The Brighton of my Boyhood 



just lie and quake in my bed hour after hour. 

 And then I could hear a kind of trampling, 

 only very far off, that came up the leg of 

 my bed into my ear ; for in those days the 

 smugglers rode on horseback and all armed, 

 as many as forty together. And then the 

 sound came nearer and nearer till I could 

 hardly breathe, and when at last they came 

 clattering up the street right under my 

 very window, I fairly went under the 

 bed-clothes. Sometimes they stayed a few 

 minutes to drop a few kegs at the 'White 

 Horse,' but they were more like to rush 

 through and out o' the village away and 

 away till I couldn't hear them any more. 

 Though, to be sure, I often thought I 

 could hear them long after I couldn't at 

 all." The morning after, one neighbour 

 would find a little parcel of tea on his 

 threshold, and another a chunk of tobacco, 

 or flask of brandy, which was silently 

 accepted as the fee for good faith and 

 closed lips. 



More than once my Mother had heard 

 another trampling, another rush and clatter 

 through the sleeping village, hard on the 

 heels of the first ; and then she had cried 

 with terror, for she knew it was a body of 

 excisemen, and that to-morrow all the folk 

 would be talking of a horrid fight some- 

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