“I reckon we’d better shift the money,” he said. As they rounded the corner of Ursula’s cow-house Isaac’s glance lighted on a man who was standing in the garden before his cottage. The fellow was busy throwing pebbles at the upper casements, imagining that the owner was still asleep within. As Dan and Isaac crossed the open stretch of grass-land that ran like a broad highway through the hamlet, the man standing in the garden caught sight of them as he turned to gather a fresh handful of pebbles from the path. He looked at them suspiciously for the moment, then waved his cap and came striding towards them over the grass. He was a rough, strongly built fellow, with the keen yet foxy air of a born poacher, his bushy brown beard and whiskers hiding fully half of his red and sun-tanned face. “Hallo, Jim! What brings you this way, eh?” The man grinned, and glanced first at Isaac and then at Dan. “It be probable, Master Grimshaw, that we shall be running the ‘osses’ through to-morrow.” “So—so!” “Mus Garston be a-wanting to see ye both down at Thorney Chapel. There be a fat load comin’ through, and Mus Garston he’ll share like a gentleman.” Isaac’s gray eyes gave that peculiar twinkle that told those who knew him that he was in the sweetest of tempers. He was never backward where money might be made, and he had no objection to cheating the Customs occasionally, provided that the adventure was worth the risk. Mus Garston was one of the finest land smugglers on the southern coast—a keen, black-eyed fellow, who loved the game better than he loved his soul. Bess, too, was safe, bound to the chair in Dan’s cottage. They could join Garston’s men and leave the girl to be dealt with at their leisure. “We’ll come, Jim,” he said. “Come in and have a bite of food and a pull at the ale-pot.” The poacher capped Isaac, for Grimshaw was a man of some circumstance among the night-moths of Pevensel. They went, the three of them, into Isaac’s cottage, and were soon gossiping over their bacon, brown bread, and ale. When they had ended the meal, Isaac whispered a few words into his son’s ear, and Dan, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, marched off to his cottage to look at Bess. He found her much as they had left her, sitting stiffly in the chair, and gazing out of the window. Her face brightened a little when Dan entered, and she tried to smile at him as though for welcome. The man appeared in no mood to pity her. He felt the cords about her wrists and ankles, stared at her a moment in silence, stroking his beard with the palm of his hand. “Dan,” she said, with a wistful drooping of the mouth. Her husband’s dark eyes were hard and without light. “What are you going to do with me?” “Do with ye?” “Yes.” Dan frowned as he turned towards the door. “Keep ye from playing more tricks,” he said. “You will bide there safe, I reckon, till we come back.”