“she’s been there all the toime.”

Tregenna, concealing the mortification he felt, turned to Jenny.

But her stolid face offered little hope of success.

“Ay,” said she, in a voice like a man’s, “I’ve been sittin’ an’ standin’ about here, I ’ave, all mornin’; but I han’t seen naught.”

“You haven’t seen a wagon full of smugglers, maybe, coming through at full gallop?” cried Tregenna, losing all patience with the mendacious females. “Nor a troop of soldiers after them?”

[39]

[39]

But the sarcasm was lost upon the good lady, who was chewing a quid of tobacco, which he well knew to be contraband.

“Noa, I han’t seen aught o’ that,” she replied imperturbably, looking him steadily in the eyes the while. “Maybe I were in a dose, sir, or had the sun in my eyes as they passed.”

He did not trust himself to speak to her again, but went on up the village, between the groups of straggling red cottages with their thatched roofs overgrown with moss or lichen, noting everywhere the sidelong looks cast at him by such of the women as did not shut themselves in their cottages at his approach.

The very urchins, chubby boys of eight and nine, grinned at him maliciously, and helped to give him confirmation of the fact that he was in an enemy’s country.

When the ground began to rise again, at the end of the village, he came to a point where three roads met, and where the high hedges and another patch of wooded ground made it impossible to see far in any direction. As all three roads were in a most villainous condition, with deep ruts and pools and furrows of caked mud, and as all three bore marks of horses’[40] hoofs the lieutenant knew that it was useless to go further. So he returned through the village in a highly irritated state of mind.

[40]

The excitement had subsided a little by this time, and most of the gossips had resumed their household occupations. There was a group of suspicious-looking loafers about the door of each of the two inns; but although it seemed to Tregenna that the word smuggler was writ large across the bloated features of every one, there was nothing to be done but to look as if he ignored their existence.

 Prev. P 17/148 next