The talk ran on smuggling and its decline. A Mr St Aubyn, of Clowance, lamented this decline as symptomatic—'the national fibre's deteriorating, mark my words.' A Mr Trelawny was disposed to agree with him. 'And, after all,' he said, 'the game was a venial one; a kind of sport. Hang it, a Briton must be allowed his sporting instincts!' 'By the same argument, no doubt, you would justify poaching?' put in Sir John, with a twinkle. Mr Trelawny would by no means allow this. 'It would interest me, sir, to hear you define the moral difference between smuggling and poaching,' said Doctor Unonius. 'I don't go in for definitions, sir,' Mr Trelawny answered. 'I'm a practical man and judge things by their results. Look at your Polpeor folk—smugglers all, or the sons of smugglers—a fine upstanding, independent lot as you would wish to see; whereas your poacher nine times out of ten is a sneak, and looks it.' 'Because,' retorted the doctor, but gently, 'your smuggler lives in his own cottage, serves no master, and has public opinion—by which I mean the only public opinion he knows, that of his neighbours—to back him; whereas your poacher lives by day in affected subservience to the landowner he robs by night, and because you take good care that public opinion is against him.' 'To be sure I do,' affirmed Mr Trelawny, and would have continued the argument, but here old Squire Morshead struck in and damned the Government for its new coastguard service. 'I don't deny,' he said, 'it's an improvement on anything we've seen yet under the Customs, or would be, if there was any real smuggling left to grapple with. But the "trade" has been dwindling now for these thirty years, and to invent this fire-new service to suppress what's dying of its own accord is an infernal waste of public money.' 'I doubt,' Sir John demurred, 'if smuggling be quite so near death's door as you fancy. Hey, doctor—in Polpeor now?' The doctor opined that very little smuggling survived nowadays; the profits were not worth the risk. 'Though, to be sure,' he added, 'public opinion in Polpeor is still with the trade. For an illustration, not a soul in the town will let the new coast-guardsmen a house to live in, and I hear the Government intends to send down a hulk from Plymouth Dock and moor it alongside the quay.' He paused. 'But,' he went on, with a glance over his spectacles at Sir John, 'our host, who owns two-thirds of the cottages in Polpeor, may correct me and say that Government never offered a fair rent?' Sir John threw back his head and laughed. 'My heir, when he succeeds me,' he said, 'may start new industries in Polpeor; but I'll not build new houses to worry my sitting tenants.'
It was now eleven o'clock, and by-and-by the company dispersed—which they did almost simultaneously and from the stable-yard, amid a tremendous clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of stablemen, 'gee's' and 'woa's,' buttoning of overcoats, wrapping of throats in comforters, 'good-nights,' and invitations to meet again. Sir John himself moved up and down in the throng, speeding his parting guests, criticising their horseflesh, offering an extra wrap to one, assuring himself that another had his pocket-flask charged for a long night ride.
In the press Doctor Unonius—whether because he never stinted a vail to the grooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to decide the important question of your living or dying—managed to get old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off with the earliest. The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the frosty air,—
'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two,
Three jolly fox-hunters, all sons of the Blue,
Sing fol-de-rol, lol-de-rol—'
Beyond the lodge gates came the high-road, and here half a dozen of the chorusers shouted goodnight, and rode away northward and by east in the teeth of the wind; but the greater number bowled along with the doctor south-west to the cross-roads under Barrow Down. There the Polpeor road struck off to the left, and, swinging into it, he found himself alone.
CHAPTER IV.
The night was moonless but strewn with stars. A tonic north-east wind hummed over the high moors, and seemed to prick old Dapple, prescient of his own straw and rack, to his very best trot. It was a penetrating wind, too; but Doctor Unonius, wrapped in his frieze coat, with the famous Penalune brandy playing about the cockles of his heart, defied its chill. At this rate half an hour would bring him to the gate of Landeweddy Farm, under the lee of Four Barrows; and beyond Landeweddy, where the road plunged straight to Polpeor and the coast, he would reach complete shelter. Let the wind blow from this quarter never so fiercely, in the steep lanes under the seaward edge of the moor a man could hear it screaming overhead and laugh at it, lighting his pipe.
The sound of hoofs and wheels died away down the westward road. Doctor Unonius, with face set for home, pursed his mouth and inaudibly whistled a tune,—
'In the month of November, in the year 'fifty-two.'
'Whoa there, Dapple! Steady! Why, what ails the horse?' For Dapple, as the gig turned a corner of road, on a sudden had shied violently, half reared, and come to a halt with a jerk that set the gig quivering, and had almost broken its shafts.