“You wenches in these parts are kinder to the beasts than to their riders, egad!” said he, with a shake of the head that set his bob-wig wagging merrily. “You don’t offer me a drink; and if I was to beg such a favor of you as a word to tell me where to find the smugglers, I’ll be sworn you’d give me a stare like the rest of ’em, and vow you’d never heard of the creatures!”
The woman listened to him with modest gravity, her face quite stolid, her eyes on the horse. Then she said, in a quiet, even tone, without either prudery or coquetry, but with an air of being much interested by what he said—
“Well, sir, I’m not going to tell you that. I know to my cost the things that go on in these parts, and that there’s many a man ruined for an honest calling by being drawn in with these folks. You see, sir, it be in the air, and they breathe it in from childhood up, so to speak.”
“That’s it; that’s it, my good woman!” cried the brigadier enthusiastically. “Egad, my lass, you’re the first person I’ve met in these parts to admit even so much. Now tell me, think you not ’twould be better for you all if this thing, this free-trade, as they falsely call it, was rooted out?”
“Ay, sir, I do think so,” said the woman earnestly. “And if I thought you’d do your work without too rough a hand, I’d lead you to their haunts myself.”
“You would? You would?” cried the brigadier, with great eagerness. “Well, then, you may rely on me. If you’ll but take me to the spot where they harbor, I’ll be as gentle as a lamb with the ruff—I should say, with the poor misguided fellows.”
“Come, sir, then, with me,” said the woman, as she at once began to lead the way back through the village at a smart pace.
The brigadier turned his horse, and commanded his men to follow, and in a few minutes every horseman was again lost to sight at the bend of the road.
Lieutenant Tregenna, who had heard this colloquy, had been inclined to think, from the woman’s manner, that in her indeed they had got hold of a decent-minded person who had no sympathy with the thieves.
But happening to glance up at the latticed window under the eaves of the nearest cottage he caught sight of two faces, a man’s and a woman’s, in convulsions of laughter. A cursory examination of such other windows as were near enough for him to see revealed similar phenomena.