Of course a story of contraband trade is the more striking if the narrator can hint that the judge of probate or the most stern of village deacons might tell a good deal if he were disposed, and there are always persons ready to give this sort of interest to their "yarns." In Ellmington lived Jake Farnum, an ex-deputy marshal and an incorrigible liar, about whom gathered the boys, Jim among them, to hear exciting stories of chase and detection, exactly as boys in a seaport town gather about an old sailor to hear tales of pirates and buccaneers. And Jake loved to hint darkly that the best people shared in the illicit traffic. With it all, Jim's sense of right and wrong was in a fair way to become hopelessly "mixed." Exactly as boys at the seashore are prone to believe that a pirate is, on the whole, an admirable character, so these border boys, and especially Jim, had come to feel--only with more excuse, because of the generally indulgent view of the community--that smuggling is an occupation in which any one may engage with credit, and which is much more interesting than most. Now it is not likely that Jim's father, a stern, secretive, obviously prosperous man, with an intermittent business which took him back and forth across the border, could in all this gossip escape a touch of suspicion. No one, of course, denied that he really did deal in lumber and cattle; the fact was obvious. But there were hints and whispers, shrewd shakings of the head, and more than one "guessed" that all Edwards's profits "didn't come from cattle, no, nor lumber, neither." Latterly these whispers had become more definite. Pete Lamoury, a French-Canadian, whom Mr. Edwards had hired as a drover, and abruptly discharged, was spreading stories about his former employer which made Blackbeard, the pirate, seem like a babe by comparison. Pete was not a very credible witness; but still, building upon a suspicion that already existed, he succeeded in adding something to its substantiality. These stories had come to Jim's ears, and Jim was delighted. The consideration that, were the stories true, his father was a criminal did not occur to him at all. Like the foolish, romantic boy he was, he was simply pleased to think of his father as a man of iron determination, cool wit, unshakable courage, whom no deputy sheriff could over-match, and who was leading a life full of excitement and danger--the smuggler king! The only thing that Jim regretted was that his father did not let him share in these exploits. He knew he could be useful! But his father's manner was habitually so forbidding that Jim did not dare hint a knowledge of these probable undertakings, much less any desire to share them.