“’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.