kitten, stepped
on deck, and into the light of the lantern which the lieutenant himself
was holding. The young man saluted her, with surprise in his eyes, and
a thrill of some warmer feeling in his gallant heart. Joan curtsied,
holding on to the nearest rope the while.

“You are welcome on board, madam.”

“I thank you, sir.”

And the young people exchanged looks.

What he saw was a most fair maiden, tall and straight, graceful with
the ease and freedom of nature and good breeding, with sparkling brown
eyes, even white teeth, and a merry gleam belying the demureness of her
formal words.

What she saw was a young man only a little above the middle height,
stalwart and handsome, with quick eyes gray as the winter sea, and
a straight, clean-cut mouth, that closed with a look of indomitable
courage and determination.

“And yet, madam,” the lieutenant went on, leaving his subordinates to
help Parson Langney, who was portly, and less agile than his daughter,
up on to the deck, “they should not have brought you. For, in truth, we
are in no state to receive a lady on board. There has been ugly work to
do with those rascally smugglers.”

“I come not as a fine lady, sir,” retorted Joan, promptly; “but as a
nurse for a sick man. There is no state needed by a woman when she
comes but to do her duty.”

“Well said, madam; but I thank God your care will not be needed. The
poor fellow who was shot by those ruffians has taken a turn for the
better, and if the gentleman, whom I take to be your father, can but
perform a simple operation for him——”

“My father, sir, is a most skilled surgeon, and can perform any
operation,” answered Joan, interrupting him proudly.

Her look was so full of fire, the carriage of her head, in its graceful
hood, so superb, as she uttered the ingenuous words, that Lieutenant
Tregenna smiled a little as he saluted her and turned to the parson,
who, panting and in some disorder, had at length reached the deck.

The young man introduced himself, and they saluted each other, the
parson with some difficulty, since the continual motion of the vessel
was somewhat trying to his landsman’s legs. Then they went below, and
in a few minutes the young man returned alone.

Joan had been accommodated with a seat by the tiller, and protected
from wind and water by a tarpaulin, out of which her bonny face peeped
white in the moonlight.

“You have no work for me, sir?” she asked, as the lieutenant came up.

“None, madam; and even less for your good father than we feared might
be the case. He has found the bullet, and ’twill be an easy matter to
extract it, so he says; and after that, ’tis a mere matter of a few
days’ quiet to set the poor fellow on his legs again. So the rascals
escaped murder this time; not that one crime more or less would sit
hard on the conscience of such villains!”

For a moment Joan said nothing. Then she hazarded, in a very dry,
demure voice—

“But, sir, by what I heard, your side went as near committing murder as
the other. The man who brought us hither spoke of a bullet in the leg
of one of the fishermen.”

“Fishermen! Odds my life, madam, but that’s a very pretty way of
putting it! I hope you han’t the same kindness for the rascals that
seems to be strong among the country-folk here! Nay, I won’t do you
the injustice to suppose you could hold their villainies in aught but
abhorrence.”

“Whatever is villainous I hope I abhor very properly,” answered Joan
with spirit. “And the shooting down of one’s fellow-men I do hold one
of the greatest villainies of all.”

“When ’tis done by smugglers and plunderers of wrecks, no doubt you
mean,” retorted the lieutenant tartly.

“Plunderers of wrecks we have none in these parts, or at least none
that do the vile things that were done in times past,” said she
quickly. “And if you and the soldiers that are come to Rye had had
but the punishment of murderers and wreckers in your eye, you would
have met with more sympathy than is like to be the case if you mean to
repress what they call in these parts free-trade.”

“Well, madam, ’tis in truth the repression of ‘free-trade’ that we
have in our minds, and that we intend to carry out by the strength of
our arms. And I own I’m amazed to hear a gentlewoman of your sense
and spirit speak so leniently of a pack of thievish persons that live
by robbing his Majesty, and, indeed, the whole nation to which they
belong. I can but trust you speak in more ignorance than you imagine,
and that the doings of such ruffians as one Jem Bax, and another wretch
called Gardener Tom, of Long Jack and Bill Plunder, Robin Cursemother
and Ben the Blast have never come to your ears.”

Lieutenant Tregenna uttered each of these names very clearly, and with
solemn emphasis, standing so that he could see the expression of the
girl’s face as he mentioned them. To his great disgust, he perceived
that, though she kept her eyes down as if to conceal her feelings, she
was well acquainted with all these men, and appeared somewhat startled
to learn that he knew them so well.

“You have heard of these men?” he asked sharply.

“Yes, I’ve—I’ve heard of them.”

“You know them, perhaps?”

A moment’s pause.

“Ye—es, I know them.”

“I won’t affront you by asking whether you have any sympathy with them
and their methods. With men that live by defrauding the revenue, and
that scruple not to commit the most violent deeds in the exercise of
their unlawful calling?”

The lieutenant’s tone was harsh and arrogant as he asked these
questions. Miss Joan still sat with her eyelids down, giving him a new
view of her beauty, unconsciously proving to him that her face was
as handsome in repose, with the black eyelashes sweeping her rounded
cheeks, as it was when her features were animated with the excitement
of conversation. She was silent at first, and the lieutenant repeated
his last question somewhat impatiently. There was another slight pause,
however, and then a ponderous footstep was heard creeping up the
companion-ladder.

“There’s my father!” cried Joan, as she started up, in evident relief
at the opportune interruption.

Parson Langney, holding on valiantly to such support as came in his
way, staggered towards them, and ended by hurling himself against the
lieutenant with so much force that it was only by a most dexterous
movement that the younger and slimmer man escaped being flung into the
sea.

“I ask your pardon, captain,” cried the jolly parson, in good-humored
apology, as, with the assistance of the young folk, he reached a place
of safety. “Remember, you’re on your element, but I’m not on mine! Come
and dine with my daughter and me to-morrow, and you shall see that my
feet carry me well enough on the dry land.”

“I thank you, sir, and I would most willingly have accepted your kind
offer, but I’m engaged to dine with one who is, I believe, a neighbor
of yours—Squire Waldron, of Hurst Court.”

“Why, God bless my soul, so am I!” cried the parson, in amazement at
his own momentary lapse of memory. “Then, sir, I shall be happy to meet
you there; and I warrant you’ll be happy too, for the squire’s port
wine, let me tell you, is a tipple not to be despised by his Majesty
himself.”

“Ay, sir, and there at any rate I shall feel comfortable in the thought
that the wine has paid duty, which, I give you my word, is what I have
not felt in any other house in the neighborhood, public or private,
since I arrived here.”

But at these words a sudden and singular alteration had occurred in the
parson’s features. He seemed to remember the office of the person to
whom he was speaking, and to become more reserved.

“Ay, sir, certainly,” was all he said.

The lieutenant went on, with a return to the bitterness he had shown
while discussing the subject of smugglers with Miss Joan.

“And as the squire is a justice of the peace, whose duty it is to
punish evil-doers, I may at last hope, under his roof, to meet with
some sympathy with the objects of justice, such as one expects from all
right-thinking people.”

“Why, sir, certainly,” said Parson Langney again, somewhat more dryly
than before. And then, turning to his daughter, he added briskly,
“Come, Joan, we must be returning. The lad below will do very well now,
sir, with quiet, and the physic I have left for him. And I’ll pay him
another visit in a day or two.”

As he addressed these last words to the lieutenant, the parson was
already preparing to lower himself into the boat which had brought him.
He seemed in haste to be gone.

Lieutenant Tregenna then helped the young lady down into the boat,
giving her as he did so a somewhat piqued and resentful glance, which,
however, she demurely refused to meet with a return look from her own
black eyes until she was safely in the little boat beside her father.

Then, as the small craft was tossing amidst the spray from the larger
one, she did look up, with the struggling moonlight full upon her face,
at the handsome young commander, on whom a touch of youthful arrogance
sat not unbecomingly.

And Lieutenant Tregenna, as he saluted and watched the little boat,
and in particular its fair occupant, was irritated and incensed beyond
measure by what he took for an expression of merry defiance in her
bright eyes.




                              CHAPTER II.

                         A STARTLING INCIDENT.


Hurst Court, where Lieutenant Tregenna presented himself next day,
by Squire Waldron’s most obliging and pressing invitation, was an
ugly Georgian house just outside the village of Hurst, standing in an
extensive but little-cultivated park, much of which was in a primitive
condition of gorse and tangle and unclipped, undersized trees.

The mansion itself was not in the heart of the park, but was built near
the road, with nothing but a little stretch of grass and a wooden fence
between.

A great baying of hounds and noise of disputing men-servants were the
sounds which greeted the lieutenant when he arrived at the house.
Even before entering, he had formed, both from this circumstance and
from the extent of the stables, some idea of the sort of rollicking,
happy-go-lucky, rough country household he was to expect; and he had
scarcely set foot inside the wide and lofty hall when the onrush of
half a dozen barking dogs, the crowding into the hall of three or
four gawky men-servants, and the entrance of the squire himself, in
a scarlet coat, with a loud and hearty greeting on his lips, fully
confirmed this impression.

“Welcome, welcome to Hurst Court, lieutenant!” cried his host, seizing
him by the hand with a grip like a blacksmith’s, and promptly leading
him in the direction of the music-room, across a floor where a couple
of stag-hounds were lying lazily stretched out, and between walls laden
with antlers and the grinning pates of three or four score foxes.
“You should have come a couple of hours sooner; for the ladies have
a mind to show you their Dutch garden, and to regale you with some
music before we dine. I know not, sir, whether such diversions are
to your taste, or whether your liking runs more in the direction of
fox-hunting and the shooting of game, as mine does? I have no taste,
myself, for your finicking London modes; but I’m told that the young
bucks nowadays pride themselves more on cutting a fine figure in the
ladies’ drawing-rooms than in sitting a horse well and riding straight
to hounds.”

“Nay, squire, it will give me vast pleasure to hear the ladies’ music,”
said Lieutenant Tregenna, when his host’s volubility allowed him the
chance of answering. “’Tis a diversion one can enjoy but seldom so far
from town.”

“Nay, we have better diversions here than those,” said the squire
disparagingly. “But my wife and daughters will be prodigious pleased
that you are not of my way of thinking. For a stranger in these parts
is a mighty welcome arrival, I assure you, and like to be made much of.”

Indeed, it was quite perceptible to the lieutenant that there was a
flutter of excitement going on in the music-room up to the very moment
of his entrance; and the welcome he got from the squire’s wife and two
daughters was quite as sincere, though not so tempestuous, as that of
the host himself.

For Mrs. Waldron and the two young misses, her daughters, were quite as
much in love with the pleasures of the town as the husband and father
was with those of the country. And in dress, manner, conversation,
and tone they marked the difference between themselves and him as
ostentatiously as possible.

Thus, while the squire wore the old-fashioned Ramillies wig, with
its bush of powdered hair at the sides, and long pigtail tied at the
top and bottom with black ribbon, and the loosely-fitting scarlet
coat which he had worn for any number of years, his good wife and two
round-faced, simpering daughters were all attired in the latest modes
of the town.

They all three wore the loose sacque or _negligee_, which was then the
height of fashion; they tottered about in slim-heeled shoes, under huge
hoops which swayed as they walked; while their hair was all dressed in
the same way—knotted up tightly under the smallest and closest of caps,
making their heads look singularly small and mean, when compared with
the enormous width of their distended skirts.

They all seemed the most amiable of living creatures; and Lieutenant
Tregenna found at last the sympathy he wanted when he expressed that
horror and hatred of smugglers which was at present the ruling passion
of his mind. The squire had left him with the ladies, and he had been
entertaining them with an account of the adventure of the preceding
night.

“And I can assure you, madam,” he said to his hostess, when they had
hung attentively on his words, and cried, “Wretch!” “Villains!” “How
monstrous shocking!” at appropriate intervals, “that so deep-rooted has
this evil become, that even the parson and his young daughter appeared
to grieve more for the smuggler whom I wounded than they did for the
poor fellow whom the ruffians shot!”

“His daughter! Oh, do you mean Mistress Joan?” said Mrs. Waldron,
pursing her mouth a little. “Sure, sir, what would you expect from a
country-bred wench like that, who tramps the villages and moors with
her father like a man, and is almost as much among these fearsome
wretches, the smugglers, as if she were their own kin?”

“Oh, la, sir; you must know they call her ‘the curate,’” cried one of
the young ladies, tittering, and looking languishingly at the visitor
out of her little pink-rimmed eyes with the whitish eyelashes; “for
she’s quite as useful in his parish as he is.”

“And I’m sure ’tis a very rational diversion for a girl of her tastes,”
said her sister. “You must know, sir, that she has never seen a play,
nor any of the diversions of the town, and that she fills up her time
twittering on a dulcimer to her father, and has barely so much as heard
of the harpsichord.”

“I don’t wonder you was affronted by her Gothic behavior,” went on Mrs.
Waldron; “but sure ’tis very excusable in a girl who has no polish, no
refinement, and who takes no more care of her complexion than if she
was a dairymaid.”

Tregenna felt considerable surprise at the storm of reprobation which
he had brought down on the head of poor Joan. For he could not know
that the young men of the neighborhood, and even Bertram, the squire’s
son, all showed a most boorish preference for handsome, straight-limbed
Joan, with her free bearing and her ready tongue, over the fine ladies
of Hurst Court; and that, at the Hastings assemblies, and at such routs
as were given in the neighborhood, Joan had more partners than any one
else, though her gown was seldom of the latest mode, and her only fan
was one which had belonged to her grandmother.

“Nay; I honor and admire her for helping her father,” said the
lieutenant, hastily. “I did but grieve that a young lady of so much
spirit should take so wrong-headed a view of the matter.”

“Your consideration is wasted upon her, sir, indeed,” said Mrs.
Waldron. “But hush! here comes her father with the squire.”

There was no possibility of mistaking the loud, deep, cheery voice
of Parson Langney, which could be heard even above the barking of
the hounds, which was the first greeting given to every visitor. The
next moment the door opened, and Parson Langney, the squire, and his
son Bertram, entered, to be joined a few minutes later by a couple of
country gentlemen more clownish than their host.

Bertram Waldron was an unhappy cross between the country breeding of
his father and the town airs and graces of the ladies. For while he
affected the modish cut of the town in his clothes, swore the latest
oaths, and swaggered about with a great assumption of the manners of
the beau, his rusticity peeped out every moment in his gait, and in
his strong provincial accent.

When they all trooped into the dining-parlor, where a huge sirloin
was placed smoking on the table, it was not long before the stranger
perceived that the sympathy he had met with from the ladies was not
shared by the gentlemen.

Not only did they express but faint interest in his collision with
the smugglers, and profess the greatest incredulity as to the alleged
magnitude of their operations, but by the time the ladies had retired,
it began to be hinted to him pretty freely, as the decanters passed
round, that the less zeal he showed in the prosecution of his raids
against the “free-traders,” the more his discretion would be respected.

“Gad, sir; I don’t say theirs is an honest trade,” said the squire,
whose face assumed a purplish and apoplectic tint as the meal wore
on; “but I say that ’tis best to let sleeping dogs lie; and that your
soldiers will do a monstrous sight more harm than good by driving the
trade into wilder parts, where the fellows can be more daring and
more dangerous. And what I say to you, who are but a young man, and
hot with zeal, is this: that the easier you take things, the easier
things will take you. And if you won’t trust the advice of a man of my
experience—why, ask the parson there, and take his.”

“Gad’s my life, sir; but I can take no man’s advice who bids me do
aught but what seems to me my duty!” cried the young lieutenant with
fire. He was incensed at the laxity of morals, which he now perceived
to have permeated to every class of society in the neighborhood. “I’m
here, under the orders of his Majesty—the stringent orders—to put down
smuggling and the wrecking connected with it. And what I’m sent to do,
I’ll do, please God, no matter what the difficulties in my way may be,
nor what the dangers!”

His words were followed by a dead, an ominous silence.

The day was dying now, and the red fire that glowed and flickered
in the wide hearth showed strange lights and shadows on the painted
ceiling, the painted and paneled walls, the long spindle-legged
sideboard, where more wine was waiting for the jovial band at the
table.

The country gentleman, one and all, looked up at the ceiling during the
pause.

Before any one spoke, there came to the ears of all a sound which was
easily distinguished as the gallop of horses, accompanied by the loud
shouts of men, the cracking of whips, the creaking of heavy wheels.
Lieutenant Tregenna who was near the window, jumped up, and looked out,
as a wagon, piled high with kegs, and surrounded by a band of half a
dozen armed men on horseback, dashed past the house and up the hill
towards the village.

“Smugglers, as I live!” cried Tregenna, much excited, and turning to
attract the attention of the rest.

But not a man of them moved; not one so much as turned his head in the
direction of the window.

The blood flew to the young man’s brain. “Gentlemen!” cried he, as he
dashed across the room to the door; “you will excuse me. You, squire,
are a justice of the peace; and I must do my best to bring some of
these rascals before you, when, I doubt not, you will do your duty
towards them—and towards the king!”

With that he swung out of the heated room, seized his hat and his
heavy riding-coat which lay in the hall, and dashed down the lawn
cutting across to the left, just as a party of soldiers came riding
fast up the hill in full pursuit of the smugglers.

“A d——d coxcombical puppy!” cried one of the husky squires, as he
watched the stalwart figure of the young lieutenant making his way
rapidly past the window. “What does he want setting up his joodgment
against ours, and presuming for to think he’s a better subject of his
Majesty than what we be?”

“Let ’un be! Let ’un be!” said the third squire, grimly. “There’s no
need to worrit ourselves about him. If he doesn’t get a bullet in his
head before many days be over, why, you may eat me for a Frenchman, and
bury my bones at the cross-roads.”

And the rest of the company, with only one protesting voice, that of
Parson Langney, who said the lad had no fault but youth, and he hoped
he would come to no hurt, filled up their glasses and smacked their
lips over the famous port, and never asked themselves whether it had
paid duty; for, indeed, there was no mystery about that.




                             CHAPTER III.

                           AN ALLY AT LAST.


The soldiers were rattling on in pursuit of the smugglers at such a
good pace that Lieutenant Tregenna only reached the road in time to see
them turn the next corner and disappear.

He followed, however, at the best pace he could, hoping to be of use
in finding out the direction the smugglers had taken. He had not yet
had time to become acquainted with the inland part of the neighborhood,
or he would have known that, by dashing across the park in a northerly
direction, he could have reached the village before the soldiers, who
had to follow the windings of the road.

As it was, when he reached the first of the straggling cottages of the
picturesque Sussex village, the horsemen were out of sight; and the
women and children of the neighborhood seemed to be all at their doors
and windows, evidently discussing the recent invasion with boisterous
mirth.

As Tregenna was not in uniform, he flattered himself that he might go
up the village unrecognized, and perhaps obtain some scraps of valuable
information; but whether they were better posted up than he supposed,
or whether the mere sight of a stranger awoke suspicion in the shrewd
women-folk, it was certain that as soon as they caught sight of him
they checked their volubility, and stood, with their hands on their
hips, staring at him with broad amusement still on their faces, or else
dropped a curtsey with demure and sudden respectfulness, which was in
itself somewhat suspicious.

However, he thought he would make at least an attempt to obtain some
information. So he addressed himself to a coarse-featured woman who
might have been any age between twenty-five and forty-five, who stood
wiping her hands on her apron at the door of one of the cottages, and
who, by the curtsey she dropped and the good-humored expression of her
face, seemed to promise that she would at least give a civil answer.

“Was that a troop of soldiers I caught sight of coming into the
village?” asked he, as indifferently as possible, when he had returned
her salutation with deferential courtesy.

“Maybe it were, sir,” replied the woman promptly, with demure
cheerfulness; “but I doan’t rightly know. I were out at back yonder
when I heard the noise.” She glanced out of the corners of her eyes at
an older woman outside the door of the next cottage. “Old Jenny yonder
can tell ye more’n me, sir,” added she slyly; “she’s been there all the
toime.”

Tregenna, concealing the mortification he felt, turned to Jenny.

But her stolid face offered little hope of success.

“Ay,” said she, in a voice like a man’s, “I’ve been sittin’ an’
standin’ about here, I ’ave, all mornin’; but I han’t seen naught.”

“You haven’t seen a wagon full of smugglers, maybe, coming through at
full gallop?” cried Tregenna, losing all patience with the mendacious
females. “Nor a troop of soldiers after them?”

But the sarcasm was lost upon the good lady, who was chewing a quid of
tobacco, which he well knew to be contraband.

“Noa, I han’t seen aught o’ that,” she replied imperturbably, looking
him steadily in the eyes the while. “Maybe I were in a dose, sir, or
had the sun in my eyes as they passed.”

He did not trust himself to speak to her again, but went on up the
village, between the groups of straggling red cottages with their
thatched roofs overgrown with moss or lichen, noting everywhere the
sidelong looks cast at him by such of the women as did not shut
themselves in their cottages at his approach.

The very urchins, chubby boys of eight and nine, grinned at him
maliciously, and helped to give him confirmation of the fact that he
was in an enemy’s country.

When the ground began to rise again, at the end of the village, he came
to a point where three roads met, and where the high hedges and another
patch of wooded ground made it impossible to see far in any direction.
As all three roads were in a most villainous condition, with deep ruts
and pools and furrows of caked mud, and as all three bore marks of
horses’ hoofs the lieutenant knew that it was useless to go further.
So he returned through the village in a highly irritated state of mind.

The excitement had subsided a little by this time, and most of the
gossips had resumed their household occupations. There was a group of
suspicious-looking loafers about the door of each of the two inns; but
although it seemed to Tregenna that the word smuggler was writ large
across the bloated features of every one, there was nothing to be done
but to look as if he ignored their existence.

Thus, in the very worst of humors, he again reached the entrance of the
village, and, after a moment’s hesitation, struck up to the left in the
direction of the Parsonage, at the garden gate of which he saw handsome
Mistress Joan in conversation with another woman.

He was still ostensibly bound on a mission of inquiry, yet it is
doubtful whether he hoped to get much information from Joan, who had
clearly shown herself to be one of the enemy. Still he strode up
the hill with a resolute step, and saluted her in the most abrupt,
business-like, and even somewhat offended manner.

“Your pardon, Mistress Joan, for intruding. But ’tis in the
performance of my duty. Can you inform me whither the smugglers be gone
that rode by just now with the soldiers after them?”

“How should I be able to tell you that, sir? Do you take me for a
smuggler myself?” asked Joan, demurely.

He did not at once answer. The girl looked even handsomer, so it seemed
to him, in the dying light of day than she had done by the light of
moon and lantern on the preceding evening. The creamy tints of her
skin melted into bright carnation on her cheeks; and he thought, with
a flash of amusement, of the strictures of the powdered and painted
ladies of Hurst Court upon her rustic complexion. Her dress, too,
pleased his taste better than theirs had done. She wore neither hood
nor cap, and her abundant brown hair was rolled back from her forehead
in a style which was at that period somewhat old-fashioned, but which
gave infinitely more dignity to the head than the tightly screwed-up
knot of the fashionable ladies. She wore no hoop or next to none, and
her full skirt, of some sort of gray homespun, fell in graceful folds
around her. A long fine white apron reached to the hem of her dress,
and her bodice was adorned with a frilled kerchief of soft white
muslin, and with full gathers of muslin just below the elbow. The dress
was neat, simple, eminently fresh and becoming.

Perhaps Tregenna’s masculine eye did not take in all these details; but
he was conscious that the whole effect was pleasing beyond anything
feminine he had ever seen, and vastly superior to the modish charms of
the Hurst Court ladies. He gave himself, however, little time for these
reflections before a glance at the house behind her suggested to him a
thought which he immediately put into the most matter-of-fact words.

“You stand high here, madam; that tower to the east of your house will
give you a view over many miles. Will you favor me with your permission
to go up thither for a few minutes, that I may take a reconnaissance of
the country?”

By the startled look which instantly came into Joan’s gray eyes, by
the crimson flush which mounted to her forehead, Tregenna saw, to his
intense annoyance, another proof that her sympathy with his foes went
beyond the passive stage.

“Oh, you can’t go into the tower, sir; at least——” She hesitated a
moment, evidently looking for an excuse, and then went on—“at least,
in my father’s absence. If you will come hither to-morrow, or—or——”
Tregenna noticed that at this point she sought the eyes of the woman
with whom she had been talking, and who had withdrawn respectfully to a
distance of some paces on his approach. “Or the day after. ’Tis a fair
view, certainly, when there’s no mist on the marshes; but hardly worth
the trouble of climbing our staircase, which is encumbered by much
lumber of my father’s,” she ended somewhat lamely, but recovering her
composure.

Tregenna did not at once answer, but he glanced at the house with a
scrutinizing eye. The western portion of the building, which was most
modest in dimensions, had been the banqueting-hall of a mansion as far
back as the time of King John. It had since that time gone through many
vicissitudes, and was now divided into small chambers, with the ancient
king-post of the banqueting-hall spreading its wide beams through the
upper story. On the east side of the dwelling an addition had been
made, taller than the more ancient portion, and crowned by a gabled
roof of red tiles.

Over the whole house there hung a rich mantle of glossy dark ivy, which
had grown into a massive tree over the more ancient part, and stretched
its twining branches as far as the higher roof of the newer portion,
leaving little to be seen of the structure but the windows, the knotted
panes of which glistened like huge dewdrops in the setting sun.

Tregenna drew himself up. He took it for granted she did not intend
him to use the Parsonage as a watch-tower, to descry the course the
smugglers had taken.

“You are afraid, I suppose,” said he sharply, “that I might find out
the direction in which lie the haunts of ‘free-trade?’”

Joan drew herself up in her turn. “Nay, sir,” said she quietly, “those
haunts are reached by now, I doubt not; and your friends the soldiers
will ere long be returning.”

“May be with a few of _your_ friends, the free-traders, at their
saddle-bow, madam,” retorted the lieutenant hotly.

“Sir, you are insulting,” said Joan.

“Nay, madam, there is no inference to be drawn from your speech and
behavior in this matter but the one I draw.”

“I wish you a good evening, sir,” replied Joan, as, flashing upon him
one look of indignant pride from her great brown eyes, she made him a
most stately curtsey, with her arms folded across and her head erect,
and sailed back into the house between the holly-bushes and the clipped
yews.

There was nothing for Tregenna to do but to retire, after having
returned her curtsey with a deep bow of corresponding stiffness. As
he turned to descend the hill, he had to pass the woman who had been
talking with Joan, and who had made way for him to converse with the
young lady. He glanced at her in passing, but noted only that she was
apparently of the small-farmer class, youngish rather than young, with
a quiet, stolid country face, and sinewy, rustic hands and arms.

Her dress was that of her class, consisting of a thick dark stuff skirt
drawn through the placket-holes, a coarse white apron, frilled white
cap, a kerchief knotted on the breast, and long close mittens. She wore
buckled shoes with stout heels, and carried a big basket on her arm.

There was altogether nothing more remarkable about her than an air of
extreme cleanliness, neatness, and dignified respectability.

She dropped a curtsey to the gentleman as he went by, which he returned
with a touch of the hat and a curt “Good evening.” He was in no mood
for any unnecessary exchange of civilities; for he judged by the
glance Joan had thrown in the direction of this woman that, demurely
respectable as she looked, she shared the universal sympathy with the
wrong-doers whom it was his mission to root out of the land.

He had scarcely reached the bottom of the hill by the lane which
formed an acute angle with the village street, when the soldiers,
with the brigadier at their head, came trooping slowly through the
village on their return journey. Alas! they had no captured outlaws
at their bridle; they looked tired, hot, dispirited; their commander
was swearing lustily, after the military fashion of the times; and the
women of the village, keen-witted enough to guess that the squadron
would be in an ill-humor, kept within doors, and satisfied their
curiosity by furtive peeps from behind the drapery of their windows.

The brigadier perceived the lieutenant, called “Halt,” in a guttural
voice, to his men, and proceeded to unfold his grievances, with a
plentiful interlarding of strange oaths.

It was the old story that Tregenna knew so well: nobody had seen the
smugglers; nobody had heard them; nobody had the least idea that there
were such people about, or could give a suggestion as to the way they
had gone.

“Ods my life, sir, we got to the river through following what I took
for their trail; but there was no bridge, and I knew no means of
getting across it, since the water appeared to be high and the stream
swift. So, sir, the d——d rascals may e’en be at t’other end of the
county by this, and curse me if I see how they’re to be got at, when
every wench and every child in the place is on their side—damme!”

While he thus railed on, Tregenna became suddenly aware that he had an
attentive listener in the person of the respectable-looking woman with
the basket, who had evidently followed the lieutenant down the hill,
and who now stood close to the bridle of the brigadier’s charger, whose
nose she presently began to caress with her broad brown hand.

The brigadier, incensed by what he considered a piece of gross
impertinence on the part of one of the country-folk, drew back his
horse with a jerk, and uttered an oath, bursting the next moment into a
not very refined reproof for her temerity. The woman remained however
entirely unmoved by it, and as the horse retreated, she followed him
up, until she again stood close to the bit he was champing.

“May I make so bold as give him a drink of water, sir?” asked she, in
a pleasant, deep voice, with less of the rough country accent than one
would have expected from her. “Sure you’ve had a long, hard ride, and
one should be merciful to one’s beast.”

Tregenna glanced at her with more interest than before. When she spoke,
there was a certain quiet authority about her, most proper to the
mistress of a farmhouse; and he perceived that she was younger by some
years than he had supposed, not more than eight and twenty perhaps,
and that her features, though not handsome, had a homely attraction of
their own when animated by the action of speaking.

The brigadier, who, true to his profession, looked upon himself as a
rake of the first water, cocked his hat, put his hand to his side,
and leered at her with a roguish air, which was, in truth, not so
fascinating in a gentleman of his portly build and purplish complexion
as he fancied.

“You wenches in these parts are kinder to the beasts than to their
riders, egad!” said he, with a shake of the head that set his bob-wig
wagging merrily. “You don’t offer me a drink; and if I was to beg such
a favor of you as a word to tell me where to find the smugglers, I’ll
be sworn you’d give me a stare like the rest of ’em, and vow you’d
never heard of the creatures!”

The woman listened to him with modest gravity, her face quite stolid,
her eyes on the horse. Then she said, in a quiet, even tone, without
either prudery or coquetry, but with an air of being much interested by
what he said—

“Well, sir, I’m not going to tell you that. I know to my cost the
things that go on in these parts, and that there’s many a man ruined
for an honest calling by being drawn in with these folks. You see,
sir, it be in the air, and they breathe it in from childhood up, so to
speak.”

“That’s it; that’s it, my good woman!” cried the brigadier
enthusiastically. “Egad, my lass, you’re the first person I’ve met in
these parts to admit even so much. Now tell me, think you not ’twould
be better for you all if this thing, this free-trade, as they falsely
call it, was rooted out?”

“Ay, sir, I do think so,” said the woman earnestly. “And if I thought
you’d do your work without too rough a hand, I’d lead you to their
haunts myself.”

“You would? You would?” cried the brigadier, with great eagerness.
“Well, then, you may rely on me. If you’ll but take me to the spot
where they harbor, I’ll be as gentle as a lamb with the ruff—I should
say, with the poor misguided fellows.”

“Come, sir, then, with me,” said the woman, as she at once began to
lead the way back through the village at a smart pace.

The brigadier turned his horse, and commanded his men to follow, and in
a few minutes every horseman was again lost to sight at the bend of the
road.

Lieutenant Tregenna, who had heard this colloquy, had been inclined to
think, from the woman’s manner, that in her indeed they had got hold of
a decent-minded person who had no sympathy with the thieves.

But happening to glance up at the latticed window under the eaves
of the nearest cottage he caught sight of two faces, a man’s and a
woman’s, in convulsions of laughter. A cursory examination of such
other windows as were near enough for him to see revealed similar
phenomena.

And the question darted into his mind: Was the respectable-looking
woman a friend of the smugglers? And was it her intention to lead the
soldiers into an ambuscade?




                              CHAPTER IV.

                            FRESH OUTRAGES.


Tregenna debated with himself whether he should run after the brigadier
and put him on his guard. But a moment’s reflection convinced him that
a word of warning from a young man like himself would be received
with resentment rather than with gratitude by the old soldier. After
all, the soldiers were well armed, and were presumably prepared for
emergencies.

So he turned his back on the village, and made his way over the cliffs
to the creek where the gig was lying to take him to the cutter.

It was at the mouth of the little ravine down which Parson Langney and
his daughter had gone on the preceding evening.

It was dark in this cleft between the sandstone hills, dark and
cool, with a breeze that rushed through from the sea and whistled in
the scrubby pines and through the arching briers of the blackberry
bushes. The stream which flowed swiftly down, making little trickling
waterfalls from rock to rock, was swollen by recent rains, and made
little patches of morass and mire at every few steps. The lieutenant
found the water over his ankles half a dozen times on his way down. He
had just come in sight of the opening where the gig lay when, drawing
his right foot out of a mossy swamp that squelched under his tread, he
saw, with a sudden chill, that his boot was dyed a deep, murky red.

Scenting another outrage, he uttered an exclamation, and looked about
him. Trickling down the side of the ravine into the mud and water of
the little patch of swamp was a dark red stream—and the stream was
blood.

He uttered a cry, a call; no one answered. The next moment he was
scrambling up the side of the ravine.

At the top, lying in a patch of gorse that fringed the edge of the
broken cliff, was the body of a coastguardsman, his head nearly severed
from his body, and with the blood still oozing from the ghastly wound
which had killed him.

The poor fellow’s hands and limbs were ice cold; he had been dead some
time. A sheath-knife, such as sailors use, apparently the weapon with
which the murder had been effected, lay among the bushes a few paces
off.

The lieutenant ground his teeth. Not thieves alone, but murderers,
were these wretches with whom the whole country-side was in league.
He picked up the knife, with the dried blood upon it; there was a
name scratched roughly on the blade, “Ben Bax.” It was a name new to
Tregenna, and strong as the clue seemed, it inspired him with but faint
hopes of bringing the murderer to punishment. The whole neighborhood
would conspire to shield the author of the outrage; the very fact of
the knife, with the name on it, having been left behind, showed with
what cynical impunity the wretches went about their work.

However, here was at last a deed which not even Squire Waldron could
excuse, not even Joan Langney could palliate. The man was dead; there
was nothing to be done for him. But information must be given of the
murder without delay.

Tregenna was near enough to the gig to hail the men in charge of it,
and these hurried up to the spot without delay.

They knew of the raid, but not of the murder. During the lieutenant’s
absence a suspicious-looking sloop had been sighted at anchor some
little distance away. A watch had been kept upon her from the cutter,
and a boat seen to push off and make for the marshes.

The cutter’s crew had manned a boat and given chase, only to find that
they had been drawn off in pursuit of a decoy craft, containing nothing
contraband, while the men remaining on the cutter had the mortification
to see a second boat, piled high with kegs and full of smugglers armed
to the teeth, row up the creek, land crew and cargo, and then return to
the sloop, exchanging shots with the cutter’s men, without effect on
either side.

The cutter’s men, however, had seen nothing of the murder, for the
irregularities of the ground and the scrubby undergrowth of gorse and
bramble had hidden the struggle from their sight, though, but for
this circumstance, the spot would have been within the range of their
telescopes.

Lieutenant Tregenna lost not a moment in returning to Hurst, to report
the outrage to Squire Waldron, whose lenity could not afford to excuse
such a barbarous act as this on the part of his free-traders.

He went by the shortest way this time, taking the foot-track over
the hills, by which Parson Langney and his daughter had come on the
previous night.

Perhaps the ghastly sight he had just witnessed had sharpened his
faculties; for before he had gone far over the worn grass of the path
he caught sight of some marks which arrested his attention. Stooping to
look at them, and then kneeling on the short turf, peering closely at
the ground, he soon satisfied himself that the marks were bloodstains,
and that they followed the course he was taking.

Feeling sure that he was on the track of another piece of the
free-traders’ sanguinary work, he went back on his steps, and traced
the bloodstains to a thicket by the side of the footpath, where there
were traces, in broken branches and down-trodden bracken, of the
wounded creature, whether man or animal, having hidden or rested.

And then it flashed suddenly across his mind that it was near this
spot that the smuggler must have stood at whom he himself had, on the
previous evening, fired with what he had believed at the time to be
good effect.

If this were so, and if this were the trail of the wounded man, he
might be able, by following it up, to find at least one of the guilty
fraternity, and bring him to justice.

Fired with this belief, which was like a ray of golden hope in the
black despair which had been settling on him, he turned again, and
following the track of the bloodstains, which were dry, although
evidently recent, he went steadily on in the direction of Hurst,
looking always on the ground, and not noticing at first whither the
track was leading him.

It was with a start and a sudden chill that he presently recognized,
on raising his head when the ground began to rise, that it was to the
Parsonage that the marks led.

To the Parsonage—where he had stood talking to Joan Langney that
afternoon! For a moment he felt sick, and faltered in his purpose. He
did not want to bring shame, disgrace, upon that house of all others.
Yet what was to be done? If she and her father were indeed harboring
one of the ferocious pack with whom he and his men had been in conflict
on the preceding night, why should he hesitate to accuse them of the
fact, and to demand that the rascal should be handed over to justice?

He was sorry to have to do it, almost passionately sorry; for even
Joan’s prevarication, her defense of the outlaws, her defiance of
himself, had not availed to destroy the admiration he felt for the
handsome, fearless maiden who was her father’s right hand, and who was
ready to dare all dangers in the cause of what she considered her duty.

But, then, there was his own duty to be considered. And that demanded
that he should seize the smallest clue to the authors of the outrages
which followed one another thick and fast, and showed an almost
inconceivable audacity on the part of the smugglers.

He marched, therefore, after a few minutes’ hesitation, boldly upwards,
and following the track of the bloodstains still, found himself, in a
few minutes, not at the front of the house, where he had been that
morning, but at a garden-gate at the back.

He lifted the latch and entered. The bloodstains were faintly visible
in the dusk, on the gravel of the path that took him up to the back
door of the house.

And there, on the very doorstep, was a keg of contraband brandy.

The sight of this gave Tregenna fresh nerve; and he knocked with his
cane loudly at the door.

It was opened by Joan herself.

It was almost dark by this time; but he saw the look of horror and
dismay which flashed across her face when she saw who her visitor was.
Her glance passed quickly to the keg on the step below, but only for a
moment. Then, without appearing to notice that very suspicious article,
she addressed Tregenna, not discourteously, but with decided coldness.

“What is your pleasure, sir? Are you come to see my father? He is not
yet returned.”

“I am not come to see your father, madam, but another person who is
harboring beneath this roof; the smuggler who is taking refuge here
from the consequences of his ill deeds.”

She was taken by surprise, and the look which crossed her candid face
betrayed her.

“’Tis in vain for you to deny it, madam,” pursued Tregenna, boldly,
“for I have proof of what I say.”

There was a short pause, and then Joan said steadily—

“I do not deny it.”

Certain as he had felt of the truth of his surmise, Tregenna felt that
his breath was taken away for a moment by this cool confession. He was
shocked, grieved, through all the triumph he felt at having, as he
thought, at last run his prey to earth.

“You deny not, madam,” he went on, in an altered voice, “that you have
beneath your roof a thief, and if not a murderer, at least an associate
and accomplice of murderers?”

“A murderer! No, I will not believe that,” cried Joan, warmly.

“Well a smuggler, if that name please you better, though in truth
there’s mighty little difference between them. I am come, then, madam,
to see this smuggler, and to endeavor to find out whether he is the man
that cruelly stabbed to death a poor coastguardsman but a couple or so
of hours ago.”

“It was not he,” said Joan, hastily. “He hath been here since last
night.”

“Ah! then he was engaged in the fight with us last night; and ’twas he,
doubtless, whom I shot in the leg as he got away.”

“And is not the wound, think you, sir, a sufficient injury to have
inflicted on him, that you must relentlessly track him down for fresh
punishment?”

“Madam, ’tis no matter of personal feeling; ’tis in the king’s name,
and on the king’s behalf, I charge you to give him up to justice.”

“Then, in the name of justice and of humanity, I refuse!” said Joan,
passionately, as she threw her handsome head back, and fixed upon him
a look of proud defiance. “The man who takes shelter in my father’s
house, should be safe there, were he the greatest criminal on earth;
and how much more when he comes bleeding from a wound inflicted by the
men who should be our protectors!”

Exasperated as Tregenna was by the difficulties which she put in his
way, he could not help admiring her spirit. He answered more mildly
than he would have done had her defiant speech been uttered by another
mouth—

“Nay, madam, you will not suffer us to protect you from the wrong-doers
and their works; you side with them, against us and the law!”

“Who is that talks of the law?” cried a cheery voice from the narrow
hall behind Joan.

And Parson Langney, in a very genial mood, having but just returned
from Hurst Court and the merrymakers there, presented himself at the
doorway where his daughter made way for him.

“You have a smuggler here, sir, whom I beg you to give up to justice,”
said Tregenna. “I can prove that he hath taken a foremost part in a
raid and a fight with my men; and sure Miss Joan may rest satisfied
with what you have done for him, and let justice take its course now.”

The parson glanced at his daughter with a change of countenance—

“Well,” said he, “the soldiers are at Hurst Court; bring them hither,
and make a search of my house, if you please. You will find but a poor
fellow that lies sick with a wound in his leg. I fear me poor Tom will
never live to take his trial if he be moved from where he lies with the
fever that is on him now.”

“He shall be used with all gentleness, sir, I promise you. And sorry am
I to have to intrude upon you and your kind charity in this manner. But
you are aware, sir, that I must do my duty.”

“Ay, sir, as we do ours,” replied the parson, sturdily. “We ask not
what a man has done when he comes to us for help. We ask but what we
can do for him, be he friend or be he foe.”

“I know it, sir. I have experienced your kindness—and Mistress Joan’s.”

The young lady now stood a little in the background, looking anxious
and perturbed. She hardly glanced at him when he uttered her name.

“You will pardon me, sir, for being forced to incommode you thus.”

“You must do your duty, sir,” retorted Parson Langney, dryly.

“And you will admit us when we come with a warrant?”

“Ay, sir.”

Tregenna bowed and withdrew. Halfway down the garden path he heard a
noise behind him, and turned. Parson Langney was busy rolling the keg
of brandy into his house. On meeting the lieutenant’s eyes, the parson,
hardly pausing in his labor, sang out with much simplicity—

“’Tis but the physician’s fee, sir. And sure, the laborer is worthy of
his hire!”

And with that, he gave the keg a final roll, got it within doors, and
drew the bolt.




                              CHAPTER V.

                            A LOAD OF HAY.


Lieutenant Tregenna was quite prepared to find the gentlemen at Hurst
Court in a very merry mood, after the hours which they had spent at the
dinner-table since his abrupt departure.

He sent in his message that his business was urgent, and chose to wait
in the great hall, with the staghounds sniffing about his ankles,
rather than have to discuss small-talk with the ladies, as the old
butler wished him to do.

In a few minutes Squire Waldron, not very steady as to gait, or clear
as to utterance, came out of the dining-parlor, followed by the
brigadier, who was less coherent still.

The news of the murder of the coastguardsman, however, startled them
both into sobriety; and the squire made less difficulty than Tregenna
had expected about making out a warrant for the apprehension of the
one man whom he had tracked down.

“What’s his name, say you?” asked the squire, who had conducted his
companions into the study, through the walls of which they could hear
the stertorous snoring of the other guests, who had fallen asleep,
whether upon or under the table Tregenna could only guess.

“I know only that he is called Tom,” replied Tregenna, who remembered
that the parson had uttered that name.

“Ah, then ’twill be ‘Gardener Tom,’ as they call him, as fine a
lad as ever you clapped eyes on,” almost sighed the squire, as he
began to make out the warrant, not without erasures, in a decidedly
‘after-dinner’ handwriting. “Poor Tom, poor Tom! You will not have him
moved to-night, general, and jolt a man in a fever across the marshes
to Rye?”

“Egad, squire, since he will certainly be hanged, what signifies a
jog more or less to his rascally bonesh?” retorted the brigadier
ferociously.

The warrant made out, and the soldiers summoned from the servants’
hall, where they had been regaled by the squire’s command, the
lieutenant and the brigadier took leave of their host, and started from
the house without loss of time, Tregenna keeping pace on foot with the
officer’s charger, while the soldiers followed.

The brigadier was in the highest spirits, and was inclined to look down
upon Tregenna’s capture, and upon his methods of work.

“’S’no use, my lad, no mortal use,” he said, laying down the law
with vigor, and trying to sit straight upon the saddle so that his
gesticulating arm should not overbalance him, “to try t’ get on in
anything without th’ women! Now, I alwaysh make up to th’ women!” he
went on, with a wink and a roguish leer; “and they’re going to pull me
through thish time, as they’ve done a hundred timesh afore! Did you
see me with that lass?” he went on, resting his hand upon his hip, and
cocking his hat knowingly. “That lass that went up the village with me?”

“A decent-looking woman, that has the appearance of a farmer’s wife or
daughter?” said Tregenna, somewhat dryly.

“Ay, that’s she. Name’s Ann Price, keepsh house for her brother, who’s
a farmer living a little way inland yonder. Forget name of place.
Squire told me all about her. Fine woman, sir; doosed fine woman;
sh’perior woman, too, monstrous sh’perior. She’s going to put me on the
track of the beggars; took me up the hill, and showed me the way to one
of their haunts, that she did, sir. Though in these parts one wouldn’t
have thought she’d ha’ dared do it, sir; and she wouldn’t if I hadn’t
known how to wheedle it out of her!”

“You don’t think, general, she was playing you false?”

“False! No, sir. I’m too devilish artful to be played tricks with. No,
sir; I played with her as a cat plays with a mouse, and led her on so
far that she can’t draw back. She is to come and see me at my quarters
in Rye next market day, and—” he paused a moment to give a fatuous
chuckle—“if I don’t get out of her afore she goes back every damned
thing I want to know, why, sir, then they may court-martial me for a
d-d-d-damned blunderer, sir!”

Tregenna did not attempt to betray further his doubts as to the woman’s
good faith. But when they reached the angle where the road through the
village was joined by the by-road up to the Parsonage, and he saw a
woman’s figure which he thought he recognized at the door of one of
the cottages, he dropped behind, and let the brigadier, who had the
warrant, and the soldiers, go up to the Parsonage without him.

As he had supposed, the woman who had attracted his attention proved
indeed to be Ann Price, who now wore a long round cloak of full pleats,
with a hood attached to it, and who appeared to be waiting for some one.

It was so dark by this time that the poor oil-lamp over the door of
the little thatched inn opposite made a small patch of light in the
miry roadway; into this patch, while the woman still stood waiting,
and Tregenna watched her, came, reeling from the inn-door, a tall,
brawny, muscular man, in a rough fisherman’s dress, wearing on his head
the long, knitted, tasseled cap of his kind. He had a couple of huge
pistols stuck in his belt, which showed under the flaps of his loose,
open coat; and his whole appearance betrayed the unmistakable fact
that he was no peaceful seafarer, but an active participator in the
contraband trade of the neighborhood.

Crossing the road with an unsteady gait, and uttering the while a
chuckling, coarse laugh, he made his way towards the woman, who, by a
quick movement, avoided his close approach.

“Why, Ann, my lass, what’s to do that thou’rt grown too nice to give a
greeting to a friend, and thy cousin to boot? Is’t for yon knave Tom
thou’rt grieving? Ods life, but he’s no fit match for thee; thou’lt
never wed with a landsman, thou, when there’s a better man ready, eh,
lass?”

And with that he steadied himself, ran towards her, intercepted her as
she would have gone through the alley between the cottages, and seized
her roughly by the cloak.

“Coom, lass, no airs with me!” he said, in an angry tone, as she tried,
to wrench her cloak away from his grasp. “Thou canst keep thy coyness
for the soldier-chaps.”

“Have done, Ben!” cried Ann, imperiously, but in a low voice. “Dost
want to have the soldiers after thee? They’re nigh enough!”

“What care I for the fules in red? or thou either, cousin Ann? Come,
now, one kiss, lass, and I’ll be gone.”

Seeing that the man, who was a hulking rascal some six feet high, and
broad in proportion, was plainly preparing to take by force what he
could not get by coaxing, Tregenna hurried up to rescue the woman from
her too persistent admirer.

To his surprise, however, before he came up with the disputants, Ann
suddenly struck out with her right fist straight from the shoulder,
caught the unsteady Ben unawares, and landed him flat on his back in
the mud in the middle of the road.

“Well done!” cried Tregenna, involuntarily below his breath.

“Get up, Ben!” cried Ann, as it were apologetically, and without the
least resentment. “Thou shouldst not ha’ crossed me, lad.”

Ben was sitting up, and swearing the most appalling oaths. Perceiving
Tregenna, and hearing his ejaculation, he was seized with a sudden
access of brutal ferocity; and with a yell of rage he clapped his hand
to his belt, drew out one of the huge pistols he wore, and, pointing it
at the lieutenant, would have fired at him, if Ann had not sprung into
the middle of the roadway with astounding agility, and jerked up the
weapon.

“Up, up!” cried she, in a low voice; “up and begone. You must do no
more mischief to-night.”

Ben continued to swear, but he obeyed her, getting up slowly and with
difficulty, and meekly suffering her to strip off his coat, which she
put into his hands, telling him to get the hostess of the Frigate to
cleanse it for him. This command also he took with docility; but once
more catching sight of Tregenna as he turned to re-enter the inn, he
shook his fist at him, and growled out something which sounded like a
threat of settling arrears between them on some future occasion.

When he had disappeared within the hospitable doors of the Frigate,
whence issued a great noise of singing, shouting, and hoarse laughter,
Ann turned with some appearance of impatience to the lieutenant.

“Why are you not with your friends, the soldiers, searching the
parson’s house, yonder?” she asked shortly.

He did not tell her the truth, that he was suspicious of her, and was
keeping watch on her movements, wondering for whom she was waiting. He
only said—

“There are enough of them to perform that simple office. And I am loath
to incommode Mistress Joan, by forcing upon her more intruders than can
do the task there is to do.”

“Nay, then, you should return to your ship, sir; for there be a wild
sort of characters about to-night, and none too sober. Your person is
known, too, and you may chance to get a bullet through you, which will
further neither the king’s cause nor your own, I reckon.”

“I thank you for the advice, mistress,” said Tregenna, who was more
interested in this grave woman with the quiet manners, low voice,
and tranquil air of authority, the more he saw of her. “But ’tis my
business to carry my life in my hand; and truly the vicinity of a woman
as quick of eye and ready of hand as yourself is as safe a one as I
could wish.”

But Ann Price shook her head. “I might not always be so fortunate,”
said she. “Besides, I must be stirring myself. I have another two miles
to trudge to get to my mother’s home.”

“If my escort would be any protection to you, which, perhaps, you would
deny, me-thinks ’twould be less hazardous than a walk across a wild
road alone.”

Dark as it was; for the light given by the moon was as yet but faint,
and the inn’s oil-lamp scarcely threw its light so far as the place
where they stood, Tregenna fancied he saw a smile on her face. She
answered quite gravely, however—

“I shall not walk, I thank you, sir. I have a load of hay to take
home; and yonder, as I think, comes the cart with it. I’ll bid you a
good-night, sir.”

She was looking up the road, and listening, Tregenna heard the creaking
of wheels; but he did not take her hint to retreat; he followed her, as
she went to meet the cart, which was at that moment descending into the
main street by a narrow lane behind the cottages on the right. He was
suspicious of that cart with its load of hay.

There was a great difficulty in getting the heavy wheels out of the
mire of the lane; and Ann hurried to the assistance of the young boy
who was leading the horse. At the same moment, the brigadier, cursing
loud and deep, came at a smart pace down the hill from the Parsonage.

“They’ve tricked us! They’re a set of rascally thieves!” yelled he, as
soon as he caught sight of Tregenna. “Your parson and his daughter are
in league with the smugglers, damn them!”

“Why, what—what mean you, general?”

“We’ve searched the house, from garret to cellar; and devil a ghost of
a smuggler is there in the place.”

Tregenna glanced quickly from the brigadier to the hay-cart, which was
just clear of the lane. As he did so, he was on the point of suggesting
to the brigadier that he and his soldiers should follow that vehicle,
when he was stopped by seeing Ann Price raise her arm, while, at the
same moment, she hailed him in a clear voice—

“Sir, one moment! Will you come hither, sir?”

It was plainly Tregenna whom she addressed. It is doubtful whether the
brigadier even recognized his charmer of the daylight hours, for the
frown did not lift from his brows, neither did he salute her in any way.

Tregenna, with a word to his companion, returned quickly to the woman’s
side.

“Maybe, sir,” said she, in the same low, level voice as before, “you
would not mind if I use my sex’s privilege, and beg you’ll be so good
as come with me as far as the ford. The roads be monstrous bad, and
I’ve but this little lad with me, to help me at a pinch to get the cart
along.”

Tregenna assented at once; though by no means so confiding or so
self-confident as the brigadier, and well aware that there was
something rather uncanny, rather mysterious, about this woman who could
fell a man like an ox while addressing him with lamb-like gentleness;
he was too young, too full-blooded, not to relish the adventure, and
was quite ready to face the danger into which she might lead him.

His first idea had been that the cartful of hay was merely a receptacle
for contraband goods, and it had been his intention to make this
suggestion to the brigadier. But this request on the part of the woman
that he should accompany her on her drive, necessarily put that notion
out of his head.

He got up beside her, the boy mounted behind, and they started on their
journey, jogging through the miry, rutty roads at a snail’s pace, with
the lantern swinging on the off-side of the cart with every motion of
the vehicle.

They went so slowly, and the cart was so uncomfortable from the lack
of springs, that the journey would have been miserably tedious but for
the interest Tregenna felt in the woman herself, an interest which
increased tenfold as he listened to her conversation.

She was very frank, very straightforward, and made no more pretense
than she had done to the brigadier of being shocked by the doings of
the smugglers.

“They’ve been brought up to it like to a trade,” said she, “and it’s
passed from father to son. And when duties be high, so I’ve heard
say, the free-traders start up from the ground like to mushrooms. And
look, sir, be they so much to blame as the folks that buy their goods
from them, and that think no harm of getting goods cheap, seeing that,
after all, defrauding a Government never seems like the same thing as
defrauding a man? Governments doan’t seem to be flesh and blood like to
ourselves, do they, sir?”

“Well, maybe not. But still——”

“Still, it brings it home to us that ’tis a crime to smuggle when the
king sends down a troop of redcoats to shoot us down, sir. Ah, yes,
sir, I’m not defending ’em, though there’s many a good-hearted lad
among them; ay, and some of my own kin too, I’m main sorry to tell.”

“Surely they’ll not be so foolhardy as to continue in these ways, now
that they must do it at such fearsome risk!” urged Tregenna.

“Nay, sir, I know not. But ’twould be a fair day for Sussex if you
could but get the men to give it up, and to take to honester work
again.”

The words were hardly out of her mouth when the cart sank down into a
small morass with such a jerk that Tregenna, less used to this type of
vehicle than his companions, was all but precipitated into the road. At
the same moment a slight groan from the back part of the cart struck
upon his ears, and startled him considerably.

All at once it flashed into his mind that it was not a load of
contraband tobacco and spirits, laces and silks that the hay was
concealing, but the wounded smuggler Tom, who had eluded the brigadier,
escaping by the back way from the Parsonage on the approach of the
soldiers. Almost at the same moment he realized why it was that Ann
Price had shown such a sudden desire for his own company. The artful
woman had guessed his suspicions of herself and her load of hay, and
had invited Tregenna to put him off the scent, and to avoid having her
vehicle overhauled by the soldiers.

He took care not to betray, by word or sign, that he had heard that
groan from the wounded man; he went on talking to Ann, getting her
opinions on agricultural topics, which she gave with characteristic
intelligence. And all the while he was congratulating himself that he
should find out where Tom lived, and be able to follow him up and bring
him to justice.

There was another thing that he wished to find out: whether the tipsy
smuggler whom Ann Price had treated so cavalierly was the “Ben Bax”
whose knife he had found beside the murdered coastguardsman. He put the
question to her direct—

“Was that fellow who affronted you in the street yonder the man they
call ‘Ben Bax’?” he asked at the first convenient opening in their
conversation.

But Ann, whether she knew the reason of his question or not, was
cautious in her answer.

“Maybe,” she answered, as if indifferently, “there be plenty o’ Baxes
in these parts; they’re in every village. I know not whether I ever
heard yonder fellow called by any other name than ‘Ben the Blast.’”

“He’s a fisherman, I suppose, by his dress?” pursued Tregenna.

She gave him a straight look, turning her head stolidly towards him to
do so.

“He’s mate of a merchantman, I think,” said she. “We don’t see much of
him up here, and we shouldn’t mind if we saw less. He’s a rough fellow,
and free with his fists when he’s in liquor.”

“It seems you know how to manage him, however,” said Tregenna.

Ann only smiled. And Tregenna, who saw that she meant to let him know
no more, allowed the subject to drop.

They had by this time jogged some distance out of the village, and were
descending a slope towards the river.

“We shall have to cross the water by the ford,” said she. “You’re not
afraid, sir, to do it in the dark?”

“Not with you,” answered Tregenna, promptly. “Have you much further to
go, when the river is crossed?”

“Not above another mile,” replied Ann. “And if you can’t stay the night
at the farm, sir, we can put you in the way of coming back by a path, a
little higher up, where there’s a ferry-boat to take you across.”

“Thanks,” replied Tregenna. “I wish I could avail myself of your
hospitality, but I must return to my boat to-night.”

They were descending the hill in the same jog-trot fashion, and were
within a few yards of the river, which was flowing swiftly, and looked,
Tregenna thought, somewhat perilous to negotiate, when Ann uttered an
exclamation of dismay.

“Mercy on me!” cried she, in a tone of great annoyance, “if I haven’t
dropped my whip! And it’ll need all the lashing I can give her to get
the mare across, with the river running as swift as it does to-night.”

She had reined in the animal, and was peering round in the road with
anxious eyes.

“Did you mind, sir, when I had it last? Nay, nay, for sure you don’t.
You’d have spoken if you’d seen it drop. Would you hold the reins a
moment, sir, while I go back up the hill in search of it?”

“Nay, I’ll do that,” replied Tregenna readily. “I’ll take the lantern.”

He had unfastened the great clumsy thing from the side of the vehicle
while he spoke, and had already begun his search. He had almost reached
the crest of the hill before he found the whip, lying in a pool of mud
under the hedge by the side of the road.

“Hey!” cried he, as he picked it up and cracked it in the air. “I’ve
found it!”

As he turned, with the lantern in one hand, and the whip in the other,
and looked down the hill towards the cart, he was astonished to see,
by the light of the moon which had grown stronger since they started,
the lad who had been at the back of the cart leap up to the seat beside
Ann, with a long stick, cut from the hedge, in his hand.

The next moment, with a speed which, compared with her former jog-trot,
was like that of an arrow from a bow, the mare was galloping towards
the river, lashed unsparingly by her driver.

Pursuit was hopeless. Almost before Tregenna had time to recognize
that he had been tricked, the cart, swaying, splashing, dashing through
little eddies of foam, was in the middle of the stream.

He ran a few paces, stumbling in the ruts of the road, and muttering
uncomplimentary things of the high-spirited lady and all her sex.
But, long before he reached his side of the river the cart had gained
the other, and was galloping along the road at a pace which put all
thoughts of overtaking it to flight.

Disgusted, furious, and vowing vengeance against both Ann and smuggler
Tom, Lieutenant Tregenna dashed the lantern on the ground, flung the
whip into the middle of the stream, and returned towards the shore
as fast as possible, taking a byway to the cliffs, lest any of Ann’s
friends should see him, and rejoice at his discomfiture.




                              CHAPTER VI.

                             A COLLISION.


On the following day Tregenna sent word to General Hambledon that he
had better search the neighborhood of Rede Hall for “Gardener Tom,” who
had escaped him at the Parsonage on the previous evening.

But he had very little hope of any result; and his fears were justified
when, a few days later, he met the brigadier, who had, of course, been
as completely fooled by the artful Ann as Tregenna himself had been.

Ann, whom the general had found with her arms in the wash-tub, placid,
stolid, and as amiable as ever, had made profuse apologies for her
behavior to Tregenna, whom she professed herself ashamed to meet. She
had had no idea, she said, that there was any one hidden in the cart
until the lieutenant had got out in search of the lost whip. Then a
man had started up from under the hay, put a pistol to her head, and
threatened her with instant death if she did not drive on, which she
was thus forced to do. After crossing the river, he had jumped out at
the first bend of the road, and she had no idea what had become of him.

Even the brigadier seemed to have his doubts about the entire truth of
Ann’s story; but Tregenna, who knew it was a tissue of falsehoods, said
nothing. He perceived already that General Hambledon’s precious plan of
“getting hold of the women, my boy,” only had the result of letting the
women get hold of him.

Then there came a lull in the excitement of the times. Ben the Blast
had disappeared from the neighborhood, without Tregenna’s having been
able to identify him with the owner of the blood-stained knife. There
were no more raids; there were no more discoveries, things seemed
to have settled down, and it appeared impossible to suspect the
peaceful-looking carters and plowmen who went stolidly about their work
in the fields, looking as placid and unenterprising as their own oxen,
of having had any hand in the lawless practises which the soldiers and
the cutter’s men had been sent to quell.

The cutter was generally cruising about, keeping a sharp lookout on the
coast for suspicious-looking craft, so that Tregenna got very little
time ashore. On the rare occasions when he did get as far inland as the
village of Hurst, he always felt a longing to call at the Parsonage and
twit Joan with her lawless behavior in helping a criminal to escape.

He was returning to the shore one day, after paying a duty visit
to Hurst Court, where the ladies’ sympathy with him had been quite
overwhelming, though he shrewdly guessed that their silken frocks had
been cheaply come by, when he saw Mistress Joan, with a small flock of
sheep before her, and a long osier wand in her hand, coming across the
high ground from the marsh.

She instantly checked her pace, as if to give him an opportunity to
pass before she and her flock came up with him. But he, of course,
checked his speed too, and raised his hat with a deep bow as soon as
she came near.

Joan threw back the heavy folds of her hooded cloak, and curtsied
politely, but with a certain stately bashfulness which showed that his
anxiety to meet her had scarcely been reciprocated.

Tregenna, however, was not to be daunted. He could not help feeling a
strong interest in the spirited young creature, and his heart had leapt
up at the chance of speaking with her again.

“Turned shepherdess, I perceive, Mistress Joan!” said he, leaving the
road to meet her as he spoke.

“And not a very skilful one, I fear,” replied she, keeping her gaze
fixed on the sheep, who showed a decided inclination to wander. “They
belong to an old dame that lives on the edge of the marsh yonder; and I
offered to bring them into the village, and to fold them for the night
in our own meadow, that they might go to market to-morrow morning with
those of a neighbor.”

“May I not assist you in your task? ’Tis no easy one, I see.”

“And have you no fear, sir, lest they should be the property of
smugglers, or lest the wool which covers them be the receptacle of
contraband goods, even as innocent hay may be?” asked she, with a
certain demure mischief in her tone which piqued him.

“Well, madam, since you challenge me,” retorted Tregenna, “I own I may
have reason for such thoughts; for you have shown a marked tenderness,
if I must say so, towards the breakers of the law, even to assisting a
criminal to escape, that had a warrant out against him.”

A change came over Joan’s handsome face. The look of mutinous mischief
in her eyes gave place to a certain wistful kindliness even more
attractive. And she spoke in such a tender, pleading, gentle voice
that, if Tregenna had harbored any resentful feelings towards her, he
must have been disarmed.

“Ah, sir,” said she, “it is hard for you to understand, and I doubt
not we must seem perverse in your eyes. But do but place yourself in
imagination where we stand, and consider whether your own feelings
would not be the same as ours, did you but live our life, and have
your home among these poor folk as we have. Remember, sir, we have had
our abode here since I was but an infant. When my mother died, and my
father was left with me, a babe of but a few months old, on his hands,
all the country-folk for miles round offered to nurse me, tend me, do
what they could to help the pastor they already loved. I was taken to
a farmhouse where this very Tom, whom we sheltered from your soldiers,
was running about, a little lad who could scarce speak plain. He was my
companion ere I could walk; he would carry me in his arms to see the
ducks in the pond, fetch me the early primroses, rock me to sleep in
the cradle which was placed for warmth by the big farmhouse fireplace.
Think you, sir, those are memories one can ever forget? Think you I
would suffer the man who was my playmate all those years ago to be
imprisoned, hanged, while I could put out a hand to save him? No, sir.
Poor Tom’s no villain. And even if he were, I would not give him up,
no, nor the sons and brothers of the kind-hearted women who tended me
in my childhood!”

And Joan’s proud eyes flashed on him a look of passionate defiance, of
noble enthusiasm, which for a moment struck him dumb.

“Madam,” he said at last, almost humbly, “’tis very true we cannot look
upon these men, nay, nor even upon these deeds, with the same eyes. I
only pray that you will make allowance for my point of view, as I do
for yours; and that you will suffer that we may be foes, if we must be
foes, after the most indulgent manner.”

Joan, who had suffered her attention to be diverted from her
troublesome charges during her harangue, now perceived that they had
wandered some distance away. She therefore curtsied hastily to the
lieutenant, and saying briefly, but with a merry laugh, “Ay, sir, we
will be the most generous of foes!” she ran off to gather her flock
together again.

Tregenna would have liked to follow and help her in her task, but he
hardly dared, after the reception he had met with at her hands. Without
being positively unfriendly, she had been defiant, daring, audacious;
she had let him see that there was a barrier between them which she, at
least, regarded as insurmountable. And piqued more than ever, conscious
that he admired her more than he had done before, Tregenna was obliged
to turn reluctantly in the direction of the shore.

October had come, bringing with it a succession of misty evenings when
the marshes were covered with a low-lying cloud of whitish vapor, while
a gray haze hung over sea and shore, making it difficult to keep a
proper lookout for smuggling craft, and for the experienced and cunning
natives in charge of them.

Before Tregenna reached the creek where his boat was waiting, the sun
was going down red on his right, over the land, while on every side,
but especially on the left, where the marshes lay, the gray mist was
getting thicker, the outlines of tree and rock, cottage and passing
ship more blurred and faint.

He was but a few hundred yards from the creek when there came to his
ears certain sounds, deadened and muffled by the fog, which woke him
with a start to the sudden knowledge that there was a conflict of some
sort going on a little way off, in the direction of the marshes.

Shouts, oaths, the sharp report of a pistol, followed by a duller sound
like that of blows or the fall of a heavy body; all these struck upon
his ears as he ran, at the top of his speed, in the direction whence
the noise came.

It was at a point where the cliff dipped gradually, to rise again in
one last frowning rock over the marshes beyond, that he came suddenly
upon the combatants, and found, as he had expected, that he was in the
midst of a fray between his own crew on the one hand and the smugglers
on the other.

As he came over the crest of the hill towards the combatants, and,
drawing his sword, shouted to the smugglers to surrender, hoping they
might think he was supported by an approaching force behind, there
arose out of the mist, from among the struggling, scuffling mass of
cursing, fighting men, the figure of a lad, stalwart but supple,
clothed in loose fisherman’s clothes and cap, and surmounted by a pale
face, in which blazed a pair of steely gray eyes, surrounded by a
shoulder-length crop of raven-black hair.

There was something so wild, so ferocious in the whole aspect of the
lad, young as he was, that Tregenna watched him even as he ran, with
singular interest.

Springing down the slope at a great pace, he drew his pistol, and
pointed it at the lad, who was watching him intently with a lowering
face.

“Surrender!” cried the lieutenant, as he ran.

But, instead of answering, the lad, after waiting, motionless, for him
to come within range, suddenly leapt out from among the rest of the
struggling men with a bound like an antelope, knocked up the pistol,
and, with a savage cry, drew out a cutlass, and made a dash for
Tregenna’s throat.




                             CHAPTER VII.

                           AN UGLY CUSTOMER.


Luckily for Tregenna, the ground was wet and slippery with the mist. As
the lad flew at him, therefore, the force with which he knocked up the
pistol in the lieutenant’s hand caused him to slip on the slimy ground.

In a moment Tregenna had seized him by the wrist and flung him down.

All this time the lad had not uttered a single word. The rest of the
smugglers never ceased shouting and swearing as they fought, using
their lungs quite as lustily as they did their arms and legs, and
making a deafening din. But the pale boy never uttered a sound, even
when he was flung down. He was up again in a second, attacked Tregenna
again, and succeeded this time in inflicting a slight wound on his arm.
But the lieutenant was ready with his sword, and, just as the lad aimed
a savage thrust at his breast, he parried it, and returned it by a cut
across the lad’s head, which brought the blood flowing in a blinding
stream down the side of his face.

At that moment the hand-to-hand fight caught the attention of the rest
of the combatants, who were struggling and scuffling in the tangle of
gorse and bramble which choked up the dell at the bottom of the slope.

And a second figure, as unlike as possible to the first, rose up out
of the _mêleé_, and came to help his young comrade. A giant he was,
this loose-limbed, heavy-built sea-dog, with grizzled hair and coarse,
sullen red face, who swore loud and deep as he came on, and made for
Tregenna with a run, pistol in one hand and cutlass in the other.

“Hey, Jack! Bill! Up with ye, lads, and let the cursed hound have as
good as he’s given us! ’Tis the lubber that shot poor Tom! Up, lads!”

Up started from the gorse bushes a fresh couple of ruffians, the one a
long, lean, lanky fellow in corduroy breeches and an old rug-coat, that
had rather the air of a highwayman than of a son of the sea; the other
a little, pimply-faced rogue in loose jacket and slops, who carried a
pipe in his mouth, and a bludgeon in one hand.

This latter uttered a savage oath on perceiving who it was that they
were to attack.

“’Tis the chief, the captain. Let’s cut his throat and carry him out,
and hang him to’s own bowsprit, mates!” cried he, in a hoarse rasping
voice, as he swung his bludgeon round his head and dashed up the slope
after his comrades.

“Ay, that will we, and serve him well for his devotion to’s duty,” sang
out the burly giant who led the attack.

“Have at ’un! Slash at ’un, Robin!” piped out the lean man, in a thin
high voice that had a tone of unspeakable savagery in it.

Meanwhile, the lad, blinded by the blood that flowed from the wound in
his head, had staggered aside, out of the way of Tregenna and his new
assailants.

On they all came, quickly, eagerly, thirsting for revenge on the man
who was, they considered, the leading spirit in the crusade carried on
against their nefarious enterprises. But Tregenna did not flinch. He
had the advantage of the ground, and his own men were within call.

Planting his feet firmly in the soil, and grasping his sword, to which
he chose rather to trust than to his pistol, he shouted to his men in
the bushes below, and dealt a swashing blow at the burly giant, whom he
guessed to be the redoubtable “Robin Cursemother,” of whose exploits he
had heard.

Robin parried the blow with his cutlass, while the small man with the
bludgeon, whom they addressed as Bill, came to his assistance with a
swinging blow, which would have felled the lieutenant to the earth had
he not sprung aside just in time to avoid the full force of it.

At the same moment the tall, thin man, whom they called “Jack,” aimed
at him a blow, with the butt-end of the huge horse-pistol he carried in
his belt, which made Tregenna reel.

Luckily for him, his own men had by this time seen him and recognized
his peril. His arrival had made the numbers on both sides more equal;
and the revenue-men, who had been getting the worst of it, took heart
from the courageous stand he was making single-handed against the
smugglers, and, racing up the slope in the rear of the assailants,
diverted their attack.

There ensued a short, sharp hand-to-hand conflict, in which the
lieutenant found himself face to face with a fresh opponent in that
very “Ben the Blast” whom he had met in such strange circumstances in
front of the Frigate at Hurst some days before.

Ben came up with the last batch, panting, roaring like a bull, his face
and hands dyed with blood, his teeth set hard, and his eyes blood-shot
and aflame.

“The damned lubber that I caught with Ann! I’ll settle him! Let me but
get at him!” said he, furiously, as he came up.

By this time, however, Tregenna had gathered his men round him, so
that they presented a strong front to the smugglers, who, being on
lower ground than they, and somewhat overmatched in skill, if not in
strength, began to give way.

The lieutenant noted this, and presently gave the signal for a
simultaneous rush. Down they came, driving the cursing smugglers like
sheep before them over the rough, broken ground of the slope, until Ben
the Blast stumbled and fell over a stone, spraining his ankle in the
fall.

He got up, turned once upon his foes, with a last vicious blow of his
cutlass, which inflicted a nasty cut on the forearm of one of the
revenue-men, and yelled out—

“Off, mates, off! Game’s played!”

Then there was a stampede. The smugglers threw away such weapons as
they found cumbersome, and took to flight with as much vigor as they
had shown in the fight. Making for the dell at the bottom, Ben the
Blast, the lithe, pimply-faced Bill, and two others who were evidently
seamen, made for their boats, which, still half-full of the cargo
they had been in the act of landing when they were disturbed by the
revenue-men, was lying snug among the rocks in charge of a lad.

The tall, thin man in the rug-coat, with the rest of his companions,
went up the slope in a northeasterly direction, towards the road.

As they were all far nimbler of foot over the ground, which they knew
well, than were their opponents, Lieutenant Tregenna stopped the
pursuit of the smugglers when he saw how fast they gained ground, and
directed his men to seize such of the contraband goods as were already
landed.

When, however, they reached in their turn the bottom of the dell, where
they expected to find the booty, they discovered that it had all been
safely removed, under cover of the mist, and of the excitement of the
fight, and that the boat which had brought it had got out of sight also.

In the meantime Tregenna had been looking about him for the lad who had
been the first to attack him, and whom he had himself, in self-defense,
somewhat severely wounded. He felt something like admiration of the
courage the boy had shown in attacking him single-handed, and was
sincerely anxious to learn whether the wound he had been forced to
inflict was likely to have lasting consequences.

In answer to the lieutenant’s questions, one of the men said that
he had seen one man stagger down the slope some minutes before the
conclusion of the struggle, in the direction of the shore.

“He looked, sir,” said the man, “as if he’d had enough of it. He
didn’t hardly fare to seem to know whither he was going.”

Tregenna went down towards the shore, trying to find some track
which he might follow; but the mist and the darkness were creeping
on together, and the traces of the conflict being on all sides, in
trampled, blood-stained grass and roughened ground, he found nothing to
guide his steps.

But when he got down to the beach he was more fortunate. He found
footmarks and little red spots on the broken sandstone rocks, and,
following these indications, he came round a jutting point of frowning
cliff, to a cave, partly hollowed out by the action of the sea, and
partly by human hands, the walls of which were green with the slime
left by the tides.

Half in and half out of the cave, lying on the shingle and broken
rocks, lay the body of the lad of whom he was in search.

It was with something like tenderness that Tregenna stooped, and, full
of dread that his own blow had killed him, raised the lad from the
ground, turning him, and looking into his white and livid face, with
the half-dried blood making disfiguring patches on one side of it.

For the first moment he thought the boy was dead; but on further
examination he found that the heart was still beating, and at the same
moment the lad, who had been in danger of suffocation from the fact
that he had fallen face downwards, showed by a movement of the eyelids,
and by a quivering of the muscles of the mouth, that he was alive, and
recovering.

Tregenna cleansed his face as well as he could from the blood and
sand with which it was disfigured. There was no need to loosen his
clothes, for his shirt was open at the neck, confined only by a flowing
neckerchief, which now hung wet and bedraggled on his breast.

“What cheer, mate!” cried Tregenna, as he supported the lad by the
shoulders against his knee, and felt in his own pocket for the flask
he usually carried there, and which was as much a necessity of his
adventurous life as the pistol at his belt or the sword at his side.

The lad opened his eyes, stared at him for a moment dully, then with a
gleam of returning consciousness. It was at that moment that Tregenna
put the flask of _aqua vitæ_ to his lips.

“Drink, lad, drink. ’Twill bring thy senses together. And fear not.
We’ll not let a brave boy hang, smuggler though he may be! Drink, and
fear not. But take this warning, not to meddle with the affairs of
lawless folk again.”

Still the boy maintained the dead silence which had been such a
strangely marked characteristic of him during the fight. He gulped down
the spirit put to his lips, and then sat, with his head bent upon his
hand, as if still half stupid, either from the blow which had wounded
him or from consequent loss of blood.

Tregenna thought there was something of despair in his attitude, and
in the wild gaze with which he looked about him, staring first at the
gray sea, the edge of which was like a roll of white vapor, and then at
the frowning cliff above him. He seemed to be listening for some voice,
some footstep.

“Come,” said the lieutenant, in a cheery tone, “don’t lose thy spirit,
boy; thou showedst enough and to spare but an hour since. Thy comrades
are gone, ’tis true, and thou art left alone. But, give but thy word to
refrain from such company for the future, and I’ll pardon thee, and see
thee on thy way, for the sake of the courage thou hast shown, ill as
thy cause was.”

Still the lad said nothing in answer. But he looked around him with
returning intelligence, not at his captor indeed, but at everything
else, and particularly at the cliffs, with their jutting points and
scrubby growth of reed and flowering weed.

Tregenna followed the direction of his eyes, but saw nothing in
particular to attract his attention. But as he took a step away the lad
suddenly sprang up, snatching up the lieutenant’s pistol, which he had
deposited on the ground while tending the wounded boy, and made for a
point where the cliff was steepest and apparently most inaccessible.

As soon as he reached it he placed his foot on a ledge of the rock,
and, seizing a rope which was evidently well-known to him, began to
climb up the face of the cliff with astounding agility, considering his
recent dazed condition.

Tregenna followed quickly. But the lad, who was by this time a good way
up, drew up the end of the rope after him, and fastened it into a knot
so that it was far out of his pursuer’s reach. To attempt to climb the
cliff without it was impossible and Tregenna could only stand and shake
his fist at the lad in impotent rage at the daring with which he had
been again outwitted.

But the lad’s impudence and audacity did not stop there. The moment he
reached the summit of the cliff, he dislodged a loose mass of earth and
sandstone which was lying loose in one of the crevices at the edge,
and, with a deft kick, hurled it down upon his generous enemy below.

Tregenna stepped back hastily, receiving thus only some fragments of
dust and earth upon his head, instead of the heavy mass which had been
intended for him.

And he swore to himself, as he turned away and made for his own boat,
that he would never again be so soft-hearted as to spare one of these
ruffians, who, even in early youth, were dead to every generous human
feeling.




                             CHAPTER VIII.

                              REDE HALL.


As Tregenna went quickly along the shore, he was not too well pleased
to find that one of his own men had been a witness, at a little
distance, of his discomfiture at the lad’s hands.

The man indeed had a grin on his face when the lieutenant first caught
sight of him, which changed to a look of supreme gravity when he caught
his captain’s eye. He pulled his forelock, and said the boat was ready.

“I suppose you don’t know who that fellow is that’s got away over the
cliff?” said he, sharply.

“Oh, ay, sir, I know who he be well enough,” answered the man,
promptly. “He be Jem Bax, by what I’ve heard tell, I’m pretty sure.”

“Jem Bax! That bit of a lad!”

“Ay, sir. And, by what I’ve heard tell, he be about the worst of the
whole lot of ’em, old or young!”.

This certainly tallied with the experience Tregenna had had of the
young ruffian, so he swallowed his annoyance as well as he could, and,
turning again to the man, said shortly—

“And it’s the old story, of course? Nobody knows anything about him, or
where he lives, or anything that could help to put us on his track?”

The man appeared to glance about him cautiously, as if afraid that his
reply might be overheard by some unseen person. Then he answered, in a
low voice—

“Well, sir, they do say he’s to be heard of somewheres about Rede Hall.”

“Rede Hall?” echoed the lieutenant with interest.

For this was, he knew, the home of the artful Ann Price, of whose wiles
he retained so vivid a remembrance.

“Ay, sir.”

And then it crossed Tregenna’s mind that this rascally lad must be some
relation of Ann’s, a younger brother, perhaps; for, looking back to
his impression of the boy’s pale, set face, he seemed now to be able to
trace a resemblance between his features and those of Ann, different as
was the expression of the calm, homely woman from that of the fierce
lad.

It was clear, then, that Rede Hall must now be visited, and that in the
first place a warrant must be obtained for the apprehension of such of
the smugglers as he could identify; for Jem Bax, Ben the Blast, Robin,
nicknamed “Cursemother,” Bill, nicknamed “Plunder,” and for one other,
whom he could only describe as “Jack,” as there was, even among the
cutter’s crew, a certain strange reluctance to give him any further
name.

When Tregenna called at Hurst Court to obtain the warrants, in company
with the brigadier, on the following morning, he found himself in the
midst of a very lively scene. The squire had given a breakfast to the
members of the hunt, and the guests were trooping out of the house, and
mounting their horses on the lawn in front.

The scarlet coats of the men gave a pretty touch of bright color to the
scene; and the presence of ladies, in their silken skirts and velvet
hoods, added brilliancy to the gathering. Behind the scattered groups
on the grass, the white house and the red-brown trees on either side of
it formed a picturesque background, throwing up the gay colors of the
costumes in vivid relief.

One figure, and one only, attracted Tregenna’s attention the moment he
entered the gates. This was Joan Langney, who, in her plain Sunday gown
of russet tabby, with a full black hood, looked, he thought, a very
queen of beauty among the more smartly dressed wives and daughters of
the country squires.

He let the brigadier pass on alone up to the place where Squire Waldron
was standing, and, dismounting from his horse, lingered a moment to pay
his respects to Mistress Joan. He had always the excuse to himself that
she might be able to afford him some useful information.

“Your servant, Miss Joan. ’Tis not necessary to ask if you are well
this morning.”

“Your servant, Mr. Tregenna. I am quite well, I thank you,” replied
Joan, with a curtsey.

It seemed to him there was in her brown eyes, as she looked quickly up
and down again, a malicious suggestion that she had heard all about
his unlucky encounter with the smugglers the day before.

“You will bear me no good will to-day, Miss Joan, since I come to
obtain a warrant against your friends the free-traders,” said he,
perceiving that her glance wandered at once in the direction of the
brigadier.

“I guessed as much, sir. Indeed, the doings yesterday put the village
in an uproar. They say you had a brush with some of the boldest spirits
about here?”

“I’ faith, ’tis true, madam. I made acquaintance with Jem Bax, in
particular, and I do e’en propose that, in return, he shall make
acquaintance with the inside of a jail.”

At his mention of the name, Joan suddenly smiled, as if with an
irresistible impulse to great amusement. She pursed up her lips again
in a moment, but Tregenna, much nettled, said dryly—

“Doubtless, Miss Joan, you have some kindness for that young knave
also, though he played me the scurviest trick I have ever known.”

And with that he proceeded to give her an account of his own
compassion upon the lad, and of Jem’s ungrateful return.

There was some satisfaction, however, in seeing how Joan took this
recital. Her face clouded as she listened; and when he ended, there
were tears in her eyes.

“’Twas infamous, sir, shameful, to treat you so, after what you had
done,” cried she, with a heightened color in her cheeks and the sparkle
of indignation in her eyes. “And if they treat you like that again,
I’ll be a turncoat myself, and do my best to help you against—Jem.”

“You speak,” said Tregenna, with curiosity, “as if that bit of a lad
were the ringleader of the gang.”

Again Joan shot at him a glance in which there was some amusement. But
she answered demurely—

“He is old for his years, sir, I believe.”

“Well, Miss Joan, I shall think my experience of yesterday worth the
risk if it but bring you to our side, the side of law and of justice.”

By this time he saw that the brigadier had got the ear of the squire,
and that he had turned to see why his companion had deserted him.
Tregenna, therefore, with a low bow to Joan, re-mounted and rode across
the grass to join him.

Squire Waldron, though by no means in the best of humors at this
interruption to the serious business of fox-hunting, made out the
warrants as desired by Tregenna and General Hambledon; but he took care
to twit them with their ill success against the smugglers, and with
their failure to catch “Gardener Tom.”

Tregenna took these reproaches modestly, but the brigadier blustered,
and said that he was ready to be shot if he did not bring one or more
of the ringleaders among the smugglers back to Rye with him that
afternoon.

“And, gads my life, sir,” he went on with emphasis which made him
purple in the face; “but I’ll warrant me I’ll have it out with Mistress
Ann, and make her give up this Jem Bax, if she’s harboring him.”

The squire smiled a little, just as Joan had done at the mention of
Jem’s name. And Tregenna was confirmed in his belief that the young
ruffian was a relation of Ann’s, and that she would put every possible
obstacle in the way of his being given up.

When General Hambledon and Tregenna came out of the house, where they
had been shut up with the squire during the formal making out of the
warrants, the lieutenant looked about in vain for Joan. Not only had
she herself disappeared; but Parson Langney, who had been prominent,
with his jolly face and jolly voice, among the red-coated groups on the
lawn, trotting about on his nag, and as eager for the sport as anybody
there, had taken his departure also.

Tregenna pondered on this fact, which was the more strange, since not
one other of the assembled guests was missing. But it was not until
he and the general, and the score of mounted troopers who accompanied
them, had traversed the village, forded the river, ridden the two miles
to Rede Hall, and come in sight of that ancient dwelling, that the
mystery was solved.

From the gates of the farmhouse, just as the soldiers came into view,
there issued Parson Langney on his nag, with his daughter Joan mounted
on a pillion behind him.

The brigadier saw no significance in this; the parson was doing his
rounds, that was all. But to Tregenna the incident bore a very
different meaning. He jumped to the conclusion that Joan had set off
with her father to warn the inhabitants of Rede Hall of the visit which
was in store for them; and, on the instant, he decided that he and the
brigadier would be as unsuccessful on this occasion as they had been
hitherto.

In the mean time, General Hambledon had caught sight of a lonely inn a
little way off the road, and directed his way thither, with the very
proper excuse that in these places one could hear all the gossip and
pick up valuable information.

Tregenna ventured to make two suggestions—the one was that the sooner
they got to the farmhouse the more likely they were to effect a
capture; the other, that nobody about was likely to give information to
them, since their uniform betrayed the sort of errand on which they had
come.

Of course he was overruled by the general; and, a few minutes later,
they found themselves at the bar of the rickety little timber erection,
with its battered sign creaking from a tree on the opposite side of the
road.

“’Tis a vastly pretty view you have from hence,” remarked the
brigadier, in the course of making himself agreeable to the knot of
drovers, laborers, and nondescript wanderers who stood within the inn
doors, watching the soldiers.

The landlord was the only person bold enough to answer the smart
soldier—

“Ay, sir; ’tis, as you say, a pretty view.”

“What call you that building yonder? Is’t a gentleman’s seat, or what?”

“Nay, sir, ’tis no gentleman’s seat now; though methinks I’ve heard
’twas a considerable place once on a time. ’Tis but a farmhouse that
they call Rede Hall.”

“Rede Hall—eh? And what sort of folk are they that live there now?”

“’Tis kept by an old farmer, sir, that lives there with his wife,
his son, and his daughter. They be quiet folks, sir, and I know nowt
else about ’em,” said the landlord, who knew perfectly well on what
business the brigadier had come, as he remembered hearing of a similar
expedition which had come that way not many days before.

“Quiet! Ay, but they be main queer folks,” piped out an old man, who
was enjoying his tankard of ale at the bar. “The place has had a
mighty odd name these long years past; and they do say, sir, ’tis
haunted. There was a wicked lord lived there in the orld toime, so they
say, and he killed his wife by flaying her to death in what was once
the chapel, and that now they call the Gray Barn.”

“Hey, man, them’s but idle tales,” said the landlord quickly.

“Ah doan’t knaw that, Ah doan’t knaw that,” chimed in another man,
taking up the running now that the first awe of the grand soldier had
worn off. “Ah’ve heeard the tale, too, and how they say he can’t rest
in’s grave, but works with his flail in the Gray Barn o’ nights e’en
now. And for sure Ah’ve heeard myself most fearsome noises, and seen
a blue light a-burning like to none other I ever see afore, as Ah’ve
crossed the bridge below there yonder o’ nights, when Ah’ve been late
home wi’ my wagon.”

“Ay, and Farmer Price, hisself, he’ve seen—summat. He’s told as much
hisself,” said another man. “’Tis a place I’d not care to sleep in
while there was a hedge to lie under.”

“Tales; naught but old wives’ tales!” said the landlord,
imperturbably. “The old lady would never ha’ lived all these years in
the place if so be there was aught to be afeared on under yon honest
roof.”

The general opinion, however, seemed to be rather with the old man who
had first spoken than with the landlord on this matter. And Tregenna
felt more than ever convinced, as they came away from the inn and
crossed the stream by the little bridge that led to the farmhouse, that
this was the wasps’ nest to be smoked out.

It was an ancient and picturesque pile of building, this Rede Hall,
standing on the slope of a hill, and presenting to the view of the
visitors a long south side of red brick, in the Tudor style, in a state
of indifferent repair, with a somewhat unkempt growth of ivy and other
creepers hanging about it and almost choking a small door, of later
date than the building, which was now the state entrance to the house.

The grass-grown state of the narrow garden-path which led to this door
betrayed the fact that visits of state to the occupants of Rede Hall
were a great rarity.

Beyond the main building, on the west side, was the Gray Barn, easily
to be distinguished both by its color and by the ecclesiastical
character of the blocked-up windows, in some of which the tracery was
still almost perfect. The roof, however, was now of thatch, well-grown
with moss and grass, lichen and tufts of wallflower; and the swallows
built their nests under the eaves.

On this side of the house was the farmyard, surrounded by a high
sandstone wall; and the space between the big barn and the dwelling was
filled up by outbuildings, most of which were in a ruinous condition.

It was when they rode up to the common entrance of the farmhouse, which
was on the east side of the house, that the visitors came to the most
interesting and ancient part of the building. All this portion was
built of sandstone, mellow with age and weather. And a huge, massive
porch, with a small lodge on one side and a room above, formed a
fitting entrance to what was now the farmhouse kitchen, but which had
been, in old times, the hall of the mansion.

The door was open; and when the brigadier and his young companion had
dismounted from their horses and stood inside the porch, they had full
opportunity to note the details of one of the most picturesque scenes
it was possible to find, while the great bell clanged, and an old woman
came slowly forward to receive them.

Anything more peaceful, more homely, more utterly irreconcilable with
the notion of lawlessness and nefarious deeds than the room and its
occupants presented it was impossible to imagine.

At one end of the vast apartment, which was some forty feet long, and
broad and lofty in proportion, a fire was built up on the iron dogs in
the great open fireplace; and an iron pot hanging from a crane in the
chimney, gave forth a savory smell.

Close by the fire, crouching in the warmest corner of the oak settle,
with her back to the light, sat a woman who never turned at the
visitors’ approach. On the opposite side of the hearth, but well in the
corner of the room, another woman, large-boned and gaunt, with gray
hair half-hidden by a large mob-cap, sat busy with her spinning-wheel.
On his knees before the fire, with a mongrel dog on each side of him,
was a withered and bent old man.

These, and the old woman who came to the door to speak with the
strangers, were all the occupants of the huge apartment.

Some other details Tregenna took in, such as the extreme cleanliness of
the uneven red-tiled floor, of the long deal table at the north end of
the room, of the yellow-washed, rough walls. He noted the brown-and-red
earthenware vessels on the tall oak dresser, the hams and bunches of
herbs dangling from dark beams above.

The next moment he was saluting the old dame, in answer to her
respectful curtsey.

A little, clean, bright-eyed woman she was, spotless as to cap and
apron, and as active as if the stick she carried were for ornament
rather than use. Recognizing the brigadier with a smile, she dropped a
curtsey to him, and asked his pleasure.

“Faith, dame, ’tis no pleasure brings us here, but rather the reverse;
since I have reason to think you played me false t’other day, and that
you know more about those rascals the smugglers than you and Mistress
Ann would have me suppose!”

“Smugglers! Nay, sir, I know naught of them! My good man and I have
always kept ourselves from such folks, and brought up our childer in
the same way. And if you please, sir, you can search where you like, if
that be your purpose, but you shall find no such villains here.”

In spite of all he had heard, of all he knew, Tregenna was almost
inclined to believe her; for what could be more open, more honest, than
this manner of receiving them, with the door flung wide and this frank
invitation to enter where they would? The brigadier’s manner, however,
was rather short with her.

“Let us hope it may prove as you say,” said he, as he beckoned his
troopers to enter. “We have a warrant for certain of these fellows,
ma’am, and we intend to search the place. But first I would speak with
your daughter, Mistress Ann.”

“Ah, sir, you’ll be sorry to see her so bad as she is; for she’s been
nigh out of her wits with the toothache these two days and nights. But
she’ll speak with you, sir, I doubt not.” And the old woman led the
way the whole length of the room, and pausing in front of the settle,
cried, in a loud voice, “Ann, dost hear? ’Tis the soldier-gentleman
that was so polite when he came hither last Friday se’nnight! Dost
mind? Him that was so civil to thee, for all he came to look for
Gardener Tom, and could not find him.” The old woman turned again to
the brigadier, who was close behind, and added, with some irritation:
“I know not, sir, why ’tis always to us you come in your search for
these evil-doers!”

“We come, dame, where we’re most like to find them!” retorted the
brigadier dryly, as he came clanking up the tiled floor, and planted
himself before the suffering Ann. “And now, mistress, I’d be glad to
have an explanation why you failed to come to Rye to see me, as you
gave me your word, to put me on the trail of the smugglers.”

Ann, whose face was bound up in a handkerchief, with a huge flannel bag
against the right cheek, turned to him impatiently.

“Sir, I have been in no fit state for visiting, as you may judge by the
size my face is swollen. I caught cold last market-day, and I have not
left the house since. Pray, sir, make your search of the place, if that
is your good pleasure, and leave me alone.”

“As you please, Mistress Ann. And I shall know what to do next if we
fail to find the men,” replied the brigadier angrily, as he turned on
his spurred heel, and clanked down the great room again.

Ann turned to Tregenna, who had followed modestly in the brigadier’s
steps. “And pray, sir, what may you want here? Have you a warrant too?”

“Nay, Mistress Ann, I would fain have put some questions to you had you
been in better health to answer them. As it is, I cannot trouble you
now; I will come hither again at some more convenient season.”

“Nay, sir, there’s no time like the present,” retorted Ann in a tone of
considerable irritation; “ask what questions you please.”

“Well, then, I have heard talk that you have a barn that’s haunted, and
I would be glad to know whether ’tis by spirits or by men.”

“Sure, the best way to answer that would be to see for yourself, sir,”
retorted Ann sharply.

“Nay, there’s a time for such apparitions, and that’s not noonday,”
said Tregenna.

“Come at what time you please, sir, and satisfy yourself by ear and
eye.”

“You mean that?”

“Faith, sir, I do.”

And she turned her back upon him again, and crouched once more over the
fire, swaying backwards and forwards, with her hand to her swollen face.

Tregenna saw that she was in pain, and made allowance for her
irritation. He retreated to the other end of the long apartment, and
awaited the return of the soldiers, who were now engaged in making an
exhaustive search of the premises.

Not much to his surprise, they presently returned to the front of the
porch, while the brigadier re-entered the room, hot, flushed, and in a
very bad temper.

They had hunted in every corner of the house, of the outbuildings, of
the barns, but not a man was to be found.

They took a very cold leave of the old farmer’s wife, and of the
farmer himself, who came respectfully to the door to see them off. He
was about seventy years of age, and almost childish, and he obeyed
mechanically his wife’s instructions to salute the visitors.

When the party had ridden off, before the eyes of the old couple, and
the last of the troopers’ horses had crossed the bridge over the stream
at the bottom of the hill, Ann looked across, with a laugh, to the
woman at the spinning-wheel.

“’Twas lucky they were but men, Jack,” said she, “or they’d have found
out long since that, while thy wheel went round, there was nothing
spun!”

And the woman at the spinning-wheel rose to a full height of some six
feet, took off the cap and the gray woman’s wig, and disclosed to
view the sallow, thin face and mouse-colored hair of “Long Jack,” the
smuggler.




                              CHAPTER IX.

                         TRAITRESS OR FRIEND?


The October sunshine was bright; there was a pleasant, bracing breeze
coming from the sea; the brown trees were at their prettiest, as they
shed their showers of dead leaves at the lightest touch of the wind:
yet the brigadier and Lieutenant Tregenna, as they rode side by side
away from Rede Hall, noted none of these things: for to them the sky
was lowering and the wind whistled of failure and disappointment.

“Did you search the great barn?” asked Tregenna, interrupting a
string of his companion’s curses upon things in general and women in
particular.

“Ay, every corner of it, and poked into every cranny,” answered General
Hambledon, morosely. “There was naught in the whole place, but a couple
of rusty plowshares, a few sacks full of grain, and some lumber that
we turned inside out in search of contraband goods. But no, sir, not
so much as a keg of _aqua vitæ_, or a quid of tobacco was there in any
corner.”

“They’re cunning folk,” said Tregenna, rather dismally. “I have small
faith in Mistress Ann’s toothache, for one thing.”

“Nay, why should she feign?” said the brigadier, quickly. “The lass
looked vastly ill, to my thinking. Had she been herself, I warrant we
should have had some sport, at least; for I’ve found her ready with her
tongue, and as full of jests as she is of tricks.”

“You think now that she’s a confederate of the smugglers?”

“Damme, it seems like it. Wherever one asks about these cattle, one
hears talk of this Rede Hall, as if ’twere their headquarters. The
difficulty is to take the beggars unawares. They must have been
prepared this morning. Odds life!” The general started violently as he
uttered these words, evidently struck by a new idea. “The parson! He
was at the squire’s this morning, when we went to get the warrant! It’s
as like as not he’s friendly to the gang, like all the rest of them in
these parts. Mayhap he guessed our errand, and was away to put them on
their guard before we left the house! Eh, sir? What do you think about
it?”

Tregenna was frowning gloomily. He was honest; biting his lips, he made
confession of his share in the mystery.

“Ay, truly I fear so, and that I had a hand in bringing it about,” he
admitted, somewhat shamefacedly. “I had a few words to say to Mistress
Joan, little thinking——”

The general interrupted him, breaking out into a laugh and an oath at
the same time.

“Ay, you lads, there’s no keeping you away from the petticoats!” he
said mockingly. “Had you but held your tongue, and kept your mind on
your duty instead of blinking into the eyes of a handsome lass, we
might have surprised the villains, and not have come back with our
tails between our legs, like the fools we look now!”

“Sir,” retorted Tregenna, not angrily, but still with spirit, “I have
but taken a leaf out of your own book. As you were tricked by Mistress
Ann Price so have I been befooled by Mistress Joan Langney. So that
neither of us can in fairness reproach the other!”

For a few moments the brigadier seemed inclined to resent the view
taken of the case by the younger man. After a little reflection,
however, and the finding of some relief in a flow of his favorite
language, he allowed himself to laugh shortly.

“Well,” grumbled he at last, “we can at least ease our minds by going
straight to the parson’s house, and bestowing upon him our opinion of
his conduct, and some advice as to the future. And thank the Lord he’s
lost his run with the hounds to-day!”

Lieutenant Tregenna was not likely to object to any proposal which
promised to bring him within speaking distance of Mistress Joan; so
they set their horses at a smart trot, and were back in the village
without much loss of time.

When they got to the Parsonage, it was the master himself who answered
their summons, with, they fancied, a rather guilty look on his face.

“Can we speak a word with you, sir?” said the brigadier, in a short,
dry tone. “You know whence we come, as I think.”

“Ay, come in, come in. You are both heartily welcome,” said the vicar,
pushing his wig to one side of his head, as his custom was when he was
troubled or perplexed. “You shall taste of my daughter’s currant wine,
and drink the health of his Majesty.”

“’Twould be more to the purpose, sir, with all thanks to you for your
hospitality,” replied the brigadier, “if you would assist his Majesty’s
troops in the execution of their duty, instead of doing what you can to
impede them.”

“How say you, sir? What mean you?” retorted the parson sturdily, as he
turned upon them, apparently glad to find that things had so quickly
come to a crisis.

He had led his visitors into the little dining-parlor, which was
one-half of the lower part of what had once been a fine hall. The roof
was low, and the beams were roughly whitewashed like the rest of the
ceiling. A small window, with latticed panes, was set in the thickness
of the wall on the front side of the house. Opposite the door was the
old wide hearth, the upper part filled with curiously carved woodwork,
and a comfortable wooden armchair in the corner on each side. On the
high shelf above were a couple of brass candlesticks, each containing
a tallow candle, in that time of rushlights quite a luxurious
extravagance. On the oak dining-table in the middle of the room were
the parson’s writing materials, his bunch of quills, round jar of ink,
half a dozen rough sheets of paper, and a sand-box. And beside them was
his pipe, just laid down.

Two strips of carpet laid on the stone floor; red window curtains;
half a dozen solid oak chairs with tapestry seats, and a couple of
ancient oak chests, completed the furniture of the room, which yet had
a comfortable and homely aspect.

“What mean you by saying I impede his Majesty’s troops in the execution
of their duty?” repeated Parson Langney, standing in all the pugnacious
dignity of the church militant, with his back to the fire, and his wig
more on one side than ever.

“You was in a mighty hurry, sir, this morning, to get to Rede Hall
before we could reach it with the warrants we hold for the arrest
of certain plunderers of his Majesty’s revenue,” blurted out the
brigadier, planting one hand on his hip, and thumping the table with
the other as he spoke.

Parson Langney was no actor; the expression which clouded his jolly
face betrayed him.

“Sir, I was at Rede Hall this morning, I admit,” said he, looking
defiantly at the officer. “But as for what I did there, you have no
right to put such an interpretation as you do upon my visit.”

“Do you deny, sir, that you mentioned we were on our way thither?”
roared the brigadier.

“I deny, sir, that you have any right to put such questions to me,”
retorted the parson quite as loudly.

The gentlemen were both much heated; and it began to look, as they
advanced their excited faces nearer and nearer over the table, till the
tails of their bob-wigs stuck up quivering in the air, as if from mere
words they would ere long come to blows.

When suddenly there appeared, in the doorway of the narrow little
entrance to the kitchen which filled the corner beyond the fireplace, a
peacemaker in the shape of handsome Joan.

She had evidently been engaged in some culinary occupation, for there
were traces of flour still to be seen on her round arms, under the
long black mittens which she had hastily pulled on. She had exchanged
the smart tabby gown of the morning for a homelier dress, over which
her long white apron hung. Her pretty brown hair, without any cap, was
rolled high above her white brow. Her face was pale and anxious, as she
came quickly in and thrust one hand through her father’s arm.

“Let me answer him, father,” said she in a low voice.

The general drew himself up. “Well, madam, and what have you to say?”
said he, unconsciously softening his tone, as no man could help doing
when addressing a creature so fair.

“It was I, sir, who begged my father to give up his hunting and to
come to Rede Hall with me; and if you have any fault to find with that
action, ’tis I should bear the blame of it.”

“And pray, mistress, what need had you to go to the farm in such a
monstrous hurry?”

“That, sir, frankly I would rather not tell.”

“Ho, ho, ’tis told then! ’Twas without doubt to put these rascals on
their guard, and to enable them to get away ere we came up!”

Joan made no answer.

“You can’t deny it, madam! Remember, we have already had proof of your
sympathy with the ruffians, in that you let Gardener Tom escape from
your house when you knew we were after him!”

“Sir, there was a higher duty before us then, than that of aiding in
the capture of a criminal. We would have done the same for you, had you
been staying under our roof, ay, had you been accused of murder,” said
the girl, with spirit.

“Well said, my lass,” cried her father.

But the brigadier’s chivalry was not proof against the provocation he
was receiving from this valiant and outspoken young woman. He gave her
one angry look, gulped down the words he dared not utter to her, and
turning hastily back to the parson, said shortly—

“This, sir, is no affair to discuss with ladies. ’Tis with you I would
have my talk out, and ’tis your explanation I wish to hear. The lady
must pardon me, but this is an affair which touches my honor and my
fame as a commander.”

“Go, my dear, go back to your work,” said her father, patting her hand
affectionately, and giving her a nod of command. “Leave these gentlemen
and me to settle this together.”

Though with manifest reluctance, Joan obeyed, withdrawing her arm from
her father’s with one tender glance in his face, and curtseying low to
the visitors, with her eyes on the ground, ere retiring.

No sooner was she gone back to the kitchen, than the two combatants
began again the old discussion, never getting much further with it—the
one reproaching, accusing, the other evading, excusing. But they seemed
perhaps a little calmer since that pleasant irruption of the sweet sex,
even when the gentle presence was withdrawn.

So that it presently seemed good to Lieutenant Tregenna to leave them
to fight the matter out together, while he made the balance of parties
even by beating a retreat to that end of the room where the lady had
disappeared. The kitchen door was ajar, and, while the two elderly
gentlemen were still banging the table and growing purple in the face,
he took the liberty of peeping through the chink. The yellow-washed
walls looked bright in the sunlight; the deal table, scrubbed
beautifully white, was quite a picturesque object with the great red
earthenware dish lying upon it. The jugs on the walls, the metal
utensils on the dresser, made a charming picture. So did the tabby
cat, curled up in one corner; so, above all, did that particularly
neat figure in the gray homespun frock, with the graceful arms and the
clever hands, and with that delicious profile above it all.

“I tell you, sir, you are no better than a traitor to the king if you
do not help his officers.”

“I tell you, sir, you don’t know what you are talking about!”

Thus the gentlemen jangled on; but their bickering had become an
unimportant incident to Tregenna.

He made rather a nice picture himself in his smart uniform, with his
well-powdered wig surmounting a handsome, clean-cut face, his gray
hawks’ eyes, now filled with the light of the young and ardent, his
mouth softened by the suspicion of a smile. He held his sword with
one hand, that its clanking should not startle her; and his smart
three-cornered hat was cocked jauntily under his arm.

Suddenly she turned; and by this time he was half inside the kitchen
door. Joan uttered a little cry; and, as if taking it for an
invitation, Tregenna hopped right in and came up to her.

“Sir,” said she, “what business have you with me?”

But she was not angry; she crossed her hands, one of which held a
rolling-pin, demurely in front of her, and looked down in a stately
fashion, not at all disturbed at being discovered in the act of making
a pudding, for those were domestic days.

“Much the same business, Miss Joan, that the brigadier has with your
father,” said Tregenna. “There is no pretense, as you know, betwixt you
and me. We are foes avowed. I ask you no questions about your visit to
the farm this morning, because I _know_ what took you thither. Neither
will you need to ask why I am going again to Rede Hall, to inquire into
this mystery concerning the Gray Barn.”

“You are going again?” said Joan, with interest, in which he thought he
detected fear also.

“Yes. And I make no secret of saying I am not going to be fooled by the
innocent appearance of the place. I am going again and again, until
I have cleared them all out, like wasps out of a hole. Mistress Ann
Price and her confederates must find a fresh field for their practises;
I swear they shall not continue to carry them on in that part of the
coast that is under my vigilance.”

“And you do not fear to tell me this, believing, as you do, that I am
in league with them myself?”

“’Tis for that reason I tell you, that you may warn them they must go.”

“Why did you not tell Mistress Ann herself?” asked Joan, with strange
quietness. “If you think, as you say, she is concerned with the gang?”

“I will tell her when I meet her next,” said Tregenna, promptly. “She
has challenged me to go some night and find out for myself the truth of
the tales the folks tell about the haunted barn. She——”

But Joan interrupted him, with a sudden look of intense anxiety—

“She challenged you to go at night? To the great barn?”

“Ay, that she did. And I accepted her invitation.”

“But you will not go! You must not! ’Twould not be safe——”

Joan uttered the words with great earnestness; but stopped, blushing,
when she had got so far. Tregenna took up her words—

“Not safe! How mean you? Surely my safety is the last thing you would
concern yourself with. ’Tis for the safety of these smuggling folk
alone that you care.”

Joan looked down, and said nothing. But it was plain by the heaving of
her breast and by her labored breathing, that she was much agitated.

“Is it not so, Miss Joan?”

“Nay, Mr. Tregenna, ’tis not so. I would not have you come to harm. If
you pursue those whom I have reason to hold in more esteem than you do,
I know that ’tis but your duty you are doing.”

“And ’tis in the performance of my duty that I must visit Rede Hall
again.”

“And I tell you again that you must not. Without saying aught against
the people that live there, I know there are others that frequent that
neighborhood that would not scruple to set upon you, perhaps to kill
you, for what you have done to their friends and confederates. No, Mr.
Tregenna, if you go, go with your men, or with the general, but go not
alone.”

“I thank you for your warning. But ’tis alone I must go. Surely you do
not credit your friend Mistress Ann with any intention of luring me
into a danger she must know of.”

But to his surprise, Joan’s face clearly betrayed that she did believe
Ann Price capable of such a proceeding. At least, this was what he read
in her perturbed expression.

“Ann is a strange creature,” said she dubiously. “She is a most loyal
_friend_, but——”

The pause which ensued was expressive.

“But a dangerous enemy. Is that what you would say?”

“Maybe,” said Joan, curtly.

“Well, I must risk what she can do——”

“Even though you know not how much that may be?”

“Even then.”

There was another pause.

“When do you purpose going?” asked Joan, suddenly.

“Ah, that I may not tell you.”

“You trust me not, sir? You think I would betray you into the hands of
them that would do you harm?”

“Nay, I do not say that. I do not think that. But, as you keep your own
counsel where these smugglers are concerned, so do I think it best to
keep mine own.”

Joan bowed her head proudly, as if in assent. But she was not at her
ease; she glanced at him quickly, and he saw that there were tears in
her dark eyes, whether of mortification, of sympathy, or of some other
feeling, he could not tell.

As they stood silent, he looking at her, and she turning towards the
ivy-hung window, the voice of the vicar startled them both, as he
called—

“Joan, where art thou, child?”

“Here, father,” cried she, as, with a rather startled, shamefaced look
at Tregenna, she ran into the dining-parlor, followed more slowly by
her companion.

Neither of the young people had noticed, so much interested had they
been in their own conversation, that the voices of the two gentlemen
had gradually sunk to more friendly tones. But both were glad to see,
on re-entering the room where they had left the disputants, that the
battle of tongues was over, and that the general was sitting by the
fireside in an attitude indicative of a more friendly mood.

And Joan was bidden to bring the currant wine, in which both the
brigadier and Tregenna pledged their host right heartily, whatever
suspicions they might have as to the existence of a stronger liquor in
the cellar.

They all spent a pleasant ten minutes over the wine and discreet small
talk, and then the visitors took their leave.

As the brigadier shook hands with his host, Joan found an opportunity
to exchange a few more words with the younger guest.

“Will you not take one last word of warning, sir, and refrain from
visiting Rede Hall alone?”

“I fear I can give you no such promise, though I thank you for your
kindness.”

“Which, nevertheless, you trust not. Farewell then, sir; for if you
keep to your intention, I shall never see you again alive.”




                              CHAPTER X.

                     THE MYSTERY OF THE GRAY BARN.


It was not without a chilly feeling down the marrow that Lieutenant
Tregenna heard these last words, which Joan uttered quickly indeed, but
with the most impressive earnestness, ere she turned her back upon the
departing visitors and hastily re-entered the house.

Far from causing him to waver in his determination to get at the bottom
of the mystery of Rede Hall and its occupants, Joan’s words did but
make him more impatient for the adventure. He was ashamed of himself
for certain doubts which would arise in his mind as to her good faith
in giving him this warning. He hated the thought of believing her
treacherous; but, at the same time, it was impossible to deny that her
interest in the people he was pursuing was intensely strong, so that
it was pardonable to doubt whether her professed solicitude on his
account was genuine.

And yet he hesitated to admit the possibility of her playing him false.
After all, he could make allowance for her feelings towards these
people, among whom she had spent her childhood, and from whom she had
received kindness from her earliest years. Was there not something
noble, rather than perverse, in her honest espousal of their cause,
even in her defiance of law and order in the persons of himself and the
soldiers?

Tregenna, if the truth must be told, thought quite as much about Joan
as he did about the important affairs in which he was engaged. He
decided to pay his visit to Rede Hall on the night of the following
day. It was from no foolhardiness that he resolved to venture alone on
this expedition; it was from the certainty he felt that a sharp lookout
would be kept, and that any attempt to bring a force against the place
would be met by the same ignominious result as the visit of the morning.

The following evening proved an admirable one for his purpose. It was
dark; it was wet; it was gloomy. After leaving orders that a sharp
lookout was to be kept for the smugglers, to whom such a night was as
propitious as it was to his own purpose, Tregenna went ashore, and
started alone and on foot across the cliffs for Rede Hall.

He had taken care to procure a loose, rough countryman’s coat,
waistcoat, and breeches, which disguised him very effectually, and
which had the further advantage of enabling him to conceal a brace of
pistols and a cutlass, with which he thought it prudent to arm himself.
A brown George wig and an enormous three-cornered hat, in a high state
of shabbiness, completed his attire. And there was nothing but the
springy, elastic walk of youth about him to betray that he was not some
decent innkeeper or small farmer on a late trudge along the lanes.

He took a short cut, and was in sight of the hall in less than an hour.

He had kept a careful watch to see that he was not observed or
followed; and he was quite sure, when he first saw the faint lights of
the farmhouse through the drizzling rain, that so far he had passed
unsuspected and undetected by such wayfarers as he had met on the road.

Instead of going straight up to the hall, he walked along at the
bottom of the hill, by the side of the stream, keeping his eyes upon
the building. And it was with a strange excitement that he heard, when
he had come well in sight of the gray barn, a dull sound, repeated at
intervals, like the noise of a descending flail.

At the same time he became aware of a faint and flickering light, which
was just visible through certain slits and gaps in the boarding with
which the original chapel windows of the barn had been filled up.

There was not a living creature in sight, though the slight noises
made by the animals in the farmyard came to Tregenna’s ears as he went
slowly and cautiously up the slope towards the barn.

The wall was high, but easy to climb; he crossed the straw of the yard
quickly and without noise, while the muffled sounds from inside the
barn grew louder and more distinct. It was not until he was close under
the south wall of the barn that a hoarse murmur of men’s voices reached
his ears, deadened, muffled, scarcely audible above the steady sound of
blows.

He looked about for some means of getting up to the level of the
slits in the boarding of the windows, by which the barn now received
ventilation and light. Only a sailor would have been able to avail
himself of such means as he found. A bit of straggling creeper, that
gave way under the touch of the foot; part of a wooden drain-pipe
rotten and broken; the crevices between the rough stones: such were the
footholds by which he was able to scramble up to the old east window;
and once at this level, he climbed by the help of the stone tracery
to the rose heading at the top, where there was a gap in the boarding
large enough for him to see the interior of the barn from end to end.

It was a weird sight that met his astonished eyes. By the flaring light
of some half-dozen smoking torches, which threw a fantastic glare
upon the stone walls, upon the still perfect arcade at the base, upon
fragments of arch and pillar, corbel and broken groin, a dozen men were
at work upon the building of a boat some thirty feet long, which lay,
like some huge sprawling creature, on the floor below.

Tregenna watched with fascinated eyes. He had heard of the secret
shipbuilding yards, where the smuggling craft were manufactured,
and whence they were drawn down to the sea on the farm wagons in the
darkest hours of the night; but no suspicion of the gray barn in
connection with such doings had ever entered his head; and it was clear
that even the country folk had been kept out of the secret.

Clash! clash! upon his ears, in his place of vantage, came the sound
of the driving in of the iron bolts. He saw the brawny bare arms of
the men go up above their heads, hammer in hand, to come down with
a thud upon the ship’s groaning sides. He saw the great skeleton
monster shiver under the blows; heard the hoarse laugh, the muttered
oaths, which the men, cautious even at their toil, exchanged as they
worked. And presently, as he got used to the din, to the waving,
smoking lights, to the excitement of his strange position, he began to
distinguish the words they uttered, and presently to discover that he
himself was one of the subjects of their conversation.

“Curse me if I think the boat’ll ever swim, with all these eyes afore
and behind us what we’ve got now!” cried one voice, which Tregenna knew
that he had heard before.

It was a difficult matter to recognize faces and figures so much
foreshortened as they were from the lofty perch he occupied: but he
presently perceived that the speaker was the little mean-looking man
with the pimply face, who had taken part in the last fray, and who was
known as “Bill Plunder.”

“Ods rabbit it! What matters the eyes?” sang out the burly giant, Robin
Cursemother, as he dealt a sounding blow on the head of the bolt he
was driving in. “There’s but one pair to signify, and we mean to close
them, don’t we, lads, so as they shan’t see naught to hurt no more!”

Then up spoke a third man, who was seated on a barrel in a corner, with
a pipe between his lips, and holding a torch in one hand. He limped
when he moved, and Tregenna guessed that this was the “Gardener Tom”
whom he had himself wounded, and whom the parson and his daughter had
sheltered under their roof. He was a young fellow of not more than five
or six and twenty, well made and handsome, with an open, honest face
and manly voice: a man too good for a smuggler, Tregenna decided.

“Nay, the young officer does but his duty in running us down. And I
don’t want to see no harm come to him, though ’twas he shot me through
the leg. So we can but keep clear of him,’tis all I want. Miss Joan ’ud
be main sorry any harm should come to him; and for her sake I’d have no
hand in doing him a hurt.”

“Zoons, then we’ll do without thee, Tom, when we give the lubber his
deserts!” said Robin. “Though what you should want to spare him for I
know not, since you’re sweet on Ann; and ’tis ten chances to one she’ll
turn sheep’s eyes upon him if we don’t settle his business while she’s
hot against him, as she is now.”

“Ay, Tom,” said the mean-looking Bill, coming close up to him, and
sniggering in his face, “you’ve already got Ben to settle with; you
don’t want no more rivals, my lad. You’d best let us do her bidding,
and carry him off and let him down the monks’ well, when he shows his
nose up here again!”

“I won’t have no hand in it, mates,” said Tom, stubbornly. “I don’t
mind a fight, man to man; I like it when my blood’s up. But to land a
man over the head when he’s alone, and to bind him when he’s dazed and
can’t do naught to defend hisself, why, that’s no work for a man as is
a man, and it ain’t no work for me.”

“Odso, man, we’ll do as well without thee!” retorted Robin, wiping the
sweat from his forehead with a huge red hand.

“Ay, and better too!” piped out Bill. “For there’ll be one less to
share the plunder; and——”

He was interrupted by a roar of mocking laughter from all the men
within hearing.

“Ay, that’s Bill Plunder, true to’s name!” cried one. “Never no blows
gets struck but what he’s thinking whether there’s guineas to come out
of it, or but a matter of shillings! But there’ll be cursed little to
take from a fellow that’s but a lieutenant!”

“There’s his laced coat, and his sword, and maybe somat handsome by way
of a pistol,” grumbled Bill, angrily. “Pickings worth having, any way,
and that ’ud not find me too proud to take ’em.”

“Maybe you’ll not have the chance, Bill, after all,” said Tom. “Maybe
the young officer’ll know better nor to come.”

“Not he!” retorted Bill. “He’s got the spirit, deuce take him. He’ll
walk into the lion’s mouth, sure as a die. And it’s us that has to take
care he don’t walk out again.”

“No fear o’ that,” said Robin, with an oath.

“What if he should come quiet?” suggested Tom.

“Sneaking by like them king’s men do when they’re after us?” cried
Bill. “Dost think Ann won’t keep too good a lookout for him for that?
No. If he comes with the redcoats, she’ll know long afore they be here,
and they’ll find all taut as they did yesterday morn. And if he comes
alone, he’ll walk in right enough; but he’ll never walk out no more!”

There was a hoarse laugh at this, which passed round the circle, as the
men repeated the words the one to the other. And then, quite suddenly,
there fell a silence upon them all.

Tregenna felt that his heart almost stopped beating; for he was under
the impression, for the first moment, that he had been discovered. But
the hush had hardly fallen upon the group below, when a faint tapping
was heard upon one of the great doors of the barn.

“Ay, ay,” sang out Robin. And turning to the others, as he rested from
his hammering, he made a gesture to them, with his brawny arm, to put
down their tools. “They’re back,” said he “back from the shore. Down
with the boat, mates, and let’s see what luck they’ve had!”

Tregenna was furious on learning, as he did from these words, that on
this very night there had been a smugglers’ raid carried out in his
absence.

But he had little time for reflection when a strange thing happened in
the great barn below. The men stood silent all round, each holding a
rope, which he had hastily untied from a post driven into the ground.
At a signal from Robin, who directed the proceedings, the boat was
slowly lowered until she had sunk below the level of the floor into the
ancient crypt beneath.

For one moment the torches flashed and flared, as the men looked down
at the unfinished hull of their boat. Then, just as Tregenna was
wondering why the soldiers had not taken up the flooring-boards to look
beneath them, he witnessed what he could not but confess was a very
clever contrivance. A row of boards were placed, side by side, on high
trestles across the boat, at a distance of some five feet below the
chapel floor, which was then boarded over in the same way. On raising
one of these upper boards, therefore, a stranger would have seen the
false floor below, with a rough canvas thrown down upon it, which would
have looked, in the imperfect light of the barn, like the bare ground.

So quickly, so quietly was this carried out, that it took but a few
minutes to transform the busy workshop into a bare, deserted place,
when the men extinguished their torches and filed out quietly by the
west door into the darkness and the drizzling rain.

The last of them had gone; the great key had turned in the rusty lock;
and Tregenna was asking himself by which way it would be safest to
descend, so that he might get away undetected by any of the smugglers,
when he felt his left ankle gripped by a strong hand.




                              CHAPTER XI.

                         IN THE LION’S MOUTH.


It was impossible for Tregenna to see the face of the man who had
seized him by the leg; for his own body was thrust through the hole
between the boards which filled up the great east window.

He kicked out, however, with all his might; and after a silent struggle
of a few moments’ duration, he managed to get rid of his assailant: and
the next minute he heard him drop with a thud to the ground.

Tregenna saw on the left the smoldering torch of one of the men who
had been at work inside the barn: he dared not, therefore, get down
and cross the farmyard. Having withdrawn his shoulders from the hold
in which he had wedged himself, he saw that the roof of the nearest
outhouse was only some four feet away. He contrived, by a risky
spring, to reach the thatch; and then it was easy to cross by the
roofs of the outhouses to an open window of the farmhouse, through
which he peeped.

It was dark outside, with the rain-clouds and the falling drizzle;
it was pitch dark within, so that he could not even tell whether the
window opened from a room or a passage. He listened; but at first there
was nothing to be heard but the wind among the tree-tops on the hill
above, and the sound of the tread of footsteps in the soft straw of the
farmyard.

Presently there was a stifled laugh, a murmur of rough voices, and then
the tramp of horses’ hoofs coming nearer and nearer along the road.
Then there was a low whistle, which was answered by a voice close to
where he stood under the window.

The men from the barn had gone out to meet their comrades returning
from the raid.

On an instant the place seemed to be alive with unseen creatures,
whispering, laughing, singing softly. Sheltered from observation from
below, for the present at least, Tregenna crouched down in the thatch,
and wondered how long he would be safe from his late assailant.
The next moment he saw a head appear above the eaves of one of the
outhouses.

There was only one thing to be done, and he did it. Springing erect,
he clutched at the sill of the open window, drew himself up to it, got
inside, and closed it fast. Just as he secured the latch he saw, dimly
indeed, but unmistakably, the figure of a rough-looking countryman on
the roof outside. The closed window, however, baffled the fellow, for
he went on crawling about over the thatch without any suspicion of the
way by which his prey had escaped him.

Tregenna fancied, as he watched from behind the security of the
latticed window, that he recognized in the fellow a rough-looking lad
whom he had seen at work in the Parsonage garden.

The question now was, having got safely into the house, to get safely
out again.

He groped about him, found the opposite wall at a distance of some five
or six feet, and soon discovered that he was in a corridor, running
along the back wall of the house. Following it, he came to a corner,
where the corridor, now cutting through the house to the front, with
rooms on each side, led to a wide staircase with a handsome carved oak
railing.

Here, however, he came to a standstill, not daring to go down. For the
hall below led straight into the farmhouse kitchen, and there was no
door.

Tregenna caught sight of a couple of men who were busy rolling
spirit-kegs into a corner of the great room; and he was prone on the
floor on the instant, watching and listening. But though he heard
plenty of noise, the entrance of the smugglers fresh from the raid, the
greetings of their comrades from the Gray Barn, the rolling of barrels
across the rough tiled floor, he saw no more. The outer door was out
of his sight, and so was the fireplace; and it was between door and
fireplace that the movement of the company lay.

When he became sure of this fact, he stole softly down the staircase,
which was entirely unlighted, and concealed himself behind the bend
in the massive oak railing at the bottom. By this time the noise of
tongues, of tramping feet, of the bringing in of heavy wares, had
become so loud that he was not afraid of his footsteps on the bare
boards being heard.

As he stepped down upon the stone flags of the hall, the wavering light
from the flaring torches in the kitchen fell upon what was now the
front-door of the house; he took a step towards it, thinking that he
might escape by this way. But it was fastened by a heavy padlock, so
that egress in this direction was impossible.

There was nothing to be done but to remain in concealment, and to hope
for a chance of escape when the occupants of the house should have
dispersed and gone to rest.

For the present he was safe; and although he dared not advance far
enough to see what was going on, his ears kept him pretty well informed
of the course affairs were taking.

In the first place, he recognized among the newcomers three voices:
those of Ben the Blast, of Long Jack, and of Ann Price, who, as he
judged by the words she uttered and those addressed to her, must have
been herself with the raiders that night. They were jubilant over the
skill with which they had evaded the king’s men, who, it seemed, had
not had a chance of coming up with them.

“’Twas all owing to the luck of the capt’n’s being away!” said Ann’s
voice, in a decisive tone. “That fellow’s the hardest nut we have to
crack. The soldiers don’t count!” she added contemptuously.

“Ay, but the question is, where was the capt’n, damn ’un!” retorted Ben
the Blast, ferociously. “If so be you say you invited him hither, maybe
he’s on’s way now, and that’s how we missed ’un. Hey, Robin, have you
seen any strangers about?”

Robin answered first with a characteristic curse.

“If so be as I had seen him,” said he savagely, “there’d be naught for
to trouble your head about him no more!”

“Maybe, he’s gone up to the Parsonage!” suggested Tom, who had entered
the kitchen from the porch during Ben’s speech. “Folk’s say he allus
has an eye to the Parsonage when he goes by, spying to see if Mistress
Joan’s about.”

“He’ll get no good by doing that!” cried Ann, sharply. “Miss Joan’ll
never tell aught to harm us, for my mother’s sake; ’twas she came
herself to tell us, t’other day, that the red-coats were on their way
hither.”

“Ay,” said Tom, “but ’tis not for information ’gainst us the lieutenant
hangs about the Parsonage. ’Tis for Miss Joan’s bright eyes, I’m
thinking.”

“Pshaw!” said Ann, contemptuously.

“She’s a handsome, winsome lady,” went on Tom, “and all the gentlemen
be raving mad about her shape and her fine eyes. So ’tis no such wonder
if he’s struck, too.”

“Miss Joan’s well enough,” returned Ann, though in a rather grudging
tone; “but I think the lieutenant’s got something better to do than
run after a lass just now. Leastways, if he hasn’t, we can find him
something!” she added with acerbity.

“Ho, ho, ho! That can we!” roared Ben the Blast, laughing lustily.

In the midst of his mirth, in which the other men joined, there was an
interruption. Some one ran in panting, and apparently in sufficient
disorder to warrant a feeling of alarm among the rest.

“Well, how now, Bill? What has frighted thee?” said Robin Cursemother;
and his companions added their questions to the panting newcomer.

At last, when there was a pause, he blurted out—

“There’s spies about, mates; there’s eyes been a-watching us while we
was at our work in the barn to-night!” Instantly there was a confusion
of tongues, so great that for a few moments he was allowed to get
breath, while his companions pressed round him, with oaths and abrupt
questionings. When he was able to go on, he said, “’Twas a lad from the
village yonder as told me, young Will Bramley, that lives down by the
mash’es, and works up at Parsonage.”

“Well!”

“Well, Oi caught ’un as he were a getting off the roof of the little
shippen, and he got away, runnin’ as hard as he could towards the
village yonder. But Oi come oop with him, and Oi says, says Oi, ‘What
be tha doing of?’ says Oi. ‘Tha’ve been spying,’ says Oi. Then says he:
‘’Tain’t Oi as have been spying, Bill Plunder,’ says he. And he told as
how ’twere Miss Joan Langney as had sent him for to see if there was
spies about the barn, and as how he’d caught hold of a man’s leg that
was a looking through the slit in the big barn winder to-night.”

As Bill Plunder uttered these words, a storm of curses and oaths burst
from the listening smugglers. There was a movement, a stamping of feet,
a rattling of weapons. And Tregenna, brave man though he was, felt the
blood run cold in his veins, as he thought of the fate which would be
his if he should fall into their hands that night.

“’Twas the lieutenant, for sure! Curses on him!” cried Ben the Blast,
bringing his heavy heel down sharply on the tiled floor as he spoke.
“And whither did he go? Answer that! Whither, I say, whither?”

“That the lad didn’t know no more’n you do. He said as how he caught
hold of the leg of the fellow that was spying, and as how he was flung
off and down to the ground. And as how he looked and looked, and
searched and hunted, but couldn’t get not so much as a sight of him no
more. And as how he dursn’t call to any of us, for fear as he should be
caught for a spy hisself. That’s the lad’s tale, and Oi believe it’s
the truth, for ’od’s fish, Oi made him tremble in’s shoes.”

“Why didst not bring him hither?” asked Robin, shortly. “We’d have
knocked the truth out of’s maw, I’ll warrant! Which way did he go,
blockhead?”

“’Tis no matter for the boy!” cried Ben, in a voice of thunder. “’Tis
for the man we must be looking! Do you, mates, search the yard and the
shippens, while Ann and me’ll do the bit of road, and the bushes in
front yonder!”

“He’ll be gotten clear away by this,” grumbled Gardener Tom.

“Not he. ’Tis for spying he’s come, and he’d not go back so soon,
and with all of us about, too. Nay, he’ll be on the premises still,
somewheres, and, odds my life, we’ll make short work of him when we
find him. We’ll tie him on the brown mare, and whip him till he swoons,
and then we’ll put his body down the Monks’ Well that lies t’other side
of the hill yonder.”

Then the shrill, thin whining voice of Long Jack broke in upon the
thunder of the others. Almost sobbing, and speaking in accents of real
terror, he said, thickly, and with uncertain intonation—

“How now, mates, how now? Best leave well alone. Besht leave well
alone, Oi say, and may Heaven Almoighty pardon us what we’ve done
this noight! It’s ill work is murder, and it’ll be murder if you come
against him this noight.”

Ben the Blast gave a contemptuous grunt. “Ugh!” cried he, surlily;
“drop that sniveling, Jack! Thou are loike to a wolf with a knife in
thy hand and thy blood up: but no sooner art thou cold again, than
thy tears flow as fast as thy liquor. Get thee to bed, mate, so thou
doesn’t loike the sound of our singing, nor of the tune we shall sing
to.”

But Long Jack, still sighing and moaning, got up and staggered down
the room. Tregenna, with his heart in his mouth, saw him lurch towards
the hall where he was in hiding. But Long Jack, who was unsteady on
his legs, had but taken a few steps out of his right course, Bill
Plunder ran after him, and fetched him back; and the tall, lean,
miserable-looking rascal and his small ferret-faced companion went
again out of sight together.

They all trooped out quickly, leaving, as Tregenna knew by the lull,
only Ben the Blast and Ann in the kitchen. They had taken some of the
torches with them, too; for the light had become very dim, even on the
whitewashed lower walls; while the great timbered roof overhead was now
in pitchy blackness.

There was a silence when Ben and Ann were alone together, after he
had gone to the door and slammed it. Then she began to hum softly to
herself.

“What art a-singing for?” asked Ben, gruffly.

“To keep up my spirits maybe,” returned she, saucily.

“Thou didst not need for to keep up thy spirits till latterly; they
was allus up,” said Ben. “What’s come to thee these last days? Is’t
since what happened t’other day that thou’rt so down in the mouth? Is’t
that thou wouldst like to be even with them that’s done thee so ill a
turn—eh, lass?”

“Ay, that would I,” answered Ann, savagely. “I do thirst to pay back as
good as I’ve been given. I’m none of your soft ones, as you know, Ben.”

“Odso, Oi don’t know it? It’s why Oi loike thee, Ann. Give me a lass,
says Oi, as can deal you a blow with her fist if she’s a mind, loike
as you did t’other day, when Oi did but ask for a smack of the lips.
The day yon cursed lieutenant tried to come atween us, you mind, Ann?”

“Ay, I remember,” said Ann, who, with native intelligence, spoke much
better than did any of her companions, and, indeed, nearly as well as
the country gentlefolk. “I played the poor lad a neat trick, and left
him to get back through the mud of the lanes as best he could.”

“Serve him roight, too!” retorted Ben, roughly. “Oi should be main
sorry to think you had any sneaking loiking for a king’s man, Ann; a
lass of spirit loike you!”

“I’ve no liking for anybody,” said Ann, impatiently; “but my own kin
and my own kind. Liking, indeed! What dost take me for, to speak as if
I’d aught of a feeling of kindness for the young rascal that’s done
more harm to us in a month than the rest of the king’s men have in half
a year!”

“That’s roight, lass; spoke with spirit. Spoke loike my cousin, my good
cousin, that’s to be my woife!”

“Time enough for talk of that, Ben, when we get the coast clear of the
cutter’s men and the red-coats!” said Ann, shortly. “And now, let’s to
our work; ’tis for us to search the road for this young spark. ’Tis but
a matter of form, though; for he’ll be back to his ship long ere this!”

“You think so?”

“I’m sure on’t.”

“Still, you’ll have a hunt for him?”

“Ay, and if I find him, I pray Heaven I may find him alone. I should
like to settle accounts with him—by myself—dearly, dearly!”

She spoke between her clenched teeth. And Ben laughed.

“Roight, Ann,” said he. “Oi’ll hand him over if he comes my way. ’Od’s
fish; Oi’d never wish a man worse than to come your way while you be in
that humor!”

“I always have a mind to pay my own scores myself,” said Ann,
viciously. “So do you, Ben. Take to the right, down towards the
bridge, whilst I search in the bushes in front, yonder. There’s many a
hiding-place there the fellow might have chosen, if ’tis true that he’s
still on the watch.”

“Oons, Oi’ll not thwart thee. So here’s for the bridge. Thou’lt not
give me a kiss before Oi go—eh, lass?”

“Dost think I’m in the mood for kissing?” retorted Ann, sharply.

And it was abundantly clear that she got rid of her too obtrusive
admirer with the physical violence he professed to admire so much; for
Tregenna heard a sort of scuffling going on, and then Ben’s tread and
his voice were heard no more; but the door was opened, letting in a
rush of cold air, and then slammed with great force.

Ann did not at once follow her admirer to take up her own allotted
share in the search for the spy. Tregenna heard her somewhat heavy
tread in the great kitchen, as if she were slowly pacing up and down at
the end of the room near the fireplace.

Should he disclose himself to her, to this enigmatical woman with the
calm manner and the fierce heart? Or should he wait and watch the
course of events, hoping for a chance of escape?

As he put this question to himself, he heard a door open in the
corridor above, and saw the glimmer of a rushlight reflected on the
ceiling. The old woman who had received him and the brigadier on
their previous visit to the farm had come out into the corridor and
was moving slowly towards the back of the house. In a few moments
she returned with a much quicker step, and coming to the head of the
staircase, called, in an anxious whisper—

“Ann!”

From the kitchen, at that moment, there came the sound of the flinging
down of something heavy, with a noise that echoed in the old rafters
above.

“Ann!” repeated the old woman more shrilly.

Ann’s voice had a muffled sound, as she answered, as if she were
speaking from a great distance—

“Hey, mother, is’t you?”

“Ay, lass. There’s summat wrong. I minded a while ago to have left the
passage window open, with the rain coming in. And now I find it shut,
and marks of a man’s tread on the floor here!”

Ann’s answer rang out sharp and clear—

“Right, mother. I’ll see to’t! Go you back to bed!”

The old woman lingered but for one instant, turning to the right and
to the left the iron stand which held her rushlight. Naturally the
feeble light showed her very little. The prints of muddy boots were
continued down the stairs, but she did not care to trace them out,
feeling, probably, that such investigations might safely be left to the
energetic Ann.

With a grunt and a muttered grumble she retreated into her own room,
and Tregenna heard her draw the bolt on the inner side of the door.

He heard the click of a pistol which, as he imagined, the intrepid Ann
was trying. But he felt that the moment for decisive action had come.
He would not be discovered hiding behind the staircase like a thief.

Coming out of his corner, therefore, he went into the big kitchen, to
present himself to the redoubtable Ann.

The great hall looked a weird place, with the flickering of the
log-fire and the glimmer of a dying torch for all illumination. Round
about the wide hearth were piled bales of goods and kegs of spirits,
while the table groaned under a weight of jugs and tankards, joints of
beef, and long, flat home-made loaves, generous preparation for the
smugglers’ supper.

In front of the hearth and between the two wide oak settles there was
a gaping chasm, a hole in the floor of which Tregenna was not long in
guessing the meaning. The heavy wooden lid, by day artfully concealed
by a piece of rough matting, apparently placed there for the comfort of
the old people who sat on each side, was now thrown back; and it was
by this lid that the solitary occupant of the huge apartment was now
standing.

Although he was in part prepared for the discovery, Tregenna gave a
slight start on finding himself face to face with this being.

For he saw before him not Ann Price the decent farmer’s daughter,
with her neat cap and snow-white apron, her calm face and quiet
manners; but Jem Bax, the young smuggler, with the rough shock of
shoulder-length hair, the seamen’s breeches, and high boots, the loose
shirt, open jacket, and flowing tie, with the pale set face, and fierce
devil-may-care expression.

And even now that he knew them to be one and the same person, he could
hardly be surprised that he had not guessed the truth before. For, as
there had seemed to be nothing masculine about Ann in her skirts and
cap: so now in Jem Bax, in coat and breeches, he could see no trace of
the woman.




                             CHAPTER XII.

                          SETTLING ACCOUNTS.


When Tregenna came in, with his wide hat under his arm, and with the
easy air of a casual caller, it was Ann who appeared more startled than
he did.

She had had one foot on the nearest settle, and had been engaged in
priming one of her pistols. But on seeing the intruder she started
erect, drew from her belt a second pistol, which was already charged,
and leveled it at his head.

It missed fire, however, and Tregenna sauntered up the room towards
her, as if such a trifle as the attempted discharge of a pistol at him
were the greeting he was most accustomed to.

“Good evening, Mistress Ann,” said he, with a low bow, when he had come
within half a dozen paces of her.

She replied by a scowl, and by a muttered whisper between her teeth of
a very unfeminine kind. Nothing daunted, he still came on; and knowing
perfectly the artful character of his opponent, and profiting by her
momentary confusion and annoyance at the failure of her weapon, he
seized her by both wrists, forced her into a seat and placed himself
beside her, still firmly holding both her hands.

“Curse you! What are you going to do to me?”

“Nothing but keep you quiet for a few minutes till I get a chance of
getting away.”

She laughed scornfully.

“You won’t get away. Not even if you kill me. We’ve got you fast this
time.”

She glared at him, her face within a foot of his, with eyes full of
passionate hate.

“In the mean time _I’ve got you fast_, for the moment, and I intend——”

She interrupted him, breathing heavily, and almost snorting defiance.

“To humble me, to humiliate me, to treat me as—as——”

It was Tregenna’s turn to interrupt, which he did with a scorn as
steady as her own.

“As a woman! Troth, no! There’s nothing less likely, nothing less
possible, I assure you. I intend to treat you—I am treating you—as Jem
Bax the smuggler, as hardened a ruffian as I’ve ever met, as ferocious
as a savage, and with naught of the other sex about him but the cunning
and the meanness!”

“Meanness!”

She quailed under the word. For the first time she flinched, and her
eyelids quivered.

“Yes. ’Twould be vastly mean in a man to attempt to harm the enemy who
had come to his succor, had promised to pardon him, to let him escape.
In a woman ’twould be worse than meanness; but what ’tis accounted by a
creature of your sort, that’s neither honest man nor true woman, why,
in sooth, I know not!”

Again her gray eyes flashed a steely fire as they met his. There was
a sudden touch of sex in the lowered eyelids, in the flush which came
into her cheek, as she felt the young man’s gaze full upon her, saw his
handsome features so near her own. She drew a deep, shuddering breath,
and then said, in a fierce whisper, turning away her head, and moving
nervously under the touch of his strong hands—

“I care not to be helped, to be pardoned, by one who stands to me as
a foe! ’Twas the first time I’d had a check, the first time I’d been
hurt. The others—my comrades—might look at me askance, I thought, might
treat me as a mere woman, despise me, when once they found me hurt,
wounded, like one of themselves.”

“Still, you need not have let your feminine spitefulness carry you so
far!”

“Feminine spitefulness!” echoed she; and she made a sudden, vain
attempt to wrench her hands away. “Pshaw, you don’t understand! And in
truth I did you no hurt.”

“’Twas the fault of your feminine arm!” retorted Tregenna. “The
intention was bad; so, thank Heaven, was your aim!”

She clenched her teeth in rage and agony. Tregenna was interested,
excited, in spite of himself, by this sudden revelation of the woman
who looked upon herself as a sort of Joan of Arc, invulnerable,
triumphant, bringing good fortune to her friends and ill luck to her
enemies. He began to understand the movement of impotent rage which
had caused her to behave so ungenerously. And he saw, too, that she
now felt ashamed of her act of treachery, that she writhed beneath his
taunts.

“Let me go,” cried she, suddenly. “You—you—— Damn it, you hurt me!”

Unfeminine as the reproach was, Tregenna was not unaffected by it. Not
a very lovely or lovable side of a woman’s nature was this that she was
revealing to him; but a woman’s it was for all that.

“Well,” said he, after a moment’s pause, “I will let you go.”

“You’ll trust me?” cried she, quite eagerly.

“No,” retorted he, coolly. “I won’t trust you. But I can trust to my
own limbs to hold my own in a struggle with you.”

And he released her. She sprang up, drew back her shirt-sleeves, and
looked at the red marks on her wrists.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” said Tregenna.

“So am not I,” retorted Ann. “I’ll show these marks to my kinsmen, my
comrades; ’twill spur their spirits to see I have been so used.”

“Egad, they need but little spurring! And in truth you would do better,
if you care for your kinsmen, to warn them to desist from their
unlawful practises. The king and the Government are alike resolved to
put them down. A handful of men—and women—be they never so bold, can
scarce hope to hold out long against such forces as they can bring.”

Ann laughed derisively.

“You know us not,” said she, disdainfully, “if you think we can be
cowed into submission either by red-coats on the land, or blue-jackets
on the water. ’Tis in our blood to like the fight as well as the booty.
There be spirits among us—and I own myself one of them—would care
little for the cargo but for the chance of a pistol-shot about our ears
in the landing of it!”

“But one of these nights you may find the bullets whizz by a little too
near, and see your lover shot down by your side.”

Ann, who, conscious that Tregenna was watching her narrowly, had
disdainfully withdrawn to some little distance, and was pacing up and
down, throwing from time to time a sidelong glance at him, turned,
planted her feet firmly, and put her hands on her hips in a defiant
manner.

“My lover!” said she. “And pray who may he be?”

“Well, I know not which is the favored one,” said Tregenna. “But I
gather from what I have heard—overheard, that there are two who crave
your favor: one Gardener Tom, a handsome lad, too good for his vile
trade, and he they call Ben the Blast, for whom, truly, I feel no great
liking.”

“Well, then, sir, know this: little as your liking for him may be, ’tis
greater than mine. And as for young Tom, why, in truth I should be
sorry to see him fall, but, ’twould be for his mother’s sake, and not
for my own. As you said but some minutes since, I am ill-fitted to deal
in such small wares as kisses and caresses!”

“Nay, I said not so, Mistress Ann.”

“You said you looked not upon me as upon a woman.”

“But there be other men that do so look upon you.”

Ann came a little nearer, and smiled grimly.

“Ay, there’s your friend the general. He looked upon me with a most
kindly eye. And there’s young Master Bertram at Hurst Court, that
craves a kiss whene’er he sees me. You cannot understand their taste,
sir, doubtless? For you a woman must have soft hands and black eyes,
like Mistress Joan Langney?”

There was something surprising in the sort of curious scorn with
which she put these questions, as if interested, though somewhat
disdainfully, in his answer. Tregenna, who was leaning back on the
settle, as easily as if enjoying his rest in an inn, smiled a little.

“Ay, truly I do not know where you would find a fairer specimen of
womanhood than the vicar’s daughter.”

His face softened as he spoke. Ann came a few steps nearer to him,
watching him with a slight frown.

“Yet she hath small liking for you. She is on our side, you know. ’Twas
she that warned us of your coming with the soldiers.”

“She will no longer be on your side when she hears that you have
murdered me, Mistress Ann.”

“Murdered you?”

“I understood that to be your intention.”

“You take it coolly.”

“’Tis as well to save my heat till ’tis wanted.”

“Maybe you don’t think I shall be as good as my word?”

“I have no reason to doubt that you can be as good as your word when
you have promised to do something vile and mischievous!”

Ann snorted with anger.

“Yet you can admire a woman of spirit in the parson’s daughter!”

“Spirit! Egad, it needs no spirit to call in half a score of your
villainous confederates to make an end to one man.”

Ann came up and planted herself before him.

“I wanted no confederates to help me with you. I did propose that task
for myself,” said she, “in return for the humbling you gave me t’other
day in sight of all my friends.”

“Ay, so you did. But your pistol missed fire, and I was too quick for
you afterwards.”

Even as he spoke his taunting words, he saw her hand go quickly towards
the cutlass she carried at her side. And he smiled as he sprang up and
changed his place to the other settle, thus putting the open trap-door
to the cellar below between himself and her.

“Come,” said she, frowning and tossing back her short hair like a
fury, “you shall not say but I play you fair. Out with your sword and
fight me again, as you did that day. If you get the best of it this
time I’ll see you safe out of this, I give you my word.”

Tregenna shook his head.

“I can neither take your word, nor fight you,” said he, lightly.

“You have fought me before! Did you find me such a contemptible foe?”

“No, indeed. But—I knew you not then for a woman.”

“Well, and you own me not for a woman now!”

“Just too much of a woman for me to fight with you I will own you to
be.”

“Well, then, since you find me too much of a woman to be fought with,
you shall find me woman enough to give me a kiss.”

“Nay, madam, I would rather be excused from that mark of your favor
also. A kiss may be given with the lips and a stab with the hand at the
same time.”

“You shall make fast my hands with this rope, sir, and then maybe you
will be satisfied of my harmlessness.”

“Nay, madam, ’twould take more than a rope to satisfy me of that!”
retorted Tregenna.

Ann laughed; and he was surprised to note the change which had come
over her countenance. This fierce creature, who but a moment ago had
looked like a fiend with her glittering eyes and frowning brows, had
been transformed, by a fresh gust of the passions which were so strong
in her, to a being gentle, mild, humble, and submissive; and all the
more dangerous on that account.

“You are hard to please, sir,” said she, in a low voice; “harder to
please than any man I have ever met before!”

And she gave him a steady glance of her glowing eyes which was a
fresh revelation as to her strongly emotional temperament. He began
to understand the hold she got on the men she met, high and low, her
equals and her superiors, as he noted the transformation from the
bold and daring front of the young buccaneer to the modest mien and
diffident voice of the more gracious members of her sex.

And he acknowledged to himself that the two sides to her nature gave
her a fascination, an odd attractiveness, which made her a creature
unique, unapproachable, dangerous.

“I think, Mistress Ann,” said he, “’twould be better for us if you
pleased us less easily.”

She laughed again, showing her beautiful sound white teeth in a most
winning mirthfulness which seemed to be wholly without guile. Tregenna,
however, was still cautious. The very fact that she now seemed to him
to be handsome, whereas hitherto he had thought her features somewhat
homely, was enough to put him on his guard.

“Nay, sir, I am not the foul foe you imagine. You shall not fare ill at
my hands, if ’twere but for the bold stand you have made against me!”
said she. “You shall pledge me in a cup of wine; and you shall find it
none the less invigorating that it has never paid duty!”

The archness with which she spoke was charming, irresistible. Tregenna
watched her with amusement, interest, admiration, as she went to the
table and poured out a full tankard from a flagon that stood at one
end of the board. She turned to bring it to him, with a grave, rough
grace that was odd and subtly attractive, when there came on a sudden
a succession of sharp raps on the door.

Tregenna sprang to his feet, thinking that the smugglers were at hand.

Ann put the tankard hurriedly down on the table, and bounding forward
to the place where he stood beside the gaping hole in the floor, she
gave him a sudden push which sent him headlong into the cellar below,
and shut down the trap-door.




                             CHAPTER XIII.

                            A LATE VISITOR.


Tregenna was so much taken by surprise by the suddenness of the attack
made upon him by Ann, that he did not realize her intention until he
found himself lying on something which was luckily not very hard, on
the cellar floor, in complete darkness.

He had not had far to fall; for the bales of silk which had been flung
in from above were piled high, and made, moreover, a more comfortable
resting-place than kegs of spirits would have done.

He floundered about in the darkness, with difficulty finding a footing,
and wondered in what spirit Ann had made him thus a prisoner. Was it to
shield him from the attacks of her confederates? Or was it to prevent
his finding an opportunity for escape?

This latter explanation seemed to him the more probable of the two.
The woman was crafty, passionate, not to be trusted; and she had seized
the first chance which presented itself for putting him completely in
her power.

In the meantime, while he recovered from the momentarily stupefying
effects of his fall, he could at first make out nothing of what was
going on in the great kitchen above. A distant murmur, undoubtedly that
of voices did indeed reach his ears; but it was not until he had been
down there for some minutes that he heard heavy footsteps on the tiled
floor above him, and was able to distinguish the voice of Ann, and then
of the newcomer, whom, from his halting gait and from what he could
hear of his voice, he guessed to be Gardener Tom.

Tregenna piled the bales up together, mounted on them, and having thus
brought his head near the level of the floor, listened intently.

The two speakers had by this time come to the hearth, and it was
possible to distinguish most of their words. Tom was displeased with
her reception of himself.

“Well, Ann, ’twas no such easy matter for me to get up the hill to tell
thee, and I reckoned for sure on a word of thanks. ’Tis well to be
prepared when visitors come so late; and, as I tell thee, he’ll be here
in a few minutes.”

“’Tis but the parson, maybe, called out to see some one that’s ill or
dying.”

“Ay, maybe ’tis he, for ’tis a horse that may be his by the look of
him. But it may be the lieutenant, come to see what’s toward; and,
in that case, you’d do well to put those kegs out of sight, and give
warning to the lads to keep close till he’s gone.”

There was a pause. Ann made no answer. By the angry tone in which Tom
presently went on speaking, Tregenna guessed that she had smiled, or
made some gesture which aroused the lover’s suspicions.

“Well, why dost thou not answer me? Art so sure ’tis not the
lieutenant? Hast seen him thyself? Hast——”

“Nay, nay, Tom, are they not all out yonder looking for him?”

“Ay, and maybe thou knowest where he is all the toime! Thou canst not
always be trusted, Ann, e’en by thy own friends. And I’d not trust thee
with a pretty fellow like yon lieutenant. Maybe you got rid of us all
that you moight have it out with him by yourself. Eh, lass, eh?”

And Tregenna could tell, by the sound of moving feet, that Tom was
searching round the room.

Ann, who was standing on the trap-door, laughed easily.

“Jealous, eh, Tom? ’Tis late in the day, with me! First ’tis Ben the
Blast, and now a king’s man! Hast no better opinion of thyself, Tom,
than to think thou wouldst be ousted so easy?”

“Oons, lass, I’ve a better opinion of myself than I have of thee, for
such a thing as constancy! And for being ousted, as thou calls it,
plague on me if I know I was ever in!”

“Come, now, Tom, han’t I always been kind to thee?”

“Ay, when you wanted to get summat from me. Other toimes, I’ve to take
thy kindness turn and turn about with Ben!”

“Fie on you, Tom, fie on you! Get you gone, and learn better manners
than to speak to a woman so!”

She gave him a push in the direction of the door; but Tom was firm.
Lame as he was, he managed to escape her, and came back to the
trap-door over the hearth, where a slight noise, made by Tregenna in
his endeavors to keep his footing on the bales in the dark, had caught
his trained ears.

He stooped quickly, and tried to raise the door. There was the sound of
a scuffle, of a fall, and then Tom growled out—

“Now, by the Lord, Mistress Innocence, I’ve got you! You’ve got some
one in hiding below there, and ’tis the lieutenant, I’ll stake my
loife!”

“And what if ’twere?” retorted Ann, coolly. “Dost think I want a lesson
from thee how to treat folks? Canst not thou trust me to do the best
for us all?”

“Most toimes, yes, Ann. But not where a handsome man’s in the business.
Oh, lass, I know thee! Thou’rt a monstrous foine lass, and I love thee.
But I wouldn’t trust thee with a fresh face too near thine, so ’twere
as handsome a one as the lieutenant’s, d—— him!”

“And canst thou not trust me to know how to shut a man’s mouth, to stop
his ears, to bind his hands?” hissed out Ann, with her lips close to
his ear and her voice low and earnest.

“Oons, no!” shouted Tom, with redoubled anger. “Not where thy fancy’s
caught, as I do believe ’tis caught now! I believe thou wouldst let us
all hang for him, while thy fancy lasted, and kill thyself for spite
and grief afterward. That’s what I think of thee, Ann Price, and oons!
to save thee from that grief, and to save all our necks, I’m going to
tell the rest of the lads who thy visitor is!”

“You would dare!”

But before the words were well out of her mouth, Gardener Tom, with a
fierce oath, had flung down a heavy wooden chair to impede her steps,
and swung out of the house at a gait which, considering his lameness,
was a rapid one.

Ann dashed into the porch after him, but stopped short with a cry on
finding herself face to face with a tall figure enveloped in a long,
hooded riding-cloak.

“Miss Joan!” cried she, in amazement.

Joan, who was standing at the entrance of the porch, with her horse’s
bridle on her arm, held out her hand; but she sighed as she did so, for
she knew well the meaning of the attire Ann was wearing.

“I like not to see you in that dress, Ann,” said she. “’Tis bad enough
for the men to be at these tricks; but ’tis worse in a woman!”

“You be grown mighty moral, Miss Joan!”

“Let me come in,” said her visitor, shortly. “I have something to say
to you.”

And as she spoke, Joan made fast the horse’s bridle to an iron staple
in the wall of the porch, and entered the great kitchen.

“You have no one here?” she asked, as she glanced around the big room,
and peered into the dim corners where the kegs were piled high.

“You see I have no one, Miss Joan,” answered Ann, in a somewhat
constrained tone. “But you had better hasten, if you would not meet
some of our rough folks; they’ll be in here ere long.”

“I know,” said Joan. And she turned abruptly to meet Ann’s eyes, with a
face full of anxiety. “They’re outside, searching the neighborhood on
all sides; and I can conjecture for whom they search.”

Ann looked down on the floor.

“Come, Ann, I can trust you to tell me what I would fain know,” went on
Joan, quickly. “Lieutenant Tregenna—know you aught of him? He said he
should come hither, by your invitation.”

“Ay, and you were so anxious to know what I should do with him, that
you sent a lad, Will Bramley, to be on the watch against his coming!
Bill, that they call ‘Plunder,’ did find the lad, and learnt his
errand, ere he let him go back to you.”

“’Tis true. I sent Will to see that he came to no harm. Even as I would
not suffer the lieutenant to do harm to you or to poor Tom, for your
mother’s sake and for the sake of Tom’s kindness when I was a child; so
would not I have you do harm to him, since I know him for a brave man,
and one that but does his duty in pursuing you and your kindred.”

“And ’tis for him you have taken this journey, by yourself, on a night
like this? Sure, Miss Joan, the lieutenant would feel flattered did he
but know.”

“I would do as much for any man, were it a matter of life or death, as
I do truly think ’tis in this case!” said Joan with spirit.

“Ay, ’twill be death to him if he meets with Ben, or with Tom, either!”
said Ann, mockingly.

“Tom! Oh, Tom would do him no harm if he did but know how much I care!”
burst out Joan, with sudden passion.

There was a second’s pause; and then Ann put her hands to her hips, and
laughed long and loudly—

“Ho—ho! How much you care! You have confessed, Miss Joan, you have
confessed! To be sure you would not be so eager if the lieutenant were
pockmarked, and of the age of your father!”

Her tone was so offensive that Joan, who was accustomed to be treated
by her with deference and respect, was not only hurt but astonished.

“I understand you not, Ann,” said she at last, with dignity.

“Nay, Miss Joan, I should have thought ’twas as easy for you to
understand me, as ’tis for me to understand you. This young king’s
man, being a pretty fellow, has taken your fancy, ’tis easy to see!
Oh, blush not, Miss Joan: ’tis a common complaint you suffer from. The
young ladies at Hurst Court feel, I warrant me, much as you do yourself
on this matter.”

Joan’s answer was given modestly, but with some dignity.

“If I blush at your words, Ann, ’tis because of the tone in which you
utter them,” she said, in a low voice, but so distinctly that every
word reached Tregenna’s ears, as, indeed, they reached his heart also.
“’Tis no shame to have a liking for a brave man: and if all the world
has the same, there is the less reason for my concealing it.”

“Well, ’tis a pity your kindness for him hath brought you so far,
alone, and by night,” said Ann, dryly. “For ’tis a bad road you have
to traverse on your way back, and none the safer for the rough fellows
that are abroad, and that will be by this scarce sober enough to tell
the parson’s daughter from a farm wench on her way back from market.”

“I can take care of myself, Ann, I thank you,” answered Joan, coldly;
“so you will but give me your word that Lieutenant Tregenna is not here
to your knowledge, I’ll return at once.”

There was a moment’s pause. Tregenna, who heard the question, waited
with interest for the answer. Ann gave it in solemn tones.

“He is not here.”

“’Tis well, then. I’ll return.” She took a step towards the door, and
then stopped. There was a sudden change to wistfulness in her tone
which touched Tregenna to the quick when he heard her next words, “Ann,
should he be brought hither: should your kinsmen find him and bring him
to you, as I know they would do, you’ll—you’ll spare him, you’ll do him
no hurt, for my sake, Ann, for the sake of what I have done for you?”

Again there was a pause. Then Ann answered, with a mocking laugh—

“Oh, he shall not be treated worse than his deserts, I’ll warrant you!”

There was a bitterness in her tone which appalled both her hearers.
Joan stepped hurriedly back into the room, and cried, in a ringing
voice—

“Then, troth, Ann, I will not leave this roof till your friends have
come back!”

“You had better go, Miss Joan,” retorted Ann, dryly. “My mates, and
specially after a raid, are no companions for a gentlewoman.”

“Nor are they to be trusted in their treatment of a gentleman. So,
faith, Ann, I will stay till I learn what has become of Lieutenant
Tregenna.”

The girls’ unseen hearer could contain himself no longer. He had at
first thought that it would be safer for Joan to return to her home in
ignorance of his presence in the farmhouse. But on hearing her express
this brave resolution, he felt that there was nothing for it but to
make his presence known to her. He, therefore, dealt three sounding
blows on the trap-door above his head with one of his pistols. The
weight of the door was so great, especially as Ann was still standing
on it, that it did not move. But the noise he made arrested Joan’s
attention, and aroused her suspicion.

“What’s that?” she cried, as she came nearer to Ann.

The blows were repeated, and then Tregenna’s voice, muffled but
recognizable, reached her ears:

“Lift up this door, Mistress Ann. Let me out, or I’ll put a bullet
through it.”

And as he spoke, he succeeded in raising the trap-door a couple of
inches, and in thrusting the muzzle of his pistol through the aperture.

Ann with a muttered oath, raised the trap-door, and flung it back upon
the settle.

“Out with you, then!” cried she, defiantly, as she planted herself a
foot or so away from the chasm thus made, and stared down upon him
sullenly. “Out with you, and off with you! And may the devil catch your
heels!”

Thus adjured, Tregenna proceeded to pile up the bales of silk in order
to reach the level of the kitchen floor. Joan, who was very white, and
who had never uttered a sound since hearing his voice, came forward to
help him.

As she held out her firm white hand, he grasped it in his with a warm,
strong pressure, which brought the red blood back to her face. The next
moment they were standing side by side, and face to face with Ann,
whose gray eyes flashed in diabolical anger as she looked at them.

Only for a moment. Recovering herself quickly, so that they might
almost have fancied that the evil expression they had seen on her
features was the effect of fancy only, she closed the trap-door, and
threw herself on the nearest settle, with a loud burst of laughter.

“Well done, well done, both of you!” cried she, as she clapped her
hands in boisterous applause. “Sure, ’twas as fine a comedy as ever was
played up in London before the quality, to see Miss Joan’s face when
she heard your voice, Lieutenant.”

While she laughed, Joan in her turn was slowly recovering her
self-possession.

“’Tis well, Ann, that it went not so far as to become tragedy rather
than comedy,” she said, as she glanced hurriedly towards the door. Then
pointing towards it with a hand that was scarcely steady, she said
to Tregenna, “I beg, sir, you will mount my horse, that is waiting
outside, and make the best of your way back to your vessel. Nay, fear
not to leave me here. They’ll not harm me, as Ann will tell you.”

“Miss Joan,” replied Tregenna, in a shaking voice, as he looked into
her noble face with eyes in which his admiration and gratitude glowed
like fire, “I’d not leave you in this nest of rascaldom if I were to be
torn in pieces for disobeying you.”

“You do not understand. I am safe here: you are not,” replied she, in a
low voice, which scarcely reached the listening ears of Ann.

“It may be so, but I’ll not risk it. I’ll not leave this house without
you.”

“Leave it with me, then,” said Joan, making up her mind with
promptitude. “You shall mount my horse, and I’ll ride behind.” And
turning quickly to Ann, “Good night,” said she somewhat coldly.

But she got no answer. Ann was watching them both with no very friendly
eyes. Sitting on the edge of the great table, and looking again to the
life the dare-devil buccaneer, as she tossed her short hair, threw back
her head, and swung one foot with great energy, she waved one hand
impatiently, as if to speed the departure of the lieutenant and Joan,
but uttered no word of farewell.

Then Tregenna tried. Going back a step he held out his hand.

“Come, Mistress Ann,” said he, “I’ll not credit that you would have
done me a hurt, here in your own house, however fierce a foe you might
be in a hand-to-hand conflict outside. Let us part friends here, even
if we meet as antagonists hereafter.”

For answer Ann put down her hands, one on each side of her, grasping
the edge of the table; and tilted herself backwards, laughing
maliciously in his face.

“My friendship is of no account to you, sir,” said she, very slowly,
in a low, deep, and full voice, “at present. You shall have it, maybe
later.”

And she turned her head disdainfully in the direction of Joan, who was
by this time in the doorway, and signified to him by a haughty bend of
the head that he had better follow the young lady.

Tregenna bowed and accepted the suggestion.

A minute later he was on the back of the parson’s bay horse, with Joan
behind him, holding on by the belt round his waist.




                             CHAPTER XIV.

                           A PERILOUS RIDE.


Although so much had passed since Joan’s arrival at the farmhouse, it
had all taken place within the space of a few minutes. She herself, and
Ann and Tregenna, had all been at too great tension of the nerves to be
dilatory either in speech or action.

When, therefore, Tregenna felt the touch of Joan’s hands on his belt,
he saw, at the same moment, the figure of Gardener Tom at a very short
distance away, between them and the bridge. He was going down the hill,
presumably in search of his comrades; but his lameness prevented his
getting along very fast.

Tregenna was about to speak, when Joan uttered, very low in his ear, a
warning “Sh—sh,” and pointed upwards, in the direction of a road that
went past the farm and over the hill behind it.

Understanding without any words that she thought it prudent to return
to Hurst by a different and less direct way than the road by which
they had come, he turned the horse’s head at once in the direction she
indicated.

They rode for some distance in silence. The drizzling rain had now
almost ceased, and the moon was showing fitfully behind ragged, driving
clouds. Their way lay at first along a very bad road, which had the
merit of being open to the fields on either side, so that they were
sure at least that they could not be attacked without warning. They
thus remained for some time in sight of the farmhouse; but though Joan
watched the building as well as she could in the feeble and fitful
moonlight, she could make out no sign of any creature stirring near it,
until for a moment, as they neared the top of the hill, the moon shone
out for an instant brightly on the valley at their feet.

Then a low cry escaped her lips.

“There is a horse coming out from the farm stables,” said she, “and
going down the hill towards the bridge. Ay, and there is a second and a
third. But one of the three is mounted; and the others are led by the
rider of the first.”

“Well,” said Tregenna, noticing the alarm in her tone. “And what think
you that portends?”

“Why, ’tis that Ann has saddled them and is leading them forth, for
what purpose, unless it be to attack us on our way to Hurst, I cannot
imagine. I would now we had kept the straight, short road, and risked
passing the searchers. Now I fear they may come up with us, since they
will be mounted, and will lie in wait.”

The suggestion was not a pleasant one. But Tregenna was at first rather
incredulous.

“Surely,” said he, “she would not have let us go forth unmolested,
if she had meant ill by us! And they would not touch your father’s
daughter, villains though they be. You and he are both too well known,
and too much respected even by the wrong-doers.”

“Nay, sir, I fear you exaggerate our powers and our position. These men
do truly show us some respect, in return for my father’s labors among
them. But the least thing will turn them from kindness to savagery.
And Ann is in that respect but little better than they, I fear.”

“She is a most extraordinary woman!”

“You may well say that. The more extraordinary, the more one knows of
her. She can be as tender as a woman ought to be, as I have proved many
a time, when I have besought her kindness for the poor and sick in her
neighborhood or in ours. But she can also be as fierce as the fiercest
man, as you, sir, have, I believe, already proved.”

“Ay, that have I. And truly I think her fierceness is more to be
depended on than her kindness. She hates me for having, as she
considers, humbled her in the fight t’other day. And I am much inclined
to think she would never have suffered me to go forth from the
farmhouse alive, had you not most happily come to my rescue.”

As he uttered these last words, in a tone which betrayed the depth of
his feeling, he was conscious of a tremor which ran through Joan’s arms
and communicated a thrill to his own frame.

“You now see, sir,” said she, quickly, “that I did well to warn you
against accepting her invitation to Rede Hall!”

“It was more than I deserved that you should concern yourself with me
and my folly!”

“Nay, sir, if ’twas a folly, I understand that you felt bound, in the
exercise of your duty, to commit it. But now that you have learnt so
much of their secrets as you have done to-night, I greatly fear they
will make a strong effort to make your knowledge of no avail. It was
with that fear in my mind I did suggest we should go by a less direct
way than the one by which we came. You must now, sir, take that path to
the left, and get down to the marsh, which we must cross on the way to
the shore. Where will your boat be in waiting for you?”

“Down in a little creek near the cliff’s end. But I will not let you
accompany me so far. I am but endangering your safety. Let me descend
when we reach the foot of this hill. Trust me, I shall be able to
reach the shore without encountering the ‘free-traders.’ And for your
kindness I can never sufficiently thank you.”

“If you must thank me, sir, I must do something to merit your thanks:
I must see you in safety on your own element,” replied Joan, lightly.

“What! And then return alone to Hurst? Nay, indeed, Miss Joan, I’ll not
suffer that.”

“Then, sir, you must pass the night under my father’s roof. He will be
pleased to have you. He was abroad when I left home, visiting a sick
woman. But he will be home again by this, and will, I am sure, receive
you with a hearty greeting.”

“You are both all goodness, all kindness. I know not how to thank you!”

His voice trembled, and when he had said these words there was silence
between them.

Prosaic as their conversation had been since they left the farmhouse,
there was an undercurrent of deep feeling in both their hearts which
lent a vivid interest to their commonplace words. To Tregenna there
was thrilling, sweetest music in every tone of the voice of this
young girl, who had exposed herself so undauntedly to danger in the
determination to save him from the results of his own daring. While to
Joan, careful as she was to speak stiffly and even coldly, there was a
secret delight in the knowledge of the real peril from which she had
saved her handsome companion.

He was, however, loth to accept her invitation to stay at the
Parsonage, fearing that he might, by so doing, bring the vengeance of
the smugglers on the heads of both father and daughter. She made light
of this fear; but finally, at her urgent entreaties, he agreed to go
home with her in the first place, and to take Parson Langney’s advice
as to going further that night or not.

Hardly had this been settled between the two young people, when the
horse they rode pricked up his ears, rousing the attention of his
riders.

They had now left the open fields, and were passing through a wild
bit of country where knots of trees, well-grown hedges, and clumps of
bramble made it difficult for them to see far in any direction, and
formed, moreover, safe hiding-places where an enemy might lie in ambush
unperceived and unsuspected.

In the distance, before them a little to the left, lay the marshes,
with the white vapor rolling over them from the sea.

Tregenna reined in the horse to reconnoiter. Trees on the right, a
hedge on the left of the miry road. Not a living creature to be seen.
In the copse, however, there was a rustling and crackling to be heard,
which might be the result of the night-wind, or might not.

“Let us draw back,” said Joan, in a whisper “and go straight down to
the marsh and up to Hurst that way!”

Tregenna assented, and was in the very act of turning the horse, when
there was a shout, a hoarse cry, and a man sprang out from the copse:
the next moment the lieutenant’s bridle was seized by Ben the Blast,
who was no horseman, and who chose, therefore, to do his part of the
work on foot. At the very moment, however, that he sprang out from his
ambush, a couple of horsemen appeared, the one behind, the other in
front of Tregenna; while a third, galloping up the road, joined his
comrades, and, presenting a pistol at the lieutenant, shouted to his
comrades to shoot him down.

The newcomer was Jack Price, whose tears and maudlin protests at the
farmhouse had excited the derision of his comrades.

“Hold your hands!” shouted Tregenna back. “Do you not see whom I
have with me? There is none here, I am very sure, would harm Parson
Langney’s daughter?”

“Nay,” cried out one of the horsemen, whom, by the voice, Tregenna knew
to be Tom; “we’ll not harm her. But thou shalt not shelter thyself
behind a woman’s petticoats!”

But before he could finish his speech Tregenna had deftly disengaged
himself from the clasp of Joan’s arms, and springing to the ground
struck Ben the Blast such a violent blow with the muzzle of one of
his pistols that that burly ruffian released his hold on the horse’s
bridle. Then, before any one had time to stop him, or even to realize
his intention, Tregenna thrust the reins into Joan’s hands, and bidding
her “Hold on! Ride on quickly!” gave the horse a smart cut which sent
him galloping forward clear away from the throng.

Then, springing to the side of the road, he put his back against a
tree, drew his cutlass, and prepared to make the best defense he could.

Jack Price, with a fearful oath, rode at him, but missed his aim with
the knife he held, and narrowly escaped being dismounted, as the horse
swerved on nearing the tree. Robin Cursemother, who was one of the
mounted ones, took warning by this, and swung himself off his horse.

In truth, none of them were more efficient as horsemen than kegs of
their own contraband spirits would have been; and Gardener Tom, who
kept his saddle on account of his lameness, contented himself with a
passive share in the business, by standing in the road with his pistol
cocked, waiting for a chance of aiming at Tregenna without risking the
maiming of his own comrades.

Meantime, however, Robin had attacked the lieutenant fiercely in front,
while little mean-faced Bill Plunder, creeping through the brushwood,
struck at him from behind.

Tregenna, thus attacked by the two, defended himself with vigor,
and had dealt an effective blow at Bill’s shoulder, when a strange
diversion occurred.

There was the sound of a galloping horse’s hoofs, of the splashing and
churning up of the mud and water in the road. The next moment Joan’s
horse dashed into the midst of the group, causing the animal Jack Price
rode to start off at a smart pace; and Joan herself, alighting in the
very midst of the fray, made straight for Tregenna, heedless of the
knives and pistols with which the smugglers were armed, and of the vile
curses which assailed her ears.

“Go back, go back!” cried he.

“I’ll not go back!” retorted Joan, as she still came on, and daringly
thrust aside the arm of Jack Price, who had by this time dismounted in
his turn. “I’ll not see you murdered before my eyes. If they will kill
you, they shall kill me too!”

And she sprang through the group and reached Tregenna, while the
smugglers, for the moment disconcerted, hung back and looked at her.

“And you, Tom, I’m amazed to see you taking part in an attack like
this, half a dozen men against one! Oh, shame on you, shame!” cried she.

Robin Cursemother recovered from his discomfiture before the others.

“’Tis easy to talk!” said he, roughly. “We mean no harm to you,
mistress, but we have accounts to settle with this fellow, and that
to-night. If so be he’s your friend, you should have taught him better
manners than to interfere with us. So now, mistress, off with you, and
leave him to us!”

But for answer Joan crept a step nearer to Tregenna, who touched her
arm gently.

“Go, Miss Joan, go,” said he, earnestly. “I can hold my own with these
fellows, believe me!”

“Curse you! You shall not bear that boast away with you,” said Robin,
fiercely.

And he made a lunge at Tregenna.

Joan uttered a faint cry as she caught sight of the gleaming knife
in the smuggler’s hand, turned quickly, and flung her arms round
Tregenna’s neck.

“Off with you, away with you! We’ll not touch you, mistress, but you
must leave him to us!” cried Gardener Tom, reining in his horse behind
the pair, and seizing Joan’s mount by the bridle.

“Touch him if you dare!” cried Joan, fiercely, as she turned her head,
panting, and looked full in Tom’s face.

“Why, what call have you to tell us to let him go, mistress? He’s a
stranger, he is, and naught to you!”

“Oons, mistress, if so be you can make out he’s aught to you, we’ll
let him go!” roared Ben the Blast, in his thick, hoarse voice, which
seemed to carry whiffs of sea-fog wherever he went. “Come, now, what is
he to thee?”

For one moment Joan hesitated, while Tregenna in vain tried to
disengage her arms, and whispered to her to go, to leave him. But she
would pay no heed to his protests. In answer to Ben, her voice, after a
moment’s pause, rang out clearly—

“You will let him go, you say, if I tell you what he is to me? Well,
then, you must let him go. For I tell you—he’s—he’s the man I love!”

For a moment there fell a silence upon the rough men. There was
something in the tones of the maidenly voice which reached even the
hearts of the smugglers, and awed them for an instant into quietness.
The horses stamped, splashing up the mud; the wind whistled in the
trees; but the men, for the space of a few seconds, were still as mice.

Then Tom, the most easily moved, the least hardened amongst them,
leaned down from his horse, and touched Tregenna, not ungently, on the
shoulder—

“Off with you then, master, and get out of sight and out of hearing
before we change our minds!” said he in a low and somewhat mocking
voice.

Tregenna took the hint. Lifting Joan on to the saddle of her father’s
horse, he swung himself into it in a twinkling, and digging his heels
into the animal’s flanks, urged him forward without a moment’s delay,
in the direction of Hurst.

There was an outbreak of oaths and curses, bloodcurdling to hear. And a
pistol was discharged after them, without, however, doing any harm.

But luckily for the lieutenant and the lady, this incident had already
bred a quarrel among the smugglers; and before the fugitives were out
of earshot, they heard the unmistakable sounds of a conflict which kept
the “free-traders” occupied until Hurst was reached by the parson’s
horse and his riders.

Then, slackening his pace when they entered the straggling village
street, Tregenna, whose heart was full, turned so that he might catch
a glimpse of the face of his companion. They had ridden thus far in
complete silence.

“What shall I say to you?” whispered he, in a vibrating voice, as he
bent his head to be near hers.

But the answer came back cold and clear, with a light laugh that
chilled him to the soul:

“What shall you say? You had best say nothing, sir. I said what I did
say but to save your life!”




                              CHAPTER XV.

                         THE SMUGGLERS’ SHIP.


Tregenna must have been harder than stone if he had not been stirred to
the depths of his being by the courage and devotion shown on his behalf
by the parson’s beautiful daughter.

From the first moment of meeting her, when he had seen her winsome
face and sparkling eyes in the moonlight, on board his own vessel, he
had been struck with admiration for her person, her modest, unaffected
manners, her spirit, and her devotion. This feeling had grown with
every meeting. So it was not wonderful that, on this evening, when she
had braved such perils on his behalf, Joan should have inspired him
with a passion exalted on the one hand, strong on the other, such as he
had never believed it possible that he could feel for any woman.

All the greater, therefore, was his mortification, his sudden
revulsion of feeling to despair, when she replied to his stammering
attempt at thanks with mocking words, and a chilling laugh.

It was some minutes before he recovered himself sufficiently to speak.
By that time they had reached the lane that led from the end of the
village street up to the Parsonage. As soon as the glimmering light
in the ivied window caught his eye, he said, in a tone which he tried
to make as indifferent as her own, but in which it was easy to detect
traces of the emotion from which he was suffering—

“You will not suffer me to thank you for your goodness on my behalf. I
trust your father may be more complaisant.”

“My father, sir, will make as much light of it as I do,” replied Joan,
as she relaxed her hold on her companion’s belt, and alighted in the
mud of the lane.

Parson Langney’s voice, hearty, cheery, but not without a touch of
anxiety, rang out pleasantly, at this moment, upon their ears.

“Hey, Miss Madcap, is’t you? By what Nance told me, I had begun to fear
your wild expedition had turned out ill!”

“Nay, father, it has turned out very well!” cried she; “for I have
carried off Mr. Tregenna from those that would have harmed him, and
have thereby made him vastly civil!”

“Nay, sir, Miss Joan will not suffer my civility or my gratitude. She,
who is so proud herself, will not allow me to acquit my own debt to her
even by a word of thanks.”

“Tut-tut, there is no need!” said the parson.

“And the less, sir,” put in Joan, quickly, “since I own I had some
hand in bringing about your discomfiture before, at the hands of
the—h’m—‘free-traders.’ Father,” she went on quickly, turning to the
vicar, “I’ll never do aught for Ann or her friends again! ’Twas she put
them on our track; and they had a mind to murder Mr. Tregenna, I verily
believe!”

She was speaking very quickly, with a certain frivolous air which
was new in her, and less becoming than her usual straightforward
simplicity. Tregenna, who was too inexperienced in the ways of women to
understand the cause of this change in her, was hurt and grieved by it.
He could not understand how strong her anxiety must be to try to efface
from his mind the remembrance of her action in so boldly declaring to
the smugglers that it was for love she protected him.

Chagrined on the one hand, yet still shaken to the very depths by the
adoration he felt for the beautiful girl whose touch he seemed still
to feel on his breast, Tregenna stammered out again some hesitating
words of thanks, as he held out his hand to Parson Langney, with a shy
sidelong glance at his daughter.

“I must hasten back to my ship,” said he. “And in the morning I shall
hope to pay my respects to you, and to induce Miss Joan to give me a
better hearing than she will grant to-night.”

At these words, Joan, who had been moving restlessly from the horse to
her father and back again, apparently unable to keep still one moment
now that the tension of the evening’s events was over, became suddenly
as motionless as a statue. Then, in a voice which was as earnest as a
moment before it had been affectedly gay, she said quickly—

“Father, bid Mr. Tregenna stay here till the morning. These fellows may
still be on the watch for him.”

“Sh-sh!” said her father, raising his hand to enforce silence.

In the pause which followed, both Joan and Tregenna were aware of a
loud, rumbling noise in the village street below, coming gradually
nearer. And in a few minutes, during which they all stood silent and
wondering, without exchanging a word, they perceived a huge black mass,
dim, shadowy, like some mammoth beast whose bulk makes rapid motion
impossible, creeping slowly by in the obscurity of the trees at the
bottom of the hill.

Slow, phantom-like, it crept along with no sound but the rumbling and
creaking that had at first arrested the vicar’s attention.

Tregenna, on the alert at once, would have descended the hill to find
out what the monster was. But at a sign from his daughter, Parson
Langney laid a restraining hand upon the young man’s arm.

“What can you do—alone?” said he, warningly. “Keep your heart in your
breast for to-night, at least. In the morning—why, you must do your
duty. Come, a tankard will do you no harm. You shall drink ‘confusion
to free-traders’ if you will. And, egad, I’m inclined, after what I’ve
heard, to drink the same toast myself!”

Tregenna agreed, anxious for another chance of a word with Joan. But
he saw no more of her that night. Even while the vicar was giving
this invitation, his daughter had slipped quietly into the house, and
disappeared for the night.

This left Tregenna free to tell his host, over the nut-brown ale
which the vicar poured out with loving hands, the whole story of the
adventures of the evening. Astounded, enthralled, marveling at his
daughter’s courage, and furious at the smugglers’ daring outrage, the
vicar listened with all his ears.

And when the young man’s tone grew lower, his eyes more passionate, as
he declared his love and admiration for the girl who had risked so much
for him, Parson Langney listened sympathetically, and with tears in his
eyes, to the tale he had often indeed heard before, but never from such
eager lips.

“Ay, ay, she’s a good girl, a good girl, my bonnie Joan!” said he, in a
tremulous voice, when Tregenna paused. “You’re not the first that has
come to me with this tale, sir, though you’re the first she’s shown
such kindness to as she’s shown to you. But reckon not too much on
that, I warn you. She’s not your ordinary lass, that minces and mouths,
like the girls at Hurst Court we’re going to dine with to-morrow.”
Tregenna made a mental note of this fact, and determined that he would
be invited too. “And what she did and what she said she’d have done
and said for any other man in such a plight as yours, I doubt not! But
we’ll see, we’ll see. I’m in no hurry to lose my Joan, I promise you,
sir. The day must come when she’ll go forth from me as a bride; but
there’s time enough for that, time enough for that! And I would not
have you hope too much, though I do not bid you despair.”

Tregenna was forced to be content with this vague encouragement, and
with the comfort of having unburdened his heart to a sympathetic ear.
It was not long before he took his leave, and having followed the
vicar’s advice to concern himself for that night with nothing but his
own safety, reached the boat in the creek without accident, and was
soon on board the _Sea-Gull_.

Next morning he was early astir. He had already, on arriving on board,
sent a trusty messenger to Rye, to beg the brigadier to lose no time
in making a second expedition against Rede Hall; he promised to meet
him there, and to put him in possession of some facts he had learnt
concerning its hiding-places.

But although it was no later than nine o’clock in the morning when he
and General Hambledon met at the farmyard gates, they found that the
smugglers had been beforehand with them.

Not a man or a woman was to be found on the premises; not a cow or a
horse; not a pig or a hen. And though the trap-door to the cellar had
been flung wide to assist them in their search, it was in vain they
sought for the bales among which Tregenna had stood on the previous
night.

Not a keg or a bale was there in the whole place, though they searched
it from garret to cellar!

The brigadier was ferociously facetious, tauntingly jocose.

“Hey-day, Tregenna, I fear they gave thee too much of their contraband
_aqua vitæ_, and that it has bred visions in thy brain!” said he, with
an ugly smile on his red face, and a vicious look in his eyes. He was
in no very good humor with the young man for having outrun himself in
zeal, and was at heart rather pleased that this expedition, designed by
his rival, should have been as complete a failure as the last.

“Well, at any rate, you see, General, that there was something wrong
with the place, for them all to have deserted it like this,” said the
lieutenant, reasonably enough.

“More like they have deserted it from fear of quarter-day!” retorted
the brigadier. “’Tis a common thing enough a flitting like to this, at
such seasons!”

“A least,” said Tregenna, who was hot and furious at this fresh rebuff,
“you will find the ship under the barn-floor!”

But even as he uttered the words, a chill seized him as he remembered,
in a fresh light, a mysterious incident of the previous evening. He
was, therefore, more disgusted than surprised when, in searching the
barn, the soldiers discovered that the flooring was indeed loose, as
he had said, and that there was a crypt beneath: but that though there
were traces of the cradle in which the smugglers’ boat had been hauled
up and down, and some tools lying about in dark corners with logs and
screws, ropes and mallets, the vessel itself had disappeared.

Tregenna took almost in silence the taunts with which the brigadier now
saluted him. Leaving the soldiers to return to Rye, the young man, with
a shrewd suspicion that the mammoth beast he had dimly seen crawling
through the village in the dark on the previous evening was the
smugglers’ boat, resolved to try to track it to its new resting-place.

Such a weighty thing as the unfinished vessel, and the wagon or wagons
on which it must have been removed, could not, he argued, but have left
its mark on the roads it traversed.

And so it proved. Following the deep wheelmarks which were easily
discernible even now in the mire of the Hurst road, he arrived at that
village, went through it, still tracing the wheelmarks; and finally, to
his consternation, tracked the wagons to the stables of Hurst Court.

It was a disconcerting discovery enough, but Tregenna, furious at the
conspiracy thus formed against the representatives of law and order,
did not scruple to follow it up. It was evident that the hiding-place
they had found for their vessel had been looked upon by the smugglers
as safe and sacred, for no steps had been taken to guard it. Tregenna
opened the wide door of the coach-house; and inside, as he had
expected, he saw the hull of the unfinished boat.

Without a moment’s loss of time he went straight up to the house, where
he fancied that the butler who admitted him looked at him askance, as
if with some suspicion of his errand.

The squire himself, however, while affecting the greatest astonishment
and indignation on hearing that the smugglers’ boat had been placed in
his stables, was evidently in a state of extreme trepidation as to the
course Tregenna meant to pursue with regard to himself.

The lieutenant, however, thought it better to receive his assurances of
innocence as if he believed them, thinking that this would be a lesson
strong enough to cure the squire of complicity with the smugglers.

Squire Waldron was, of course, particularly civil to his unwelcome
guest, pressing him to stay to dinner; an invitation which Tregenna
accepted at once, in the hope of meeting Joan.

Then the squire made haste to rid himself of his guest by presenting
him to the ladies in the music-room, who again, as on a previous
occasion, loaded him with hypocritical expressions of horror at the
smugglers and their conduct. Certain rumors of the adventures of the
previous evening had reached their ears from the Parsonage, and they
all endeavored to worm out of Tregenna the exact details of his visit
to Rede Hall, and of Joan’s late ride.

“They do say, you must know, dear Mr. Tregenna,” lisped one young lady,
with a prim little ghost of a malicious smile, “that Joan Langney was
so afraid you were gone to make love to Ann Price, who is reckoned a
great beauty in these parts (though I am sure I ha’n’t a notion why),
that she cantered after you on horseback!”

“The forward thing!” cried Miss Lucy.

“But maybe ’tis not true!” said Mrs. Waldron inquisitively.

“Do, pray, tell us how ’twas, sir,” went on Miss Alathea, playing
affectedly with her fan. “’Tis no breach of confidence; for you and
she were seen to return to the Parsonage together, late in the
evening. So ’twill make the best of a bad business to let us know the
circumstances!”

“A bad business!” echoed Tregenna hotly. “Nay, madam, ’twas a very good
business for me! Since, if Miss Joan had not been good enough, knowing
I was going thither, to ride to Rede Hall and release me from what was
practically imprisonment at the hands of the scoundrels who infest that
place, I should scarce have got hither alive!”

The young ladies both went off into a series of little twittering
shrieks, raising their hands and turning up their eyes towards the
painted ceiling, with every mild expression of horror and affright.

“So she _knew_ you was going thither!” chirped Miss Lucy presently.
“You are great friends at the Parsonage then, Mr. Tregenna?”

“I hope I am, madam,” returned Tregenna promptly. “For there’s no
friendship in the world I value more than that of Miss Joan and her
father.”

This prompt declaration seemed rather to damp the spirits of the
two little pink-eyed girls, and they desisted from their attacks in
this direction; and having obtained his assurance that music was his
passion, they proceeded to the harpsichord and warbled monotonous
little duets to him until the arrival of Parson Langney and his
daughter brought a welcome relief from the infliction.

Poor Tregenna, however, rather regretted that he had been so prompt
in accepting the squire’s invitation, when he found how very frigid
Miss Joan was to him. She made him a stately curtsey, with her eyelids
lowered, and without taking any notice of his proffered hand. And when
the parson, who had heard already of the doings of the morning, twitted
Tregenna about the escape of the smugglers, Joan joined heartily in his
ironical comments while the squire was not long in adding his taunts;
so that the young man found himself assailed on all sides with no ally
save the chirruping young Waldron ladies, whose advocacy irritated him
more than did the attacks of Joan.

So mortified was he, indeed, that when the ladies withdrew from the
table, he felt that he could not bear the society of the other three
gentlemen—his host, Bertram Waldron, and the parson—any longer. He
therefore made the excuse of his duties calling him away, and left
them to their wine.

Just as he was taking his three-cornered hat from the peg in the hall
where it hung, he caught sight of one of the maids of the house, in
her smart frilled cap and neat muslin kerchief and apron, in a corner
of the hall. On seeing him she started and turned to go back and this
action arrested his attention, and caused him to look at her again.

The first look made him start; the second made him stare; the third
caused him to run lightly across the hall, and to seize her by the
apron as she tried to escape into one of the rooms.

“Ann Price—masquerading as a housemaid, by all that’s audacious!” cried
he, as they came face to face.




                             CHAPTER XVI.

                             A TRAITRESS.


Finding escape impossible, Ann turned and put a bold face on the
matter. Or rather, she turned indeed, and faced him, but with the same
air of modest womanliness which he had before remarked in her when she
wore her sex’s clothes—a manner which altered so completely as soon as
she assumed the costume of “Jem Bax.”

“And what are you pleased to want with me, sir?” she asked
respectfully, after the short silence which had followed Tregenna’s
exclamation.

“Well, I want to know, in the first place, what you are doing here?”

“Sure, sir, there’s no harm in my taking a place as housemaid, now I’m
turned out of my mother’s home by your pryings of last night.”

“’Tis rather a bad thing for the squire and his lady,” said Tregenna,
dryly, “to be harboring any of your kin, Ann, more especially after my
discovery in the coach-house this morning!”

“I am not here, sir, as a smuggler, but as a homeless farmer’s
daughter,” returned Ann, in the same modest, even tone. “I believe I
am reckoned worth my salt with a broom in my hand, as well as in the
dairy.”

“Nay, nay, ’tis not for your services with mop and churn they take you
in, Ann, I know that,” said Tregenna. “You would have done best to keep
out of my way a few days, after your doings of last night. ’Tis not
your fault your rascally crew did not make an end to me, when you sent
them in pursuit of me, as you did!”

“Nay, sir, if I did,” answered Ann, with a sudden change to a soft
voice and a pleading manner which had in it something strangely
attractive, by reason of its unexpectedness, “’twas done in the heat of
unreasoning passion, and without a thought of what grave consequences
it might bring upon you. If they had really harmed you, by my troth I
would never have spoke to one of them again.”

“A very fair explanation, to be sure!” said Tregenna, dryly. “But ’twas
well I had the luck to meet with a woman more womanly, to counteract
the effects of your solicitude on my account.”

“You mean Miss Joan,” said Ann, in a very quiet tone, as she played
with the corner of her apron, keeping her eyes fixed upon it all the
time.

“Whom should I mean but that most sweet woman?” cried Tregenna, with
the more enthusiasm that Ann was evidently displeased by his praise of
the lady. “Had it not been for her goodness, I should most surely have
been murdered last night, either by you or some one of your villainous
confederates.”

“Nay, nay, sir, you would not,” returned Ann, earnestly. “They would
not have dared, I say, not one of them, to do a hurt to one in whom—in
whom”—her voice faltered a little, and she looked down, bending her
head, so that he could not see her face—“in whom I had an interest!”

“An interest! Ay, truly, an interest so strong that, at first sight of
me, you did show it at once by presenting a pistol at my head!”

Ann suddenly raised her head, and looked into his face with a steadfast
earnestness which could not but arrest his attention. In her gray eyes
there was a strange light, in her whole manner a softness, both new and
surprising. Even her voice seemed to have lost every trace of robust
peasant harshness, and to have become tender and melting.

“Sir, sir, you don’t understand! How can I make you understand?” cried
she passionately.

Then, as he looked into her face with astonishment and curiosity, she
suddenly turned, walked a few steps towards a door in the darkest part
of the hall, and beckoned him to follow her.

“Come hither, sir, out into the air!” said she, in a low voice. “I am
stifling here; I want to feel the fresh wind on my face while I speak.”

Her voice was full of strong emotion. Tregenna paused an instant,
suspecting treachery in the strange woman; but she divined the cause of
his hesitation, and with a sudden change to fire and pride, she said—

“You need not fear me. See, there is no ambush prepared for you!” And
as she spoke, she threw open the door, and showed the way into the
beautiful old garden behind the house.

Tregenna followed her in silence as she went out, and took, without
looking behind her, the path that led, through winding walks, and
between quaint, stiff yew hedges, to the Italian garden. There a broad
terrace, with a stone balustrade, led down to bright beds of late
autumn flowers, still pretty and fragrant, though they were growing
tall and straggling at this late season, and were, in places, nipped
with the early frosts of the coming winter.

Ann stopped on the terrace, and waited for Tregenna to come up to her.
When he did so, she turned abruptly, and he was surprised to see that
she was in tears.

The discovery, in a woman of her fierce attributes, was startling,
amazing; and Tregenna was disconcerted by it.

“You are astonished, I see, sir,” she began, in the same gentle voice
that he had last heard from her, “to see a creature you have always
looked upon as masculine and hard, with aught so feminine as a tear
upon her face!”

“Well, Miss Ann, I confess it, I am surprised. I thought you were made
of stuff too stern for such weakness!”

“Did you but know more of me,” said she, sadly, “you would not think
so. We are all, as you know, sir, made by our surroundings; and see
what mine have been! Brought up from my earliest childhood among rough
folk, hearing of scenes that ’twould make your blood run cold to
relate, what chance had I to grow into your soft and tender woman, that
sits and smiles, and screams at sight of a spider?”

“But surely there’s a wide difference between screaming at a spider, on
the one hand, and using the weapons, ay, and the oaths of a man, on the
other?”

At this reproach, Ann became suddenly red, and hung her head as if in
shame.

“Nay, sir, ’tis true,” said she, almost below her breath, “and I am
shocked myself, when I have leisure to reflect on’t, at the work I do,
and the words I utter, when my kinsmen have stirred me up to fight
their battles and to do the deeds they demand of me!”

“Nay, ’tis, I think, rather they that do the deeds you command. Jem Bax
has the name of being a leader on these occasions, and indeed your own
words have confirmed this!”

“’Tis true I have thrown in my lot with them, hating myself the
while; but ’tis not true, sir, to say I have had aught but misery and
wretchedness in the doing of these deeds. Does not your fine lady
friend Miss Joan speak well of me? Come, now, has she spoke never a
good word for me, in the discussions I doubt not you have had on these
matters?”

“Yes, she says you can be kind and womanly, when you please; that you
are good to the poor and the sick; and that she has a kind of liking
for you, besides that she feels for you as the daughter of one whom she
remembers tender to her in her childhood.”

Ann’s mobile face had grown, as she listened to this speech, as happy
and soft as a child’s.

“Ay, sir,” said she, “and ’tis the real Ann of whom she speaks, the
natural woman that I would fain always be!”

“Give up your dealings with these folk, then,” said Tregenna, eagerly,
as he sat on the balustrade, and looked at her with earnest eyes.
“Listen to the promptings of your better nature, and in yielding to
your own good instincts you will be helping not only yourself, but your
kinsfolk out of harm! Remember, you cannot fight forever such forces as
will be brought against you and your lawless traffic. Yield then while
there is a grace in yielding, and wait not for the strong hand of the
law to get hold of you, and to mow you down!”

While he spoke with fire and excitement, moved by her emotion and
deeply interested in the wayward woman, Ann had drawn gradually nearer
to him, until her strong hand touched his as it lay on the balustrade.
Her eyes, still soft and dewy with tears, sought his for an instant
from time to time, as if in shyness, all the more attractive from her
reputed character for fierce disdain.

When he ceased speaking, she sighed deeply, and then seemed to become
suddenly possessed by a spirit of daring and desperation.

Drawing herself up, and peering closely into his handsome face, she
said quickly—

“Sir, sir, you know not how you move me! I have never felt before as
I feel in listening to you. You make me hate my own folk, with their
villainies and their rough ways, kinswoman and confederate of theirs
though I have been! Oh, sir, I feel, I know, that you are better than
we, that we are but the nest of robbers and pirates you say, that we
deserve no mercy at your hands!”

Passionate, earnest as she was, Tregenna kept his head sufficiently to
be skeptical about this sudden appearance of conversion.

He drew back, almost imperceptibly, a little way, and said, in a cooler
tone—

“And I fear ’tis little mercy some of you will get, when a stronger
force is sent down to ferret your leaders out!”

“But you would make distinctions, sir, would you not?” said she, with
tremulous eagerness. “You would not, for sure, deal with the lad Tom,
poor Tom that you have lamed for life, as hardly as with some others?”

“Those that have done the worst will be the most harshly dealt with,
certainly,” said Tregenna.

“Ay, and none too harshly either, for some of them! villains, thieves,
plunderers that they be! See here, sir”—and her tone dropped again to
a whisper, as she came quite close to him, and laid one hand almost
caressingly on his sleeve—“there’s no sympathy in my heart for them
that would have done you harm, no, nor for the man that murdered that
poor coastguardsman when first you came hither! I love not such folks,
sir, whatever you may think of me! And see, sir, to prove to you how
earnestly I do grieve for the ill they have done, I am ready to give
you up the murderer of the coastguardsman into your hand, ay, for I
know who ’twas that did it, and I can put you in the way of evidence to
prove it too!”

Tregenna started and flushed. He had not the least doubt that this
woman could indeed do as she offered to do, that she could deliver the
murderer into the hands of justice. But he shrank from accepting her
suggestion, not only with instinctive mistrust of a woman who was ready
to deliver up her own lover, but with not unnatural suspicion that she
might be a traitress to both sides.

So he got off the balustrade, and said coldly—

“I thank you, Mistress, for your offer: but I believe the hands of
justice will need no more aid than they have got!”

Then Ann, without any appearance of ill-feeling, laughed softly.

“Maybe the hands of justice are less powerful than you think, sir,”
said she. “But, at any rate, I hope you will think kindly of the woman
who, for your sake, was ready to risk her safety, nay, her life maybe,
to help you!”

As she spoke, in a tone of inexpressible tenderness, she came very
near to the young lieutenant, and gazed into his face with a look so
melting, so passionate, that he was stirred, fascinated, in a very
high degree. It was impossible to be cold to her, however great his
innermost disapproval of her might be. He had bent his head to reply,
when a footstep on the gravel behind the yew-hedge, followed by a loud
outburst of laughter, caused him to start, and to look round.

Peering at the pair through a gap in the hedge he saw the face of young
Bertram Waldron, flushed with wine, twisted into malevolent contortions
of coarse amusement.

“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed the young cub, “here’s sport, egad! I’ll wager
she gives you a smack o’ the face before she’s done, like to the one
she gave me but this morning.”

Tregenna made but one step in his direction when Bertram prudently
retired; and they heard his cracked laugh as he went rapidly back to
the house.

It was some moments before Tregenna and Ann could resume their
interrupted conversation. Indeed, Tregenna was anxious to break it
off altogether, but Ann persisted, following him as he turned to move
away, and detaining him with a gesture which was half peremptory, half
imploring.

“Nay, nay, sir, you’ll give me a hearing, at least,” said she,
earnestly, “if ’twere but for the safety of your friends. And I could
tell you of a plot that’s been formed whereby your crew would be the
sufferers, to an extent would rend your heart. Ay, ’tis true!” she
added, as he turned incredulously towards her.

“There’s little need of a special plot,” said he, “since we all know
the whole neighborhood’s in league against us!”

“And for that reason you should be all the more willing to lend
your ear, when you have at last found a friend ready to afford you
assistance!” persisted Ann. “And better assistance than your Miss Joan
could give, I’ll warrant me!”

Just as she spoke these words, in a tone which betrayed some pique,
Tregenna raised his head on hearing the sound of a rustling silken gown
on the walk above: and there, between the hedges, with the malicious
face of Bertram Waldron appearing behind her, he saw Joan Langney
herself, with a look of proud astonishment on her beautiful face.

The mischievous young man had brought her out into the garden on some
pretext, evidently; for it was plain she had not expected to see either
Tregenna or Ann.

The moment he caught sight of her, Tregenna made a hasty excuse to Ann,
and mounting the stone steps from the terrace in a couple of strides,
addressed Joan just as she was in the act of turning away.

“Miss Joan, a moment, I beg!” said he.

Bertram giggled; but on Tregenna’s turning sharply to him with a
gesture of angry dismissal, the cub retreated, and, with a clumsy air
of being at his ease, retired quickly to the house. Ann also, with a
short, hard laugh, disappeared among the yew-hedges.

Thus left alone with the girl he loved, the young lieutenant was not
slow in seizing the opportunity he had so long wished for; and although
she tried to leave him and to return to the house, he gave her a look
so full of entreaty, as he mutely placed himself in her way, and gazed
at her with an expression there was no mistaking, that she faltered,
paused, and asked, in a low voice—

“What have you, sir, to say to me? I had no notion of meeting you here.”

“Surely, Miss Joan, if you could give ten minutes of your conversation
to that booby young Waldron, you might bestow the same favor on me!”

“’Twas from no liking for Mr. Waldron I came out,” said Joan, hastily.
“He lured me hither by saying I should see something very interesting
in the Italian garden; and I thought he had some rare flower or bird
to show me. I should scarce have come, as you may guess, to see you in
such interesting converse with Ann Price!”

In her voice, Tregenna was delighted to notice a tone of pique which
seemed to be of good augury.

“There was naught of great import in my talk with her,” said he,
quickly. He was trembling so much that his sword rattled at his side,
and his voice was as hoarse as a raven’s. “But ’tis true I have
something of great import to me on my mind, and I cannot but think,
Miss Joan, you must know what it is!”

“Indeed, sir, I cannot guess your thoughts!” said Joan, though the
heightened color in her cheeks belied her words.

“Can you not imagine what I feel—what I could not—dared not, say last
night? Oh, you do, you must, I think! Sure a man cannot feel what I
feel for you without its getting from his heart into his eyes! Don’t
you know I love you, Joan?”

The change came about in the space of a second. When the last hurried
words, husky, tremulous, half whispered, came bursting from his lips,
Joan shivered, gave him one glance, and had betrayed herself before she
was aware.

“You—you care for Ann!” she faltered between two long-drawn breaths.

“Pshaw! Not I! I care for Joan. I care for Joan, only Joan!”

And at the last word, as she hardly resisted him, he kissed her.

It was growing cold even in the sheltered garden, now that the late
autumn sun was descending in the sky, and the wind was rising and
sending the red leaves fluttering from the boughs of the trees to the
earth. But they never heeded it: they would have gone on sitting on
that terrace, and walking round and round those flower-beds, for an
hour and more, had not Parson Langney’s voice presently startled them
by calling—

“Joan, Joan, my lass, where art thou?”

The girl gave one frightened glance at her lover, forbade him to follow
her and speak to her father till she had prepared the way, and fled
away like an arrow from a bow.

Happy and excited with the joy of successful love, Tregenna was
sauntering round the house towards a side-gate out of the park, when
Ann’s voice startled him.

He knew not whence she had sprung; but she was looking at him from out
a clump of bushes with a strange smile on her pallid face.

As he started, she burst into a low, mocking laugh.

“Ay, sir, kiss while you can; speak low when there’s a fair maid to
listen. But the game’s not played out yet!”

Upon those words, with a flashing look from her great somber gray eyes,
she disappeared abruptly.




                             CHAPTER XVII.

                          AN INNOCENT RIVAL.


Now, although Harry Tregenna was in a state of mind more nearly
approaching perfect bliss than he had ever been before, with the
knowledge that Joan Langney loved him fresh upon him, he could not
but feel an uncanny chill when Ann Price uttered her mocking words of
warning.

“The game’s not played out yet!”

He would have followed her, questioned her. But she knew every turn in
the park much better than he; and after a few moments spent in looking
for her, he gave up the search as an idle one.

After all, what could she do? Desperate and vindictive as he
knew her to be, she could hardly go the length of trying to harm
generous-hearted Joan. And as for what she might choose to attempt on
his own person, Tregenna was ready to take the risks of war, which,
indeed, could hardly be greater in the future than they had been in the
past.

So he presently dismissed all thought of her, and gave himself up,
heart and soul, to joyful thoughts of the beautiful, brave girl he had
won. He lingered about for a little while, to give her time to break
the news to her father, as she had herself wished to do. And when he
thought they must have reached home, he turned his steps also in the
direction of the Parsonage.

By the wistful look of emotion on Parson Langney’s rugged, kindly face,
by the moisture in his eyes, the young man guessed that he had already
been made aware that he was threatened with the loss of his fair
daughter: and the first words he uttered, as he held out a shaking hand
in welcome, confirmed this impression:

“So you’re going to take her away from me! Well, well, ’tis the way of
all flesh!”

Tregenna assured him that they were in no hurry, that he was ready
to wait any reasonable time: a week, a month, any period they might
choose. He further assured the vicar that he would leave the service,
and promised to settle down with his wife at no very great distance
from Hurst Parsonage.

And although Parson Langney shook his head very lugubriously, and
grumbled at the folly of a woman’s marrying before she was thirty,
his jolly face soon grew brighter when Joan came in, and, putting her
arms round his neck under her lover’s very nose, assured him that he
was the nicest and handsomest man in the whole world, and that, if she
were driven to get married, it should only be on compulsion, and on
receiving her future husband’s assurance that she was her father’s girl
still, and might be with him as much as she liked.

So they had a happy evening together, and when the young lieutenant
bade them good night, and started on his way back to his boat, it was
with never a thought of smugglers, or wreckers, builders of secret
boats, or treacherous farmers’ daughters, to damp his spirits.

There was a lull in the contraband traffic after these events, and
Tregenna and the brigadier began to flatter themselves that their
energy had at last awed the smugglers into submission, when one day the
news was brought to the lieutenant that the same sloop which had been
in sight on the occasion of the last raid, was hovering about in the
distance.

A sharp lookout was accordingly kept that night, but nothing happened
to justify their suspicions. On the following day, however, a light
mist sprang up, and not long afterwards they were able to discover
that, under cover of it, there was a boat making at a great rate for
the beach at Hastings.

The smugglers—for Tregenna had little doubt of the nature of the boat’s
errand—had a good start of the cutter’s men; but the latter gave chase
at once in one of their own boats, and were soon justified in their
surmise; for, on grounding their craft as soon as they could on the
pebbly shore, the occupants of the pursued boat deliberately emptied
it of its contents in sight of their pursuers, and leaving it to its
fate, ran up the beach towards the narrow streets of the old town, each
with a couple of kegs slung round him, the one in front, and the other
behind.

They did not fail, as they went, to bid a graceful adieu to Tregenna
and his men, waving their rough knitted caps and shouting “Good-by” as
they disappeared through the openings between the houses.

Straining every nerve, the cutter’s men grounded their own boat in
an incredibly short time; and, profiting by the precious moments
the smugglers had lost in emptying their cargo, they raced up the
stony beach in pursuit, believing that, encumbered as they were, the
“free-traders” would find it impossible to keep ahead of them long.

But alas! they had reckoned without their host; for while they, the
representatives of law and order, were fighting alone and unaided, the
smugglers had each a brother or a mother, a sister or a sweetheart,
in one or other of the mean, picturesque little hovels that nestled
together in the shelter of the tall cliffs beneath the castle, and
lined the narrow, tortuous streets of the ancient town.

No sooner had the first of the revenue-men turned the corner into the
High Street, up which the smugglers were making their way towards some
chosen haunt of their own, than the hindermost of the rascals, who
alone carried no burden, gave a peculiar kind of shrill whistle.

This was evidently the recognized method of giving an alarm to the
rest, and was also the signal for the inhabitants of the squalid little
houses to be on the alert.

Already every door was standing open, showing, to the exasperation of
the king’s men, a group of eager, grinning faces, intent on the sport.

The moment the whistle sounded, the smugglers who carried the kegs
divested themselves each of one of his burdens, and rolled it towards
the nearest open cottage-door. The moment the keg was safe inside, the
door closed.

The smuggler, having thus got rid of one of his kegs, went on at a
quicker pace for a few steps, and then, on the sounding of a second
whistle, got rid of the remaining one in the same way.

Well used to this maneuver, which was a common one at the time, those
of the cottage-folk who had not received one of the contraband kegs,
closed their doors also; so that Tregenna and his men, on reaching
the point in the street where this trick had been played, found it
impossible to identify any particular house as one of those which had
lent the use of its portal to the smugglers.

A few half frightened, half mocking children stood about in the road;
but at the windows not a single face was to be seen.

Tregenna, who was at the head of the pursuing force, saw, to his
chagrin, that it was now impossible for him to hope to come up with the
smugglers. Lightened of their burdens, and already well ahead of their
pursuers, they flew like the wind up the steep street towards the old
church, without so much as looking behind them to give the cutter’s men
a chance of seeing and remembering their faces.

At this point in the route, however, they all somewhat abruptly
disappeared, with the exception of the one who had given the signal.

From his limping gait, Tregenna had long since recognized him as
“Gardener Tom,” and he felt at the first moment rather sorry that this
man, the only one of the “free-traders” for whom he felt the slightest
kindness, should be the only one to fall into his hands.

It was not until he had reached the queer little irregular group of
nestling houses clustering round the church, that Tom suddenly turned,
put his back against the steep wall which banked up the houses on one
side of the roadway, folded his arms, and waited for Tregenna to come
up to him.

The lieutenant, expecting that Tom had a pistol ready for him, put his
hand to one of his own. The smuggler, however, shook his head, and held
up his hands.

“Where are the rest?” cried Tregenna, more by instinct than because he
expected a useful answer.

Tom, whose handsome, open face was flushed with his exertions, smiled
mockingly at him.

“Wheer? Wheer?” asked he, with a shake of the head. “Nay, master, look
round, and see if ’twill be easy for you to light upon ’em now!”

Tregenna did look round. He saw the close-packed cottages, some prim
and neat, with a sort of look about them as if no creature within
had ever heard of so terrible a thing as a smuggler: some dirty and
neglected, and capable of anything: but all shut up, and without a
human face at any window. One mean-looking little alehouse at the
corner did certainly bear a sort of rakish, contraband look. But a
peep within its doors showed that the landlord and one old man had it,
to all appearances, to themselves.

Tregenna sighed, and frowned.

“Well, I must arrest you, Tom, and carry you off at least,” said he.

“I be smuggling naught, master!” objected Tom, quite mildly.

“You were signalman to the others,” answered Tregenna. “You’re one of
the gang.”

Tom took this very quietly.

“All roight, take me if you will,” said he. “’Twas you, sir, that gave
me the hurt makes me too lame to get away!” said he.

Tregenna frowned, and looked uneasily round at his own men, who,
deeming him quite able to cope with this, the only one of the ruffians
whom they had in their power, had dispersed in various directions,
engaged in the rather hopeless task of ferreting out their lost enemies.

“I’d sooner have caught any one of the others, Tom,” said Tregenna,
“than laid hands on thee.”

“And I,” replied Tom, with a glance round in his tone, and a lowering
of the voice, “I’d sooner I was caught by you, sir, than as any of the
others was! For I’ve summat for to say to you, sir, summat for to arst
you!”

And over Tom’s open ruddy face there passed an expression of deep
anxiety.

“To ask me, Tom? Well?”

“Oons, sir you’d tell me the truth, wouldn’t you? You’d be above
telling lies to a poor fellow loike me!” went on the young man,
wistfully.

Tregenna looked amazed, as well he might, at this most unexpected
speech.

“I hope, Tom,” said he, “I’m above telling lies to any one.”

“Well, sir, it’s loike to this ’ere: you han’t forgot, sir, that noight
as you came to Rede Hall, have you?”

“No, I’m not likely to forget that quickly!”

“You’ll moind, sir, how ’twas Ann Price sent us after thee, in a
passion.”

“Ay, I’m not like to forget that either, Tom, nor your treatment of me
when you came up with me!”

Tom looked down, reddening.

“Oons, sir,” said he, gruffly, “we’re rough customers, I know. But we
had more than one account to settle with you, sir; and you see, you’d
found out a bit too much to be let off loight! We had to turn out of
the place where we’d met together for years, all along of you and your
findings. And that wasn’t all neither!”

And a significant frown puckered his brows once more.

“Why, what other harm have I done you, than what I had to do in the
course of my duty?” asked Tregenna.

“You’d gotten the roight side of Ann!” growled Ann’s lover, angrily.

“The right side! Nay, then I know not what getting the wrong side
would be like!” retorted Tregenna, lightly. “For there’s no sort of
ill treatment, short of actual murder, that I have not received at
her hands, and I own I never meet her without watching her hands, to
be sure she holds not a knife concealed in some fold of her dress,
wherewith to stab me!”

“Ay, that’s Ann all over!” said her lover, admiringly. “She’s got such
a spirit, has Ann! But it’s just them ways of hers with you that makes
me know she looks upon you with too koind an eye, sir. She loikes you,
and she hates herself for loiking a king’s man, that’s what it is!”

“Indeed!” said the young lieutenant, with a laugh. “Then I assure you,
Tom, she’s vastly welcome to transfer her liking to some one else; for
it’s wasted on me!”

Tom scanned the speaker’s face narrowly, and then drew a long breath of
relief.

“You speak as if it was truth,” said he, at last, in a muttering tone.
“Then, maybe, sir,” he went on, with deep earnestness, still keeping an
anxious gaze upon Tregenna’s face, “maybe you don’t know where she is
now?”

He seemed to wait with breathless eagerness for the answer.

“Most surely I do not,” replied Tregenna, promptly, “if she be not at
Hurst Court, where I saw her near ten days ago.”

Tom shook his head.

“She ben’t there now, sir. Nobody hereabouts has a notion where she’s
got to; so I thought as maybe it was you had spirited her away.”

“God forbid!” said Tregenna, heartily. “My good fellow, set your mind
at rest. If there’s one man in the world less likely than another to
spirit away your friend Ann Price, or indeed to have aught to do with
her, ’gad, ’tis I!”

Tom passed his hand over his chin reflectively: he did not yet seem
satisfied.

“Faith, man, what further assurance do you want?” said Tregenna, amused
at the fellow’s persistency. “Dost still think I’m in love with thy
fair friend the amazon?”

“Nay, sir that I do not,” replied Tom, slowly. “But ’tis her that’s in
love with thee! And, sure, she’s more loike to have her way with thee,
than ever thou wouldst ha’ been to make way with her, if so be it had
been t’other way round!”

“Make yourself easy on that point also,” answered Tregenna, now
laughing heartily at the young man’s fears. “Mistress Ann would get no
soft words from me, no loving looks, and no fond embraces, were I the
only man left on the earth, and she the only woman!”

“Sir,” said Tom, not a bit relieved by the assurance, “I do believe
you mean what you say. But she’s no common woman, isn’t Ann; and since
she’s sworn she’ll have your kisses within the month, why, I do surely
believe she’ll get them, whether you will or no.”

“Sworn to have my kisses!” echoed the lieutenant, in amazement. “Egad,
then, she’ll be forsworn. Fear not, man; thy fair one has no charms
for me, and truly she hath never met a man less like to bestow his
kisses upon her. Where she is gone I know not: and if I were in thy
shoes, I should be thankful she’d disappeared, and I should look about
for something softer, something more like a woman, to whom to give my
kindness!”

“Sir, one cannot give love where one will!” said poor Tom, rather
ruefully. “If I do know why I love her, ’tis on account of her not
being loike to every other lass in the parish; to her being so
different from herself, as from all other women, that one never knows
how she’s going for to be two hours together! So it ain’t no good of
talking, sir; for, oons! I’ve loved her too long to go trapesing after
another now!”

At that moment Tregenna caught sight of the first of his own men
returning from a fruitless search for the rest of the smugglers. He
turned quickly to Tom.

“Tom,” said he, “I cannot deal harshly with thee; get away with thee
ere it be too late. For these fellows of mine dare not show so much
leniency as I am doing.”

Tom took the hint. He was artful enough to make a feint of striking
the lieutenant, making a movement which caused the latter to take an
instinctive step backward, as if he had really been pushed aside. Tom
then made a dash for the nearest opening between the houses; and being
still wonderfully active when he chose to exert himself, he was lost to
the sight of the cutter’s men in a few seconds.




                             CHAPTER XVIII

                              A PRISONER.


It was useless to pursue the smugglers any longer, and equally useless
to make any plans for seizing them on land on their way back to the
sloop. As they had friends all along the coast, it was very certain
that they would make no attempt to re-embark from the beach at
Hastings, but would reach the ship from some other point of the shore.

All that Tregenna could do, therefore, was to seize the boat they had
left upon the beach, and then to return to the cutter. Here he learnt
that the sloop had sailed away under cover of the mist, so that there
was nothing for it but to take their chance of falling in with her crew
on their way back to her.

When night came on, therefore, a couple of boats, with Tregenna in one
of them, left the cutter and cruised about, the one on the Hastings
side, the other in the direction of the marshes.

Tregenna was in the former boat; but it had not got very far when one
of the men at the oars raised his head, as if listening intently.

“Did you hear that, sir?” asked he, in a low voice.

“What? I heard nothing.”

The man rested on his oar, and his example was followed by the others.
There was a moment of dead silence, no sounds reaching their straining
ears but the cry of a sea-bird and the soft plash of the calm water as
it lapped the sides of the boat. It was a beautiful night, the sea as
smooth as a lake, and the moon, which was almost at the full, making a
bright path of silvery yellow on the still water. There was nothing to
tell of early winter save for a touch of frost in the air, and a thin
line of November fog along the shore.

Suddenly there rang out in the keen night air the sharp report of a
pistol, followed by a cry, which sounded shrill in the distance.

“Turn,” said Tregenna, “and row hard for the other boat.”

As they went, pulling with all their strength, they heard nothing more
for some time. It was not until they had come in sight of their second
boat that they perceived that a stern chase was in progress.

Well out to sea, and rowing out at a rapid rate, was a long, low craft
which was painted a light color, and which it was easy to guess was the
property of the “free-traders.” It was much longer than either of the
pursuing craft, lightly built, and well manned. So that singly one of
the cutter’s boats and its small crew would have had little chance with
it, had the two come to close quarters.

Nevertheless, the revenue-men were giving chase with a will, and at
sight of their comrades on the way to join them they gave forth a cheer
which rang out over the water, putting spirit into the heart of their
comrades, and vigor into their strokes.

As the answering cheer came forth from the throats of Tregenna and
his crew, a shout of hoarse, mocking laughter, mingled with oaths and
foul threats, came in a volley from the smugglers’ craft; and the next
moment, finding that the two opposing boats were gaining on her, she
swung round and waited for them to come up with her.

Tregenna’s boat was now the nearer of the two. In the moonlight the
lieutenant saw a face, coarse, evil, with eyes aflame, peering over the
side of the smuggler’s craft from under one of the knitted caps the
most of them wore: it was that of Ben the Blast. The next moment the
rascal raised his right arm, and pointed a pistol at him.

The rest of the smugglers were all crouching, like Ben, round the
sides of the boat. Suddenly there sprang up above their heads the
slighter, more lithe figure, in open jacket and loose shirt-collar,
which Tregenna had so much reason to remember. Even at that moment of
excitement, the thought that this was a woman who stood exposed to his
own fire and that of his men made Tregenna feel for a moment sick and
faint. Before he had recovered from the effects of his recognition of
Ann Price in the guise of “Jem Bax,” he saw her strike a violent blow
at Ben’s right arm: and the upraised pistol dropped into the water.

Then there came a cry from the crew of the second cutter’s boat; in the
last few moments they had gained on their comrades, and it was they
who first came up with the smugglers.

Over Tregenna there had suddenly come a frightful sense of a new and
sickening danger, that of killing a woman in open fight. Unsexed
creature as she had seemed, when he had heard her cursing and uttering
threats against him at the farmhouse, he could not but remember, at
this fearful moment, how she had conversed with him in the garden at
Hurst Court, with all the sweet tones and soft looks, the pleading
words and winning ways, of a very woman.

The feeling was paralyzing; it went near to making a coward of him.
Then, just as his boat was drawing in its turn alongside that of the
smugglers, he saw one of his own men, from the other boat, in actual
conflict with “Jem.”

He saw the gleam of knives; he saw the two boats rocking like cradles
on the surface of the water. Then it was “Jem” who uttered a cry; the
red blood gushed forth over the white shirt she wore, and the next
moment she staggered, and fell, not back into her comrades’ boat but
into that of the revenue-men.

At that moment Tregenna’s attention was recalled to his own situation
by his receiving a blow on the breast from a weapon in the hands of one
of the smugglers. The attack recalled him to himself, roused again the
savage instinct which is the best for a man to feel at such a time, and
nerved his arm to retaliation.

He saw no more of “Jem;” he was able, therefore, in the excitement of
the fight, to forget her. And, although the smuggler’s boat presently
succeeded in sheering off, after having inflicted some damage on their
opponents, it was with more than one of their number hurt and disabled
that they made off in the direction of the sloop.

Tregenna would have followed; but to the signals he made to his second
boat to accompany him, the crew replied that they were unable to do so.
He had, therefore, to be content with the damage he had undoubtedly
inflicted upon the “free-traders,” and to return to the cutter, which
he reached some minutes before the second boat did.

When this came up, in its turn, the boatswain, who was in charge of it,
saluted, in some triumph, as he drew alongside.

Tregenna was looking over the side, anxious to learn whether his men
had suffered much.

“Sir,” called out the boatswain, cheerily, “I’ve good news for you!”

“Well, and what is it?” asked the lieutenant, as he scanned, with some
bewilderment, a sort of heap which lay in the bows of the little boat.

“Oons, sir, we’ve brought a prisoner along,” answered the boatswain, in
a ringing voice. “And wounded beside. And ’tis none other than Jem Bax,
that’s long been known as the biggest rascal of the lot!”

Instead of receiving this intelligence with the delight and
congratulations which the hero of the capture evidently expected,
Tregenna uttered a sound which was very like a groan, and exclaimed, in
a most lugubrious voice—

“The devil you have!”

The boatswain, startled and disappointed, looked at his captain in
astonishment.

“Plague on’t, sir, but I thought I’d done the smartest night’s work
ever fell to my lot!” cried he.

“Take him back!” roared Tregenna, as soon as he caught the first sight
of the white face he had so much reason to remember.

The boatswain had uncovered the heap in the bows, exposing to view
the prostrate form of “Jem Bax,” who lay, with closed eyes, and with
blood-stains on face and breast, limp, motionless, helpless, without
giving a sign of life.

Tregenna’s face and voice changed at the sight.

“Well, haul him up,” said he, with a sudden change to anxiety, as the
thought struck him that Ann was perhaps already dead. “We’ll see what
we can do for the fellow!”

None of the others had, apparently, the least suspicion that “Jem Bax”
was a woman; and Tregenna intended to keep the secret to himself if he
could, and to get rid of her as fast as possible.

There was something so ridiculous in having caught such a prisoner that
he would not for worlds have had the truth suspected.

They raised the still motionless body to the level of the cutter’s
deck, and Tregenna himself knelt down to examine the injuries of the
seemingly unconscious prisoner. The men would have taken her below;
but Tregenna, whose great anxiety was, after seeing to her wounds, to
get rid of her as quickly as he could, without discovery of her sex,
desired them to leave her where she lay, at any rate for the time,
and threw his own cloak over her, while he sought the wound which had
reduced her to this condition.

He could find nothing but a superficial cut near the collar-bone, which
had indeed bled freely, but scarcely to such an extent, to judge by
appearances, as to have produced insensibility. Further examination
disclosed a large bruise on the upper part of the right arm; but this
seemed to be the full extent of her injuries.

It was not unnatural that Tregenna, knowing the artful character of
the woman, should come to the conclusion that she was shamming sick to
some extent, and that her injuries were not alone the cause of this
excessive prostration.

He dismissed his men, therefore, and performed for her the same office
that had fallen to him before, by producing his flask of _aqua vitæ_,
and holding it to her lips.

He did not, however, on this occasion, bestow so much patience or so
much tenderness upon her as he had done before. As soon as the men had
retired far enough for him not to risk being overheard, he said in her
ear—

“Come, Jem, ’tis vastly well done, but ’tis wasted on me this time!”

Very little to his surprise, she opened her eyes immediately, and said,
but in a faint husky voice—

“I did but wait till I could speak with you alone, sir. I am dying—I am
bleeding within—I know it, I feel it—But I care not. So I die in your
arms, or, at least, with you by me, I care naught: I shall die happy!”

As she spoke, her great, weird gray eyes unnaturally large in
appearance through the drawn expression of her features and the utter
absence of color from her cheeks and lips, were fixed intently upon his
face.

Although he reproached himself for the suspicion, Tregenna did at first
ask himself whether this speech, moving as it was meant to be, were not
part of the deception she had intended throughout to play upon him.
But before he could utter a word in answer, she said, looking at him
reproachfully the while—

“You doubt me, sir; I can see it in your face! But, tell me, did I not
stay the hand of Ben the Blast, when he would have shot you down? Did
you not see how I caused his pistol to fall into the water? Wherefore
should I have acted so, I, who can fight as well as I— can love, but
for some feeling for you which was not that of an enemy.”

“’Tis true you saved me from that bullet, and I am grateful, Ann,” said
Tregenna. “And I will hope you think too gravely of your own case, and
that I may soon be able to send you back on shore. Drink this, drink
it, and it will, I hope, put some life into you, some warmth, as it did
before!”

The reminder brought a tinge of color to Ann’s white face.

“Raise my head with your arm then, sir,” said she, “and I will drink,
since ’tis you who bid me!”

She gave him another long look, passionate, earnest, full of a strange,
mysterious pain. Then, having sipped the cordial, she drew a long
breath, as if its potency were too great for her in her weakened
state, and whispered—

“I have something to ask you, sir, before—I—die!” Her voice failed
her on the last words, and he had to wait a little before she gained
strength enough to go on. “Will you promise that, when the breath has
gone out of my body, you will let me lie here, in the open air, and
with your cloak over me, till the morning? Nay, sure, sir,” she went on
feebly, as Tregenna would have spoken, “you can’t refuse me so small a
boon!”

She clutched at his hand as she spoke, and held it with a convulsive
grip, as he answered her.

“You shall stay here, if you please,” said he. “But do not give way.
You are young, and strong: you will live yet, I doubt not. I can see no
wound upon you that should lead to your death!”

“None the less,” said she, as she tried to shake her head, “I shall
die. And I am glad of it, since my body, in death, shall lie where I
would have it lie, in Heaven’s sweet air, and on your ship, yours.”
She pronounced the last word with inexpressible tenderness, and
turned upon him, as she spoke, a look so moving, so piercing in its
wistfulness, that the tears sprang to Tregenna’s eyes.

“Kiss me,” said she quickly. “Kiss me, once, kiss me twice, and
thrice—before I die!”

As she uttered these words, in a hoarse and broken voice, she strove to
raise herself, and lifted her white and eager face to his.

He obeyed her, kissing her three times, not with the feeling that it
was a dying woman whose lips touched his, but with a horrible, uncanny
sense of contact with some being that was not honest flesh and blood.
It seemed to him that her dry lips burned, seared his, as if he had
been touched by red-hot coals.

It was with difficulty that he repressed a shudder as she let him go.
She fixed upon him her dark gray eyes, to which the black lines sunk
beneath gave a strange brilliancy; then suddenly her head fell forward
upon his breast and she lay limp and motionless in his arms.

He laid her down, looked long at the white face, fixed and ghastly in
the moonlight. Then he felt himself seized once more with that sick
horror which had taken possession of him once before that evening. As
he turned his head away, the boatswain came up, and looked curiously
down at the prostrate body.

“Why, sir, he’s dead!” cried he.

Tregenna nodded.

“Leave—him lying there—till morning!” stammered he.

And as he spoke, he replaced his cloak, as he had promised Ann that he
would do, upon her quiet limbs.

It was a moment of intense horror for him: although the passion the
woman had felt, or professed to feel for him had left him almost cold,
it was impossible not to be moved by the sight of that form, which he
had seen so full of life and fire and energy, cold and still at his
feet.

He could not shake off the chilly feeling of having held converse with
a creature of weird and supernatural attributes. Even when he retired
to rest, leaving a sailor to watch by the corpse till morning, the
thought of the woman and her strange end haunted him, would not let him
rest.

It was long before he slept, and his slumber was disturbed by many an
uneasy dream.

When he awoke, in the early morning light, there was a good deal of
commotion on deck. On going to see what was the matter, he found that
the body of Ann Price, alias “Jem Bax,” had disappeared.

At first the man who had been left in the position of watcher professed
to know nothing about the strange disappearance. But, upon being
questioned with some shrewdness by Tregenna, he confessed that a small
boat had come alongside about two hours before daybreak, with a couple
of men whom he did not know, who asked what had become of “Jem.”

With a sailor’s superstition, he had been only too glad to tell them of
what had happened, and to let them carry away the body in their boat,
still covered with Tregenna’s cloak.

The last he had seen of them was that, in the gray dawn, they had
reached the shore, and landed their silent burden with difficulty on
the beach, when the tide was out and the rocks lay bare and cold in the
morning mist.




                             CHAPTER XIX.

                             A VERY WOMAN.


It was with strangely mixed feelings that Tregenna heard this story of
the carrying away of the body of “Jem Bax,” the smuggler. Knowing, as
he did, that it was a woman who had been thus borne across the water to
her last resting-place, and with the memory of that farewell interview
strong upon him, he was stirred, in spite of himself, by the thought
of that swift and silent passage across the water to the shore; and he
seemed to be able to see, as he strained his eyes in the cold morning
light, the smugglers’ boat with its quiet burden, gliding over the gray
sea to the dim line of rocks and foam which marked the edge of the
shore.

The sloop had disappeared.

Later in the day the lieutenant went ashore, and lost no time in making
his way to the parsonage, as usual.

To his surprise and dismay, he was informed by old Nance, who opened
the door to him, that Miss Joan had gone away that very morning.

“Gone away!” repeated Tregenna, in stupefaction. “But whither?”

“That’s more’n I can tell you, sir,” grumbled Nance, who seemed in
an ill-humor, as if resenting her own position of ignorance. “But if
you’ll step in, maybe the master’ll be able to tell you more.”

So Tregenna went into the little dining-parlor, where he found the good
vicar looking rather gloomy.

“Hey-day!” cried Parson Langney, as soon as the young man entered,
“what’s this thou hast been about, Harry, to disturb thy sweetheart’s
peace as thou hast done?”

“I disturb her peace!” exclaimed Tregenna. “Nay, sir, I know not. I
parted with her but last night the best of friends, as indeed you very
well know, since it was here I passed the evening!”

“Well, she’s taken herself away, this morning, to her aunt’s at
Hastings, and charged me not to tell you how to find the house.”

“But, sir, how know you that I am the cause of this freak?”

“Aye freak you may well call it, as indeed I told her myself. But she
is as stubborn and as proud as can be on this matter, and all she would
say was that no man was worth a thought, save her old father, and she
begged me give her a few days away, to collect herself, ere she wrote
to tell you you must see her no more!”

The lieutenant, whose limbs were shaking very much, sat down quietly,
with his head spinning round. What cause of offense he could have
given Joan, to induce her to treat him in this apparently heartless
manner, he had not the remotest notion. The parson easily perceived how
bewildered he was, and presently he said—

“’Twas after a visit from poor Gardener Tom, who came to the door after
breakfast this morning, that she flew into so great a passion. She
would not tell me what he said, save that no man was to be trusted by
any woman. Does that give you any clue to her behavior?”

“Gardener Tom!” echoed Tregenna, at first without an idea as to any
connection between the smuggler’s visit and Joan’s abrupt departure.

“Had it naught to do with your conduct towards another woman, think
you?” suggested Parson Langney, watching him with keen eyes. “It was at
the same time that Tom told us of the death of poor Ann Price.”

At the mention of the name Tregenna started up.

“What did he tell her about that?” asked he quickly.

“Ah!” said the vicar, with meaning. “Then it had something to do with
that, eh?”

“Surely, surely, sir, Joan has too much sense, too much generosity, to
be angry with me for showing kindness towards a dying woman!” cried the
young man, with fire.

“Nay,” said the parson, “I know not. A lass is a strange creature: how
far did thy kindness go, Harry?”

Tregenna frowned. It flashed across his mind now that perhaps one of
the smugglers’ boats had been hovering about the cutter at the time
of Ann’s death, unnoticed in the excitement and commotion caused by
the return of the boats’ crews and the capture of a prisoner. If this
were so, and if Gardener Tom had been one of the occupants, it was very
possible that he had seen the kiss Tregenna had given the dying woman,
and that he had recounted the incidents of that passionate farewell of
hers to Joan.

Since Tom was jealous himself, it was not likely that he would let the
story lose in the telling. This seemed the only possible explanation of
Joan’s strange flight, and it was a most disquieting one.

“’Tis true I did kiss her, sir, at her request,” said Tregenna, after a
short pause. “But there was never a kiss given in this world that was
less cause for jealousy!”

“Well, I believe you, Harry, for I know you to be most truly attached
to my daughter. But whether she will believe, is another question. A
woman looks not at these things with a man’s eyes, nor does she listen
to the recital of them with a man’s ears.”

“Sir,” said Tregenna, proudly, “I hope she will come round to a
sensible state within a few days, and send me some message to say so.
For otherwise I will not humble myself to write and demand one. I
could not trust the discretion of a woman who would show so little
confidence in her lover!”

“Nay, let not your spirit carry you too far, or maybe you’ll lose her
altogether!” said the vicar. “And I would not have that; for though I
would fain have kept my daughter with me a little longer, had it been
possible, I should not hope to find for her an honester man than I
believe you to be!”

“’Twill be the cruelest loss I have ever known, if I do lose her,”
answered Tregenna, with emotion. “But yet I shall have no choice if she
is so hard as to let me go without one word!”

“You will not take with you the name of the house where her aunt
resides?” suggested Parson Langney, wistfully.

“No, sir. Let her send me a message, or I will not go to her!” retorted
Tregenna. “I intrude, sir. You are engaged upon your sermon, I see. Let
me wish you a good day!”

And with a bow, and an air of great spirit, the young man left the
house.

Hard though it was to be stern and constant to his determination,
Tregenna kept his word. He did not call again at the Parsonage, nor
did he attempt to find out the address of Joan’s aunt. But he did
certainly wander pretty frequently, in the course of the next few days,
both in the direction of Hurst and of the town of Hastings, not without
a secret hope that he would meet his offended sweetheart.

He felt that he had a right to consider himself aggrieved, since she
was condemning him unheard. But at the same time, his glances towards
the Parsonage grew more and more wistful as the days went by, and he
still received no letter, no message. Had the vindictive and merciless
Ann done him an injury in death greater than any she had tried to do
him in life? It seemed so; and the lieutenant, though he assumed a more
and more jaunty air as the time passed, hid a heart of lead underneath.

It was on the fourth day after the morning, when Ann’s body had been
so mysteriously conveyed away, nobody knew whither, that Tregenna, on
arriving at the village one morning, found the inhabitants all astir
with some great excitement. They were congregating in groups about one
particular cottage in the village; and on inquiry as to the reason, he
learnt that it was the day of Ann Price’s funeral and that they were
waiting for the body to be brought out.

Tregenna lingered, on hearing this, and hoped that he might have an
opportunity of meeting Tom, and of questioning him as to the mischief
he had done.

When the coffin, covered with a deep black pall, was brought out of the
house, however, the lieutenant found no one he recognized among the
four bearers.

They were all rough-looking men, of the rather sinister type he had
begun to know so well, but neither Bill Plunder, nor Robin Cursemother,
Ben the Blast, Jack Price, nor Gardener Tom, was among them.

“How comes it her brother is not one of the bearers?” asked he of a
bystander.

“Sure, sir, ’tis you should know the reason of that better than
anybody,” returned the woman, saucily.

For the person of the lieutenant was now well known in the
neighborhood, and there was a sort of lively warfare carried on
between him on the one side, and the women of the place, with their
free-trading sympathies, on the other.

By this time the little procession had started towards the churchyard,
and Tregenna, bare-headed, joined it on its way.

Slowly they went, past the few remaining houses of the village, and up
the hill where the Parsonage stood. The church, a weather-beaten little
structure, innocent of any sort of restoration except whitewash, stood
beyond, on a somewhat lower level, and nearer to the marsh.

Under the building, at the east end of the church, there was a vault,
which had belonged to the family at Rede Hall for nearly a century. The
way to it was by a flight of worn steps, damp, uneven and overgrown
with weeds, behind the east window.

Here the vicar stood, with the great key of the vault in his hand,
waiting for the arrival of the solemn little procession.

Very weird, very awe-inspiring it seemed to Tregenna—the brief service
held in the keen frosty air, under the lee of the old church, whose
stones had been gray and old before the ancient Faith gave place to
the new. There was a dead calm that day over land and sea, and the
sea-birds flew inland, screaming, over the brown fields.

A strange contrast all the calm, the peace seemed to make, to the image
of fire and passion, restless energy and feverish struggle which was
called up by the name of Ann.

When the service was over, and the coffin had been locked away in the
great bare vault, Tregenna left the rest of the company, and took a
straight cut across the cliffs towards the Hastings road.

It was with no definite object of going in the direction of Joan’s
present residence, yet there was doubtless some thought of her hovering
in his mind; so that when, at a distance of some mile and a half from
Hurst, he came suddenly face to face with her at a turning in the road,
he flushed indeed, but without much surprise, as if the person who had
been in his thoughts had become on the instant present to him in the
flesh.

She was in the company of a stout country lass, who was carrying a
parcel under her cloak.

Tregenna bowed, but, except for the space of half a second, did not
stop. And in return for the slightly resentful, cold and distant
curtsey she gave him, he held his head very high in the air, and looked
her full in the face with a defiant expression.

Perceiving this, Joan went suddenly white; and as he went on, she
presently halted, and turned to look after him. Now, it happened that
Tregenna, although he had made up his mind that he would not be guilty
of such a weakness, did in his turn stop and give a hasty glance back
at her.

Joan, seeing that he instantly went on again, could bear it no longer;
he should not go like that, without knowing how little she cared. So
she hastily bade her companion walk on, saying that she would overtake
her shortly; and then she called, in a haughty and distant tone—

“Mr. Tregenna!”

And of course he had not gone far enough not to hear her.

He turned, however, in the most leisurely way possible, and walked back
with a very lofty air of doing something he was much disinclined to do.

“Madam,” said he, when he had come quite near, “you called to me, I
believe.”

“I did, sir,” said Joan, in a tone as lofty as his own. “I did but wish
to ask you—whether the stage-wagon has passed this way.”

“I have not seen it, madam,” replied he, more superbly than ever.

“I thank you, sir.”

She dropped him a stately, dignified curtsey, to which he responded
with a profound bow. Then he turned again and resumed his walk. This
was more than Joan could bear.

“How can you, Harry?” burst from her lips.

“Nay, ’tis I should ask that!” retorted Tregenna, who was back again by
her side in a moment. “’Tis I should want to know how a woman can treat
her lover as you have treated me this last five days!”

“They told me—they told me——” stammered Joan, who was now in tears.

He interrupted her quickly.

“Nay, then, if you are content to quarrel with me on account of what
others tell you, without a word to me, ’tis time we should bid each
other farewell, madam!”

“Oh, Harry, you are too hard, too cruel! And when ’tis your fault, all
your fault! For Tom saw you with—with—her in your arms! You kissed
her, once, twice, thri-i-i-ce! And—and when you told me you cared not
for her! Nay, sir!” She drew herself erect, and looked at him with a
challenge in her eyes.

“Deny it if you can. You know you dare not, you cannot!”

“Most certainly I do not deny that I held Ann Price in my arms, nor
that I did kiss her, as you say. And, if you hold that I did wrongly
in suffering the caprice of a dying woman, why, madam, I must tell you
that ’tis you that err, not I.”

“But—but—but she had sworn you should kiss her!” whimpered Joan,
falteringly. “Gardener Tom told me so.”

“Madam, could I help that? She was sick to death, as you know. Whether
’twas for affection, which I doubt, or for spite, or for some other
motive, I could do naught but that which I did. I will neither deny the
action, nor excuse myself for it: since there was naught to be done but
humor her.”

Joan looked at him through her tears; but although she still endeavored
to maintain her cold and haughty demeanor, it was plain both that
she was longing to find some way of getting out of the position she
had taken up, and that she was rejoiced at seeing her lover again.
Tregenna, on his side, was just as feverishly happy in this meeting as
she, and just as eager to go on with the quarrel, if that were the only
way of holding converse with her.

She uttered another sob.

“I thought you cared for me!” sighed she.

“Madam, I thought I did also.”

“But I see plainly you do not!”

“Nay, madam, then your eyes are keen to see the thing which is not!”

“If—if you cared for me, you would have been to visit me—while I was at
my aunt’s!”

“If you had cared for me, you would not have gone away!”

“Then this is to be farewell indeed, sir?”

“If such is your pleasure, madam!”

“Oh, Harry, you are too, too cruel!”

“And you,” whispered Tregenna, his tone suddenly melting to tenderness,
as he seized her in his arms, “are too foolish, my dear! Come, dry
your eyes and confess that never had a maiden so little cause to doubt
her lover as you! Oh, Joan, Joan, and I thought you were so wise, so
sober-minded a person! I never guessed you were subject to caprices,
like other women! I’m disappointed in you, Joan.”

“Will you swear,” said Joan, in a tremulous voice, “you had never any
thoughts of love for her, but only for me?”

“I will swear it again, as I have sworn before. But you should not
doubt me, Joan!”

She was looking rather ashamed of herself, and it was easy to see that
it would be no difficult matter to convince her of his truth.

“’Twas only,” said she meekly, “that all men say she was so resistless
a creature—that no man could stand against her wiles. But I’ll be
content, so you assure me with your own lips you loved her not, but
were kind to her out of pity!”

Tregenna did give her assurance with his lips, in very impressive
fashion. And they walked back together to Hurst, where Parson Langney,
espying them from his gate while they were yet at some distance,
greeted them with derisive roars of laughter.

“Nay, nay,” said he. “What a flighty, wayward creature is a lover,
male or female! If sober married folk did fly off at a tangent like to
sweethearts in their courting, there would be never a household on the
earth with both master and mistress within its doors at the same time!”

“Wherefore are you not busy with your sermon, father?” asked Joan,
saucily, to turn the conversation and draw attention from her guilty
blushes.

“’Tis too early in the week,” retorted the vicar, with a twinkle of his
merry eyes. “I was going to the churchyard to look for the key of the
vault I opened this morning. I know not how I can have mislaid it.”

They accompanied him on his search, but their efforts were in vain; and
at last Tregenna suggested that the key might have been stolen.

“Nay, but who should steal the key of a burial vault?” objected the
vicar, incredulously. “’Tis the last thing a man would covet, I
imagine.”

But though Tregenna did not press the point, the notion he had
suggested did not leave his mind. And even after he had had tea with
Joan and her father, and had started on his way back to his vessel, it
recurred to him again and again.

So that at last he stopped short, turned back, and made his way once
more to the churchyard.




                              CHAPTER XX.

                      THE FREE-TRADERS’ FAREWELL.


What if one of Ann’s friends, her poor lover Tom for instance, had
stolen the key of the vault, in order to be able to pass an hour by the
coffin which held the remains of one who had been so dear to him?

This seemed so likely, that Tregenna was resolved to put his notion
to the test. But he found the door of the vault safely locked, and no
signs about of any recent visitor.

As, however, on the following day, the vicar confessed that the key had
not yet been discovered, Tregenna made up his mind to keep an eye on
the church; and he regularly, for the next ten days, paid a visit to
the spot before returning to the cutter after his call at the Parsonage.

And on the tenth evening, just as he was entering the churchyard by the
little wooden gate on the north side, he caught sight of a human head
disappearing rapidly, apparently into the bowels of the earth, behind
the east end of the church.

Going rapidly and noiselessly in that direction, Tregenna reached the
steps which led down to the vault, and saw that the door was open some
inches. Descending cautiously, he could distinguish certain sounds
within the vault, which betrayed the presence of live human beings; the
mutterings and shufflings of feet grew louder, until he was able to
distinguish the voice of Jack Price the smuggler, and another which he
did not recognize.

After the lapse of a few seconds they began to make such a noise, as
they pushed certain heavy loads about, to the accompaniment of much
scraping of the stone floor, that Tregenna ventured to open the door a
little farther, and to peep in.

A weird sight met his eyes. By the light of a torch, which smoked and
flared, throwing a red light on the faces and figures of the men, and
making a great patch of sooty blackness upon the green slime on the
roof, Jack Price, long, lean, and woebegone of face, and Bill Plunder,
short, crooked, and evil-looking, were busily engaged in piling up
against the walls of the vault a huge quantity of kegs and bales of
goods, in order to make them occupy the least possible space, and so
make room for more.

Tregenna, hardened as he was to the smugglers and their villainies,
could scarcely believe his eyes. Not a sign of a coffin was to be seen.
Apparently the dead had been turned out of their resting-place, to make
way for the merchandise of the “free-traders.”

As he thought of the callousness which could thus make an opportunity
out of the death of an old comrade like Ann, to find a new nest for
their contraband wares, the lieutenant felt that he could restrain
himself no longer. Casting all prudence to the winds, and unmindful of
the fact that these two might have comrades within call, he dashed open
the door of the vault, and seizing the tall Jack Price, by a clever
movement flung him sprawling on the stone floor.

Bill Plunder, though taken aback for the moment, recovered himself, and
planting himself behind a breastwork of contraband merchandise, leveled
his pistol at Tregenna.

The lieutenant whipped out his own weapon at the same moment, received
a bullet in his right shoulder, and answered by firing with his left
a shot which made Bill leap up in the air with a loud cry. The next
moment Tregenna found himself grappling with Jack, who had risen from
the ground and seized a broken piece of metal which was lying on the
stone floor.

Jack fought like a madman, slashing and plunging at his opponent with a
vigor and ferocity which seemed to render the combat a hopeless one for
the lieutenant, whose wound was bleeding freely, when, just as Tregenna
felt his head growing dizzy and his eyes becoming dim, the smuggler, in
making a desperate lunge at him, tripped in some ropes which were lying
on the floor, and stumbled headlong over a couple of the smuggled kegs
of spirit.

Quick as thought Tregenna seized one of the kegs, sprang to the door,
got outside, and wedged the door tightly with the barrel, which he had
rolled out in front of him.

The space at the bottom of the steps was just wide enough to allow of
this being done; and then, without waiting to see whether the men
would make any attempt to escape from their imprisonment, he started
for the Parsonage.

Before he got there, however, he found himself staggering, and knew
that he would not have strength left to reach the house. As he stood
swaying to and fro for a few seconds on the footpath, he caught the
sound of a wagon going along slowly at the foot of the hill. There was
a man walking beside the horses, cracking his whip and urging them on.
It was too dark for Tregenna to see either wagon or man; but the frosty
air carried the sounds to him clearly, and carried back his fainting
cry—

“Help, help!”

Then he fell down on the grass beside the footpath.

When he came to himself, after a curious experience of being in the
sea, swimming for life, with a dozen faces he knew around him, he found
that he was still lying on the grass, but that there was at least one
face he knew bending over him, looking very weird and strange by the
light of a heavy lantern, which had been placed on the ground beside
him. And the face was that of Gardener Tom!

“Tom?” cried he faintly.

The great boorish fellow watching over him burst into a great
blubbering and sobbing like an overgrown child.

“Ay, ’tis me, sir, and glad am I to see you look at me again. For oons,
sir, I thought you’d shut your eyes forever! You’re hurt, sir—badly
hurt. And for sure ’tis one of them rascally smugglers that’s done it!”

Ill as he was, Tregenna smiled and raised his eyebrows.

“Smugglers, Tom! Nay, sure you mean ‘free-traders.’”

“I means _smugglers_, domn ’em!” roared Tom, energetically. “And if
ever I carry a keg again, or help ’em in their wicked ways, may I be
riddled through and through, loike as if I was a target!”

“Since—when have you—become so virtuous?” panted out Tregenna feebly.

“Since one of ’em, nay two of ’em served me a dirty trick, sir,”
answered Tom, fiercely. “Ask me no more, sir; for sure I don’t want for
to let out what I’ve in my moind!”

“How long—have I lain here?”

“Not more’n the space of half a minute, sir. And no more you mustn’t. I
be going for to call them at the Parsonage.”

“Nay, nay, Tom, I should alarm them, in this plight.”

“Never fear for that, sir. It would alarm ’em more for you to die!”

And Tom hobbled away in the direction of the vicar’s house at a great
rate.

As he lay there in the cold air, Tregenna was vaguely conscious of a
feeling of satisfaction that Gardener Tom had turned to honest ways.
And then his mind began to wander again. He was recalled to full
consciousness by a delicious sense of ease and peace, and by feeling
the touch of the hand he loved the best in the world on his forehead.

A few minutes afterwards he was lying on a hastily made bed in the
vicarage parlor.

Tregenna lay ill for some weeks; for the wound inflicted by Bill’s
bullet was a serious one, and he had lost so much blood before he was
discovered by Tom, that there was a fear lest he might not be able to
stand the drain.

Thanks to the tender nursing he received, however, at Joan’s loving
hands, he presently began to mend. And it was when all danger was past
that he learnt the fate of the two smugglers whom he had imprisoned in
the vault beneath the church.

Jack Price had managed to escape, but had had the misfortune to run
straight into the arms of the brigadier and his soldiers, who now
patrolled the country round Hurst with more assiduity than before.
Being recognized as one of the most prominent of the smugglers, he
was seized, carried to Rye, and hanged within a fortnight; for such
offenders as he had scant shrift in those times.

Bill Plunder was found dead in the vault, having been killed by the
shot Tregenna had fired at him in exchange for his own.

An enormous quantity of smuggled goods which had been secreted in the
vault, were confiscated by the authorities: for even Squire Waldron had
begun to see that his reign of laxity was over.

Not a sign of the coffins was to be found, however; and a thrill of
horror ran through every one at the thought that the smugglers had
even got rid of these in order to make way for more plunder.

A deep peace seemed to fall over the whole neighborhood after the death
of Jack Price and Bill Plunder. The brigadier flattered himself that he
should get promotion for his energy, and Tregenna felt that his task
was done, and that the time was convenient for the retirement he had
promised the vicar.

So fully satisfied were the authorities in London that the mission
of soldiers and revenue-men had been thoroughly and effectively
accomplished, that the brigade was shortly withdrawn from the
neighborhood, and the cutter was sent to another part of the coast.

It was not until after his withdrawal from the service, when the
snowdrops were peeping above the ground, that Tregenna came down to
Hurst, and put up at the best inn, ready for his marriage with Joan on
the morrow. It was to have been a very quiet wedding; but Joan had made
herself so much beloved in the countryside that, long before the time
for the ceremony had arrived, the whole churchyard and the grass round
were thick with a dense throng of people.

Gardener Tom was there with a huge nosegay of hothouse flowers,
speaking loudly his hatred and detestation of the whole sex, with the
exception of Miss Joan.

Squire Waldron and Bertram were there, in smart hunt colors, waiting to
welcome the bride.

The ladies from Hurst Court were there, simpering and wondering how
the vicar’s daughter could be so selfish as to leave her father! They
wouldn’t have done it, not they!

Men, women, and children from Hurst and the villages round were there
with their snowdrops, to strew on the path before sweet Mistress Joan.

All was peace, and brightness, and happiness; and the winter sun came
out in her honor as blushing Joan, tall and handsome, in her plain
white dress and veil, came from the Parsonage, leaning on her father’s
arm.

The service was over; the blessing had been spoken on the young people,
and Tregenna was leading his bride down the little aisle, when a sound
reached the ears of all present which froze the blood of some of them.

It was a peal of loud, mocking laughter, in a well-known voice.

It came into the church from the wide porch, and echoed through the
building.

“Ann!” cried Tregenna, under his breath.

“No, no, not Ann; but Jem Bax!” cried the well-known voice, in clear
and ringing tones.

And into the bright light of the doorway strode Ann, in her lad’s
dress, with a keg slung in front and one behind, in approved smuggler
fashion.

“Heaven bless you both, for a pair of innocent lambs,” she cried,
raising one hand as if in benediction. “See, Ben, do not they make a
monstrous pretty pair? Prettier than you and me, when they made us one!”

And the burly form of Ben the Blast, with his kegs slung over his
shoulder, came into view behind her.

Everybody was too much taken aback, too much amazed at the deception
Ann had practised, and at her unflagging audacity, to attempt to touch
either her or the smuggler at her side. With another laugh and a wave
of the hand, they both left the church porch, sprang on the back of a
stout horse which was waiting at the gate, and were away over the marsh
to the new haunt they had made, before Tregenna had had time to recover
his wits.

He had done with her, forever; but there was still trouble in store for
the representatives of law and order, while the daring, wicked spirit
walked the earth in the flesh.

“Are you jealous still, Joan?” whispered Tregenna, in his bride’s ear.

“No. But—I’m thankful she’s married, Harry,” was the fervent answer.

“And I,” returned Tregenna with equal fervor, “am thankful ’tis no
longer my duty to cope with her and her tricks. For, faith, I believe
she’s in league with the very powers of darkness!”

                               THE END.


          —————————————————— End of Book ——————————————————

                    Transcriber’s Note (continued)

Minor typographical errors that appear in the book have been corrected
in this transcription.

Unusual or variable spelling and hyphenation have been left unchanged
except as noted below.

  Page 91 — “oft” changed to “off” (a little way off, in the
            direction of)

  Page 127 — “fain” changed to “feign” (“Nay, why should she feign?”)

  Page 148 — “vantange” changed to “vantage” (in his place of vantage)

  Page 168 — “O’dsfish” changed to “’Od’s fish” (’Od’s fish; Oi’d never
             wish a man worse)

  Page 175 — “I’ve got you fast” is all italic.

  Page 225 — “celler” changed to “cellar” (the trap-door to the cellar)

  Page 290 — “courtsey” changed to “curtsey” (cold and distant curtsey
             she gave him)