My efforts, however, to soften and remove his doctrinal prejudice as to the unimportance, in a moral point of view, of putting the officers of his Majesty’s revenue to death, were equally unavailing. Indeed, to my infinite chagrin, I found that I had lowered myself exceedingly in his estimation by what he called standing up for the exciseman. “There had been divers passons,” he assured me, “in his time in the parish, and very learned clergy they were, and some very strict; and some would preach one doctrine and some another; and there was one that had very mean notions about running goods, and said ’twas a wrong thing to do; but even he, and the rest, never took part with the gauger--never! And besides,” said old Trim, with another demolishing appeal, “wasn’t the exciseman always ready to put _us_ to death when he could?” With such a theory it was not very astonishing--although it startled me at the time--that I was once suddenly assailed, in a pause of his spade, with the puzzling inquiry, “Can you tell me the reason, sir, that no grass will ever grow upon the grave of a man that is hanged unjustly?” “No, indeed, Tristram. I never heard of the fact before.” “Well, I thought every man know’d that from the Scripture: why, you can see it, sir, every Sabbath-day. That grave on the right hand of the path, as you go down to the porch-door, that heap of airth with no growth, not one blade of grass on it--that’s Will Pooly’s grave that was hanged unjustly.” “Indeed! but how came such a shocking deed to be done?” “Why, you see, sir, they got poor Will down to Bodmin, all among strangers, and there was bribery, and false swearing; and an unjust judge came down--and the jury all bad rascals, tin-and-copper-men--and so they all agreed together, and they hanged poor Will. But his friends begged the body and brought the corpse home here to his own parish; and they turfed the grave, and they sowed the grass twenty times over, but ’twas all no use, nothing would ever grow--he was hanged unjustly.” “Well, but, Tristram, you have not told me all this while what this man Pooly was accused of: what had he done?” “Done, sir! Done? Nothing whatever but killed the exciseman!” The glee, the chuckle, the cunning glance, were inimitably characteristic of the hardened old smuggler; and then down went the spade with a plunge of defiance, and as I turned away, a snatch of his favourite song came carolling after me like the ballad of a victory:-- “On, through the ground-sea, shove! Light on the larboard bow! There’s a nine-knot breeze above, And a sucking tide below! Hush! for the beacon fails: The skulking gauger’s by. Down with your studding-sails, Let jib and foresail fly! Hurrah for the light once more! Point her for Shark’s-Nose Head; Our friends can keep the shore, Or the skulking gauger’s dead.