“I’m sure, I hope,” said mine host, sufficiently animated by the theme to draw one hand out of his breeches-pocket, and extend it in an emphatic manner, “that they won’t break out, for if they do, it will be an awful business. The exciseman what lodges at my house, tells me that they are afraid of nothing, and care for nothing; and then they have such means of letting one another know when any thing is a-foot. Lord bless you, sir, if there’s a smuggling vessel makes a signal off the coast at dusk, by twelve at night there are a thousand people collected near the shore to run the goods, and they laugh at the Preventive Service.” Warenne was inclined to suspect, that the account given by his landlord of the numbers and desperation of the people engaged in these lawless pursuits might be exaggerated. There was, however, evidently enough of truth in the report to make him wish to send another troop to Fisherton. But his orders were positive; and the officer appointed to the chief command of the district was one from whom he could not expect to obtain an alteration of them. He was a man well known in the army for his wrong-headed obstinacy, and pertinacious regard to the minutiæ of military discipline. It was also said of him, that having been in India during the time of the Peninsular war, and therefore without opportunity of distinguishing himself in any European campaign, he had a mean jealousy of those who had served in Portugal and Spain, and was disposed to treat them with captiousness, when they had the misfortune to be employed under him. Warenne determined, nevertheless, to write to General Mapleton a respectful request to be permitted to increase the force at Fisherton. He had been walking round the town, and was entering the inn-yard by the London gateway, when almost at the same moment a gentleman, on a remarkably neat well-bred cob, rode in from the coast road. As they encountered each other, the new visiter, who was a fresh-coloured fair man, of about his own age, dressed in sporting costume, looked at him earnestly. The countenance was familiar to him, but he could not recollect where he had seen it. He was in the act of having recourse to the landlord, for the purpose of ascertaining its owner, when the gentleman himself, having more quickly obtained his master’s address from Warenne’s servant, came up to him, and claimed his acquaintance. “Warenne; how are you? You forget me, I dare say, for it is a long time since we last met; but I remembered you the moment I saw you, though I could not give you a name without the assistance of John there. Do you not recollect Jack Nicholas, at Dame Twyford’s, just over Barn’s Pool Bridge, at Eton?” Warenne immediately recalled to mind a heavy, good-natured boy of that name, who resisted every attempt made by his tutor to instil into his brain any classical lore, but who was an expert fisherman, and not a bad foot-ball player.