The revenue officer made full notes, then he looked at Ratface as he stood blinking those restless eyes of his, scraping a lean cheek with his maimed hand. The officer rang the bell, and the door was opened by a servant, who showed Ratface out. “There is something in our appearance being an index to what we are,” thought the officer, as his eyes followed Ratface. “Certainly, the other day, I went to the wrong house.” Then he turned to the notes that he had taken, and his glance lingered on the entry of Thurot’s name. CHAPTER XXIV _Where now are these? Beneath the cliff they stand To show the freighted pinnace where to land; To load the ready steed with guilty haste; To fly in terror o’er the pathless waste; Or, when detected in their straggling course, To foil their foes by cunning, or by force, Or yielding part which equal knaves demand To gain a lawless passport through the land._ CRABBE. It is a soft moonless night in October. The darkness seems filled with that calmest and most sufficing of all sounds, the sea, breaking on a sandy shingle, with the long-drawn hush of the retreating wave. Yet if you listen you may hear another sound. A footfall on the sand occasionally, and the sound of men’s voices, lowered. For Crumblejohn and Ratface have sent round the message that tub-carriers, a full force of them, will be wanted on this night of the 18th, at Grey Rock, off Knapper’s Head. And the tub-carriers are already assembled, numbering about twenty-five villagers, and half as many boys. A light flares up against the night-sky at some point along the coast, far away. It stars the darkness, a crumb of light. Then it grows slenderly, and sinks once more to waver upward, and then the night engulphs it all but a creeping thread of light that holds it own. “You can light that pipe o’ yourn, master.” “Whoi doänt yon light bleäze then? Be ’ee sure they gave the right beacon word? Who done it? Whose work wer to see to yon?” “It was Ratface that see’d to that. That’s why he beänt here to-night. He’ll see the light’s all right.” Even as the words are spoken the spark broadens, and shoots up into a tongue of flame. And now the caution of the tub-carriers appears to lessen; pipes are lit, with a hand to shade the glow, and there is a restless movement of swingles changing hands, or being laid down upon the sand beside their owners.