94 THE SMUGGLER. 



his master. " Get me every information you can obtain re- 

 garding young Mr. Radford, where he goes, what he does, 

 and all about him." 



" Past, present, or to come, sir?" demanded the man. 



" All three," answered his master. " Everything you can 

 learn about him, in short; birth, parentage, and education.' 1 



"I shall soon have to add his last dying speech and confession, 

 I think, sir,'' said the man; " but you shall have it all before 

 night; from the loose gossip of the post-office down to the full, 

 true, and particular account of his father's own butler. But 

 bless my soul, there's a hole through the window, sir!'' 



"Nothing but a musket-ball, Somers,'' answered his master, 

 carelessly. "You've seen such a thing before, I fancy?" 



" Yes, sir, but not often in a gentleman's bed- room," re- 

 plied the man. " Who could send it in here, I wonder?" 



" Some smugglers, I suppose they were," replied Sir 

 Edward, " who took me for Sir Robert Croyland, as I was 

 leaning out of the window, and gave me a ball as they passed. 

 I never saw a worse shot in my life ; for I was put up like a 

 target, and it went a foot and a half above my head. Give 

 me those boots, Somers;" and having drawn them on, Sir 

 Edward Digby descended to the drawing-room, while his ser- 

 vant commented upon his coolness by saying: "Well, he's a 

 devilish fine young fellow that master of mine, and ought to 

 make a capital general some of these days!" 



In the drawing-room, Sir Edward Digby found nobody but 

 a pretty country girl in a mob-cap sweeping out the dust ; and 

 leaving her to perform her functions undisturbed by his pre- 

 sence, he sauntered through a door which he had seen open 

 the night before, exposing part of the interior of a library. 

 That room was quite vacant, and as the young officer con- 

 cluded that between it and the drawing-room must lie the 

 scene of his morning's operations, he entertained himself with 

 taking down different books, looking into them for a moment 

 or two, reading a page here and a page there, and then put- 

 ting them up again. He was in no mood, to say the truth, 

 either for serious *study or light reading. Gay would not 

 have amused him: Locke would have driven him mad. 



He knew not well how it was, but his heart beat when he 

 heard a step in the neighbouring room. It was nothing but 

 the housemaid, as he was soon convinced, by her letting the 



