Tregenna, with a word to his companion, returned quickly to the woman’s side.
“Maybe, sir,” said she, in the same low, level voice as before, “you would not mind if I use my sex’s privilege, and beg you’ll be so good as come with me as far as the ford. The roads be monstrous bad, and I’ve but this little lad with me, to help me at a pinch to get the cart along.”
Tregenna assented at once; though by no means so confiding or so self-confident as the brigadier, and well aware that there was something rather uncanny, rather mysterious, about this woman who could fell a man like an ox while addressing him with lamb-like gentleness; he was too young, too full-blooded, not to relish the adventure, and was quite ready to face the danger into which she might lead him.
His first idea had been that the cartful of hay was merely a receptacle for contraband goods, and it had been his intention to make this suggestion to the brigadier. But this request on the part of the woman that he should accompany her on her drive, necessarily put that notion out of his head.
He got up beside her, the boy mounted behind, and they started on their journey, jogging through the miry, rutty roads at a snail’s pace, with the lantern swinging on the off-side of the cart with every motion of the vehicle.
They went so slowly, and the cart was so uncomfortable from the lack of springs, that the journey would have been miserably tedious but for the interest Tregenna felt in the woman herself, an interest which increased tenfold as he listened to her conversation.
She was very frank, very straightforward, and made no more pretense than she had done to the brigadier of being shocked by the doings of the smugglers.
“They’ve been brought up to it like to a trade,” said she, “and it’s passed from father to son. And when duties be high, so I’ve heard say, the free-traders start up from the ground like to mushrooms. And look, sir, be they so much to blame as the folks that buy their goods from them, and that think no harm of getting goods cheap, seeing that, after all, defrauding a Government never seems like the same thing as defrauding a man? Governments doan’t seem to be flesh and blood like to ourselves, do they, sir?”
“Well, maybe not. But still——”
“Still, it brings it home to us that ’tis a crime to smuggle when the king sends down a troop of redcoats to shoot us down, sir. Ah, yes, sir, I’m not defending ’em, though there’s many a good-hearted lad among them; ay, and some of my own kin too, I’m main sorry to tell.”