“This is only the third day, sir, for _me_; but the rest, them boys above, has been here a good while.” “Have you seen nobody stirring about the hills since you came?” “Only once, sir, yesterday, I seen two men having an empty sack or two, runnin’ across the hill there above.” At this moment the military came up, for he had himself run forward in advance of them, and he repeated the substance of his conversation with our friend the vidette. Upon examining the stolidity of his countenance, in which there certainly was a woful deficiency of meaning, they agreed among themselves that his appearance justified the truth of the story which he told the gauger, and upon being still further interrogated, they were confirmed that none but a stupid lout like himself would entrust to his keeping any secret worth knowing. They now separated themselves into as many detached parties as there were fires burning on the hills about them, the gauger himself resolving to make for that which Darby Neil had in his keeping, for he could not help thinking that the vidette’s story was too natural to be false. They were just in the act of separating themselves to pursue their different routes, when the lad said, “Look, sir! look, sir! bad scran be from me but there’s a still any way. Sure I often seen a still; that’s jist like the one that Philip Hogan the tinker mended in George Steen’s barn.” “Hollo, boys,” exclaimed Pentland, “stoop! stoop! they are coming this way, and don’t see us: no, hang them, no! they have discovered us now, and are off towards Mossfield. By Jove this will be a bitter trick if they succeed; confound them, they are bent for Ballagh, which is my own property; and may I be hanged if we do not intercept them; but it is I myself who will have to pay the fine.” The pursuit instantly commenced with a speed and vigour equal to the ingenuity of this singular act of retaliation on the gauger. Pentland himself being long-winded from much practice in this way, and being further stimulated by the prospective loss which he dreaded, made as beautiful a run of it as any man of his years could do. It was all in vain, however. He merely got far enough to see the still head and worm heaved across the march ditch into his own property, and to reflect after seeing it that he was certain to have the double consolation of being made a standing joke of for life, and of paying heavily for the jest out of his own pocket. In the mean time, he was bound of course to seize the still, and report the caption; and as he himself farmed the townland in question, the fine was levied to the last shilling, upon the very natural principle that if he had been sufficiently active and vigilant, no man would have attempted to set up a still so convenient to his own residence and property.