STORY THREE, CHAPTER ONE. IN A GOWT. Looks ominous, don't it, to see nearly every gate-post and dyke-bridge made of old ships' timber? Easy enough to tell that, from its bend, and the tree-nail holes. Ours is a bad coast, you see; not rocky, but with long sloping sands; and when the sea's high, and there's a gale on shore, a vessel strikes, and there she lies, with the waves lifting her bodily, and then letting her fall again upon the sands, shaking her all to pieces: first the masts go, then a seam opens somewhere in her sides, and as every wave lifts her and lets her down, she shivers and loosens, till she as good as falls all to pieces, and the shore gets strewn with old wreck. Good wrecks used to be little fortunes to the folk along shore, but that's all altered now; the coastguard look-out too sharp. Things are wonderfully changed to what they were when I was a boy. Fine bit of smuggling going on in those days; hardly a farmer along the coast but had a finger in it, and ran cargoes right up to the little towns inland. The coast was not so well watched, and people were bribed easier, I suppose; but, at all events, that sort of thing has almost died out now. Never had a brush with the coastguard or the cutter in my time, for we were all on the cut-and-run system: but I had a narrow escape for my life once, when a boat's crew came down upon us, and I'll tell you how it was. We were a strong party of us down on the shore off our point here at Merthorpe, busy as could be; night calm, and still, and dark, and one of those fast-sailing French boats--_chasse-marees_, they call them-- landing a cargo. Carts, and packhorses, and boats were all at it; and the kegs of brandy, and barrels of tobacco, and parcels of lace were coming ashore in fine style; I and another in a little boat kept making trips backwards and forwards between the shore and the _chasse-maree_, landing brandy-tubs--nice little brandy-kegs, you know, with a VC--_Vieux Cognac_--branded on each. I don't know how many journeys I had made, when all at once there was an alarm given, and as it were right out of the darkness, I could see a man-of-war's boat coming right down upon us, while, before I quite got over the first fright, there was another in sight.