Mag admitted on Roger’s heels into the courtyard. Twenty or more,—sunburned seamen in loose breeches, rough jackets and red caps, a cutlass at every man’s belt; a few country folk, men and women, driving a train of laden pack-horses. Smugglers! I knew then the use of the Stone House, lonely and near the sea, and guessed how the silks and laces and brandies and what-not were secreted in its old cellars for distribution through the countryside. There rode with these folk a rakish red-faced fellow on a cob; his blue cloak, blown back in the wind, showed me his blue coat ornate with gold lace and buttons, his white breeches poked into high, mud-stained boots; he had a black hat thrust down upon his brows. All these folk, entering the yard with much sound and clatter, passed about the house, and out of view, Mother Mag following and calling for Bart. I heard from beyond the house, presently, the rolling of barrels over cobbles, the voices of the smugglers, and the baying of the hound. So p. 100Blunt was come, with his seamen and his smuggled goods; so I was soon to be handed over to him to be shipped overseas. Trembling, I waited by the window, till the grey afternoon gave place to dusk and dark, with a cold wind blowing, ever gaining strength and ever crying out around the house, as though to share in the ever-swelling tumult of the smugglers. For the quiet of the Stone House was at an end; it seemed that Captain Ezra Blunt—if the fellow with the copper-red face were Blunt—and his folk would spend a gay night ashore.

p. 99

p. 100

When the rolling of the barrels and the trampling of the horses ceased, I heard the company clatter into the kitchen,—Mother Mag’s voice was shrill as a fiddle-string over their laughter and the baying of the hound. Their leader left them soon to join Martin and Roger in the room below me; lying with my ear to the crack in the floor, I heard Martin address him as “Blunt.” It appeared that Galt was now lying drunk by the fire, for said Martin, “Our friend here’s been unloading an earlier cargo of yours, Mr. Blunt. Don’t mind him! Sit you down and taste a dram!”—and I heard the clink of glasses, and Blunt’s voice at first so low that I could not make out his words.

“Will you be making back to the Black Wasp p. 101to-night?” Martin asked. “Mr. Craike would have a word with you at the Haven.”

p. 101

I believed that Blunt answered that he had already met Mr. Craike. Martin proceeded, “Don’t let these men of yours get too drunk, then. You know what 

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