166 TUB SMUGGLER. 



the custom's clues ; that they don't see the good of them, and 

 are resolved to put them down." 



" Ignorant people, and indeed, all people, do not like taxa- 

 tion of any kind," replied Osborn; "and every class objects 

 to that tax which presses on itself, without the slightest regard 

 either for the necessity of distributing the burdens of the 

 country equally, or any of the apparently minute but really 

 important considerations upon which the apportionment has 

 been formed. However, Mr. Mowle, we have only to do our 

 duty according to our position; you to gain all the informa- 

 tion that you can, I to aid you to the best of my ability, in 

 carrying the law into effect." 



" From the smugglers themselves, little is the information I 

 can get, sir," answered Mowle, returning to the subject from 

 which their conversation had deviated; "and often I am 

 obliged to have recourse to means I am ashamed of. The 

 principal intelligence I receive is from a boy who offered him- 

 self one day the little devil's imp and certainly, by his 

 cunning, and by not much caring myself what risks I run, I 

 have got some very valuable tidings. But the little vagabond 

 would betray me, or any one else, to-morrow. He is the 

 grandson of an old hag who lives at a little hut just by Salt- 

 wood, who puts him up to it all ; and if ever there was an old 

 demon in the world she is one. She is always brewing mis- 

 chief, and chuckling over it all the time, as if it were her 

 sport to see men tear each other to pieces, and to make inno- 

 cent girls as bad as she was herself, and as her own daughter 

 was too : the mother of this boy. The girl was killed by a 

 chance shot one day, in a riot between the smugglers and the 

 custom's people; and the old woman always says it was a 

 smuggler's shot. Ohl I could tell you such stories of that 

 old witch." 



The stories of Mr. Mowle, however, were cut short by the 

 entrance of a servant carrying a letter, which the young officer 

 took and opened with a look of eager anxiety. The contents 

 were brief; but they seemed important, for various were the 

 changes which came over his fine countenance while he read 

 them. The predominant expression, however, was joy, though 

 there was a look of thoughtful consideration, perhaps, in a 

 degree, of embarrassment, too, on his face; and as he laid the 

 letter down on the table, and beat the paper with his fingers, 



