That the smuggler then had friends was here demonstrated. The facts were as plain as they could be, but their interpretation or bearing on the question of guilt or innocence was left to the jury, who had the law expounded for their guidance with all possible certainty. Tommy Johnson was acquitted in the teeth of evidence and the strength of a sympathy between himself and every man in the jury-box. Let me, however, return to the last conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Johnson. "I would have cut it after that," he said; "but it cost such a sight of money. What with the loss of the ship, and all the rum, brandy, and hollands, and the hard money I paid Lawyer Swelling, we were almost ruined. I couldn't stop then. Neck or nothing, I must go in again; but now we're on our legs again, thank God! and I'll drop the game after one more slice of luck." Having made this resolution, Mr. Johnson next day proceeded to execute it. He drew out two good round sums of money from different banks; a fine lugger, "a perfect beauty," as he declared, was soon afterwards bought, and she was in due course freighted with liquors on a neighbouring coast. I happened, not many weeks after this, to be travelling as an outside passenger by the coach from Cowes to Ventnor, in the Isle of Wight, when two revenue-carts, heavily laden, passed us on the road. "My eyes!" exclaimed my driver; and addressing a man who swayed the whip in the first cart, he inquired, "Whose is that lot?" "Tommy Johnson's, we suppose." "Poor fellow! unlucky again!" sighed the coachman. The last venture that was to crown the honest resolution had, then, failed, and worse had to be encountered. The repentant smuggler was again locked up in Winchester Gaol for a weary succession of months. The case had already been established against him by the clearest evidence. Tommy's heart dropped. His rotund form became elongated, his cheeks lost their plumpness and their colour, his garments hung loosely about his person, and his mind was ill at ease. This was the fourth time Tommy Johnson had been put on his trial for a like offence against the laws of his country. Each time his case was, in the opinion of his legal advisers, more desperate than before. The facts were not each time stronger, but the prejudice against the prisoner increased with his reappearance in the dock.