Toms was therefore obliged to go into hiding again, and, this time, from his old associates. It was some considerable time before they captured him, and they did it, even then, only by stratagem. His wife, and others, knowing the intense feeling aroused, not unnaturally supposed his life to be in danger; but the smugglers assured her that they only wanted to secure him and hold him prisoner until after the trial of Bowden, and would not otherwise harm him. They added, mysteriously, that things might go worse with Toms if he continued to hide away; for they would be certain sooner or later to find him. The greatly alarmed woman at last arranged that they should capture him when accompanying her across the moors in the direction of Polruan, and they accordingly seized the informer when in her company, on Lantock Downs. They hid him for awhile close by, and then smuggled him, a close prisoner, over to that then noted smugglers’ Alsatia, Guernsey, with the idea of eventually shipping him to America. But while at Guernsey he escaped and made his way to London. The evidence he gave was to the effect that, during the firing, he went down into the cabin of the _Lottery_, and there saw Potter with a gun. Potter said “Damn them! I have just done for one of them.” Potter was convicted and hanged. Toms, of course, never dared to again return to Polperro, and was given a small post as under-turnkey at Newgate, where he lived the remainder of his life. Talland, midway between Polperro and Looe, was a favourite spot with these daring Polperro fellows. It offered better opportunities than those given by Polperro itself for unobserved landings; for it was—and it still is—a weird, lonely place, overhanging the sea, with a solitary ancient church well within sound of the waves that beat heavily upon the little sands. It was an easy matter to store kegs in the churchyard itself, and to take them inland, or into Polperro by the country roads, when opportunity offered, hidden in carts taking seaweed for manure to the fields.