“We are the people of England!” cried young Master Ovington, the son of the Tory Squire.
“You! you horse-racing, cock-fighting ne’er-do-weel! Do you presume to talk for the people of England? They are a deep, strong, silent stream, and you are the scum, the bubbles, the poor, silly froth that floats upon the surface.”
We thought him very wicked then, but, looking back, I am not sure that we were not very wicked ourselves.
And then there were the smugglers! The Downs swarmed with them, for since there might be no lawful trade betwixt France and England, it had all to run in that channel. I have been up on St. John’s Common upon a dark night, and, lying among the bracken, I have seen as many as seventy mules and a man at the head of each go flitting past me as silently as trout in a stream. Not one of them but bore its two ankers of the right French cognac, or its bale of silk of Lyons and lace of Valenciennes. I knew Dan Scales, the head of them, and I knew Tom Hislop, the riding officer, and I remember the night they met.
“Do you fight, Dan?” asked Tom.
“Yes, Tom; thou must fight for it.”
On which Tom drew his pistol, and blew Dan’s brains out.
“It was a sad thing to do,” he said afterwards, “but I knew Dan was too good a man for me, for we tried it out before.”
It was Tom who paid a poet from Brighton to write the lines for the tombstone, which we all thought were very true and good, beginning—
“Alas! Swift flew the fatal lead
Which piercéd through the young man’s head.
He instantly fell, resigned his breath,
And closed his languid eyes in death.”