"Oh, I don’t think so bad o’ she as that. When I seed her yesterday she said she wished I could go to Dower House to-night. Maister John be goin’ to a randy at Portharvan; he’ll kiss his young ’ooman under the mistletoe, I reckon." "And Susan wants you to go to the Dower House and kiss her, I suppose?" "Now that’s too bad, Maister. We bean’t neither of us so forward as that. Maidy said she’d like me to go up-along and gie un some o’ my merry talk, but jown me if my tongue ’ud run merry wi’ things so bad up to home." "You couldn’t go: Father would never allow it. You’ll have to be satisfied with the Vicar’s nuts and candy, Sam." They came to their den at the end of the Beal, and remained there for some little time arranging their tackle in the wan glimmer preceding the dawn. Then they emerged, and climbed up beside the big boulder to take a look at the sea, over which a thin mist hung. "Isn’t that the _Isaac and Jacob_?" said Dick, pointing to a vessel tacking to make the fairway between the cliff and the reef. "Iss, sure. Tonkin be come home wi’out a cargo, seemin’ly, unless he hev run it a’ready." They watched the lugger creeping slowly toward the harbour. The tide was on the ebb, and there was not enough depth of water upon the reef to allow the vessel to head straight for the jetty. As she crept into the fairway Dick was struck with the unusual appearance of her deck. Amidships it was almost clear except for two or three men; but, herded under the low bulwarks on the weather side, out of sight from the harbour, were a score or more of men whom he recognised by slight indications in their dress to be foreigners. Almost instinctively Dick slipped behind the boulder, pulling Sam with him. "That’s very curious," he whispered, standing so that he could see without being seen. On the lee side of the vessel, he noticed arms, legs, and here and there a red-capped head protruding from beneath tarpaulins, thrown with apparent carelessness on the deck. Two or three heads also appeared in the hatchway, suggesting that other men were on the companion below. But what struck Dick most of all was the fact that although Nathan Pendry held the tiller, there lolled against the bulwarks near him a stranger whose hat and coat were manifestly Cornish, but whose lower garments were as unmistakably of foreign cut. He was a short, stout man, and he held a pistol, which was pointed at the helmsman. Dick was so much fascinated and wonderstruck by this extraordinary spectacle that for a few moments he neither spoke nor stirred. "Be it Boney at last?" whispered Sam, his eyes wide with alarm. "No, no: Boney would bring thousands. But I can’t make it out. We’ll run home, Sam, and tell Father." Creeping round the boulder, and dipping their heads as long as there was any chance of being observed from the lugger, they set off at a breakneck run for the Towers. Dick dashed up to the Squire’s room, and knocked at the door.