"No, no, no!" answered the smuggler. "It was not Harding. It was some Frenchified name; and then there came some person or persons unknown. But now your honour will stand by me, I am sure--for if the justices find out that I helped them off the coast, they will make me out as having a hand in it; and I am sure that if I had known what they had been doing, I would sooner have scuttled the cutter and sent them all to the bottom, if I had gone down with them myself."
"I really believe you would," replied Beauchamp; "and I do not think that--with the evidence which I can give, and which I will give in your favour, should anything be brought against you--there is the slightest cause for your entertaining any apprehension."
"Thank you, sir! Thank you for that!" replied the smuggler. "That will make me easy, and now I'll go and tell the old woman."
"But stay, stay, my good friend!" cried Beauchamp. Is the post-chaise"----
"Lord-a'-mercy, now!" cried the man, before his guest could finish the sentence, at the same time pulling off his hat, and throwing it down upon the ground with a despairing sort of fling. "Lord-a'-mercy, now, if I did not forget all about it! This murder has turned my brain, I do think--for I never went into a house or shed in the whole place, but set off home as hard as I could go, to ask if your honour would stand by me."
"Humph!" said Beauchamp. "This is pleasant."
CHAPTER III.
"Well," thought Beauchamp, "I certainly did calculate upon being at Dorchester to-night, as firmly as if I had never read the Rambler. Oh, Seged, Seged, emperor of Ethiopia! But never mind! to-morrow, at all events, nothing shall stop me; and by that time this leg of mine will be nearly well; so that some advantage at least will be gained by the disappointment."
The following morning the son, instead of the father, was accordingly despatched to the post-town of ----, to order down a chaise immediately to the nearest point of the high-road; and he was, moreover, directed to take advantage of the conveyance, to return so far upon his way, in order to give Beauchamp notice of its arrival. This precaution was not unnecessary, for the boy was a lout, who might very probably have suffered the chaise to go on without him; but having taken these measures, Beauchamp very confidently expected to hear that his vehicle was in waiting, at or about the hour of two.
His lameness had by this time so far worn off, that he could move from place to place with tolerable ease; and he spent the morning principally on the sea-shore, partly in thoughts which were all the busier from the forced inactivity of his body, partly in removing any remaining traces of apprehension from the mind of the old smuggler, who continued working leisurely and lazily at his boat, the damage done to which had evidently been considerable. A little before two o'clock, Beauchamp settled his accounts with his hostess; and all charges being left to his own liberality, and his purse being luckily and miraculously still in his pocket, he presented the worthy dame with a sum so much above either her expectations, or the value of her mackerel and pickled pork, as, in the first place, to make her turn red with surprise and satisfaction, and then run out to tell her husband what the stranger had given them. Two o'clock, however, passed, and old Billy Small began to regret that he had sent young Billy Small, instead of going himself. Three o'clock passed, and Beauchamp joined most sincerely in the regret, especially when he heard the old man exclaim, in the tone of a discovery, "I'd bet a puncheon, now, that Bill has gone and got drunk at the 'lection. I forgot this was the first day of the 'lection for the borough, or I would ha' gone myself to a certainty. He's drunk, no doubt!"