"Good morning, Joe. You look very spry," replied Dick genially. "Well, and I feel spry, to be sure. Haven’t ’ee heard?" "Heard what?" "Why, how we brought up the smugglers wi’ a round turn last night." "Did you? Tell me about it, Joe. I wish I had seen it, but Father won’t let me out of the house at night now." "Why for, maister?" "Because I got home very late the other night, and he’s afraid I shall get my head broken, I think, now that the folks are so set against us." "’Tis a very wise commandment of the Squire. Well, I’ll tell ’ee. Never was they so flambustered afore. When I seed _Isaac and Jacob_ goin’ off so merry t’other morning, I guessed she wouldn’t come back empty, the wind favourin’ and all. So what do I do but put on my considerin’ cap——" "That means a pipe and a bowl of rum, doesn’t it?" said Dick with a laugh. "I won’t say but it do. Thinks I, now where will they try to run their cargo? Tonkin went off in a ’nation hurry, and the reason o’t you know as well as I, but we won’t speak o’ that. There warn’t time for him to fix up with the shoremen, leastways with many of ’em, afore he went, so thinks I, Zacky won’t try to carry his kegs inland. What then? Why, she’d sink ’em somewheres off the coast, and let ’em lay till he gets a chance o’ liftin’ ’em. I’ve knowed a crop o’ goods lay for a month afore they could be lifted." "Doesn’t it spoil the spirits?" asked Dick. "It do, if the tubs lay too long. Then the spirits be stinkibus and fit for nothing. Howsomever, they’ll sink ’em, thinks I, and what’s to be the place? Well, I mind that ten year or more ago they dropped a big crop just beyond St. Cuby’s Cove, and got ’em clean away in two nights, while Mr. Curgenven was playin’ cat and mouse miles down the coast. Says I to myself, that’s the very place." "But how did you know it ten years ago?" "By one or two things I noticed when I went a-rambling at foot of cliffs; trifles I could hardly tell ’ee of. That’s the very place, says I, so I has a little talk with Mr. Polwhele, and he made it known to Mr. Mildmay, and betwixt us we hitched up a pretty scheme to circumvent ’em. And I was right, and wrong too, as you’ll see. "Well, we sent over to Plymouth for a half-troop of dragoons, and put them in Penruddock’s empty farmhouse on the moor yonder. They came quiet last night, and not a soul knowed about ’em. You see, ’twas only my calcerlation as Tonkin wouldn’t try a run, and ’twas best to be on the safe tack, as you may say. Wi’ the dragoons on shore, and Mr. Mildmay at sea, we reckoned we’d spoil their game, whether ’twas sinkin’ or runnin’. When ’twas dark, we brought the sojers down to shore, and put ’em among the rocks on each side of where I thought ’twould happen. I had a sort o’ suspicion that the smugglers had a hiding-place somewhere along shore thereabouts, though I’d never been able to find it." "What made you suspect that?"