"Take him to the barn?" said Jemmy, with an affrighted stare. "Why, it's coming here he is, this very minute." "The fiddle, the fiddle!" shouted Mr. Mylrea. "I always had my doubts about the music that's in it, and now I see there's none." Jemmy took himself off, carrying his fiddle very tenderly in both hands. He was all but stone deaf, poor fellow, and had never yet known the full enjoyment of his own music. That's why he was so liberal of it with people more happily endowed. A big blustering fellow then dashed into the parlor without ceremony. "Balladhoo," he shouted, in a voice that rang through the house, "why don't you have the life of that howling demon? Here, take my clasp-knife at it and silence it forever." "It's gone to the barn," said Mylrea Balladhoo, quietly, in reply to these bloodthirsty proposals. The newcomer, Kerruish Kinvig, was a prosperous net-maker in Peel, and a thorn in the side of every public official within a radius of miles. The joy of his life was to have a delightful row with a magistrate, a coroner, a commissioner, or perhaps a parson by preference. When there was never a public meeting to be interrupted, never a "vestry" to be broken up, Kerruish Kinvig became as flat and stale as an old dog, and was forced to come up and visit his friend Mylrea Balladhoo, just by way of keeping his hand in. On the present occasion he had scarcely seated himself, when he leaped up, rushed to the window, peered into the night, and shouted that the light on the harbor pier was out once more. He declared that this was the third time within a month; prophesied endless catastrophes; didn't know for his part what in the name of common-sense the commissioners were about; could swear that smuggling was going on under their very noses. "I'll have the law on the lot of you," bellowed Kinvig at the full pitch of his voice, and meantime he helped himself to the whisky on the table, and filled his pipe from the domestic bowl. "It's the truth, I'll fling you all out," he shouted through a cloud of smoke. "Eh, you'll have your fling," replied the unperturbed Mylrea. Then, going to the door, the master of Balladhoo recalled the gardener. From the subsequent conversation it appeared that, to prevent illicit trading, the Imperial Government had been compelled to station a cutter in every harbor of the island; that the cutter stationed at Peel, having come by some injury a month ago, had been removed to England for repairs, and had not yet been brought back. Kerruish Kinvig declared that some gang of scoundrels, perceiving the incompetence of the home officials, were availing themselves of the absence of the Government ship to run vessels laden with contraband goods under the cover of the darkness. Jemmy came back, and Mr. Mylrea sent him to fetch his son Christian. Jemmy went off for that purpose.