THE SMUGGLER. 183 



fuel to the inhabitants, and keeping out the wind from a large 

 crack in the wall, which penetrated through and through, into 

 the room where young Eadford had been conversing with the 

 smugglers. 



"Did you hear them, my kiddy?" asked the old woman, 

 as soon as the boy approached her. 



" Every word, Mother Ray," answered Little Starlight. 

 "But, get in, get in, or they will be thinking something; and 

 I'll tell you all to-morrow." 



The old woman saw the propriety of his suggestion; and, 

 both entering the hovel, the door was shut. With it, I may 

 close a scene upon which I have been obliged to pause longer 

 than I could have wished. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE man who follows a wolf goes straight on after him till he 

 rides him down ; but, in chasing a fox, it is always expedient 

 and fair to take across the easiest country for your horse or 

 for yourself, to angle a field, to make for a slope when the 

 neighbouring bank is too high, to avoid a clay fallow, or to 

 skirt a shaking moss. Y T ery frequently, however, one beholds 

 an inexperienced sportsman (who does not well know the 

 country he is riding, and sees the field broken up into several 

 parties, each taking its own course after the hounds) pause for 

 several minutes, not knowing which to follow. Such is often 

 the case with the romance writer also, when the broken nature 

 of the country over which his course lies, separates his charac- 

 ters, and he cannot proceed with all of them at once. 



Now, at the present moment, I would fain follow the smug- 

 glers to the end of their adventure; but, in so doing, dear 

 reader, I should (to borrow a shred of the figure I have just 

 used) get before my hounds; or, in other words, I should too 

 greatly violate that strict chronological order which is necessary 

 in an important history like the present. I must, therefore, re- 

 turn, by the reader's good leave, to the house of Mr. Zachary 

 Croyland, almost immediately after Sir Edward Digby had 

 ridden away, on the day following young Radford's recently 

 related interview with the smugglers, at which day, with a 



