After a mile of lane, I came to a highroad, past a church and houses, all very peaceful and still. I passed these, and wandered on along the highroad, thinking that I had gone many miles from the sea, though, of course, I had only gone a little distance. When one walks a new road, one finds it much longer than it really is. I sat down by the roadside now and then to think of plans. I felt that my best plan would be to go to London, and see the Lord Mayor, who, I felt sure, would help me to get home. But I had not much notion of where London was, and I knew that if I went into a house to ask the road to London, people would suspect that I was running away, and so, perhaps, find out that I had been with the smugglers. I knew that many people there must be smugglers themselves; but then, suppose that I asked at a house where they were friends of the preventives? The smugglers had signs among themselves by which they recognised each other. They used to scratch the left ear with the left little finger, and then bite the lower lip, before shaking hands with anybody. I thought that I would go into an inn and try these signs on somebody (on the landlord if possible) and then ask his advice. An inn would be a good place, I thought, because the landlord would be sure to buy from the smugglers; besides, in inns there are generally maps of the country, showing the coaching houses, and the days of the fairs. A map of the kind would show me my road, and be a help to me in that way, even if the landlord did not recognise my signs. And yet I was half afraid of trying these signs. I did not want to get back among the smugglers. I only wanted to get to London. I had that foolish belief that the Lord Mayor would help me. I was too young to know better; and besides, I was afraid that my being with the smugglers would, perhaps, get me hanged, if I were caught by one of those magistrates, whom I so much feared. Presently I came to another little village, rather larger than the last. There was an inn in the main street (the "Blue Boar"), so I went into the inn-parlour, and looked about me. One or two men were talking earnestly, in low voices, to a sad-faced, weary-looking woman behind the bar. She looked up at me rather sharply as I entered, and the men turned round and stared at me, made a few more remarks to the woman, and went quickly out. I looked at the woman, scratched my left ear with my left little finger, and bit my lower lip. She caught her breath sharply and turned quite white; evidently she knew that sign extremely well. "What is it?" she said, "what's the news? There's been fighting. Where's Dick?" I said I didn't know where Dick was, but that there had been fighting, sure enough; and the preventives had been beaten off. "Ah," she said, "and the stuff? Did they get the stuff off?" I said I believed that it had got off safely.