“A little? Ask some of your smuggling friends that you go to meet out beyond the East Town.”
The woman’s jaw dropped, and Leslie saw that a peculiar blank look of wonder came over her countenance.
“Go to meet—East Town?”
“Yes; you’re always stealing out there now before daybreak. I’ve watched you.”
“Now think of that, Master Leslie,” said the woman with a forced laugh. “I go with my basket to get a few of the big mussels yonder for bait, and he talks to me like that. There, see,” she continued, swinging round her basket and taking out a handful of the shellfish, “that’s the sort, sir. Let me leave you a few, Master Luke Vine.”
“I don’t believe you, Poll. It would not be the first time you were in a smuggling game. Remember that month in prison?”
“Don’t be hard on a poor woman,” said Poll. “It was only for hiding a few kegs of brandy for a poor man.”
“Yes, and you’re doing it again. I shall just say a word to the coastguard, and tell them to have an eye on some of the caves yonder.”
“No, no: don’t, Master Luke, sir,” cried the woman, rising excitedly, and making the shells in her basket rattle. “You wouldn’t be so hard as to get me in trouble.”
“There, Leslie,” he said with a merry laugh; “am I right? Nice, honest creature this! Cheating the revenue. If it was not for such women as this, the fishermen wouldn’t smuggle.”