“Look here; I don’t want to know or hear anything about it,” cried Aleck. “Only I shall come along these cliffs, egging or watching the birds, as often as I like.”
“Well, I don’t know as anyone’ll mind, Master Aleck, if I speaks to ’em and says as you says as a young gentleman that you’ll never take no notice of anything as you sees or hears—”
“What! How can a gentleman promise anything of the kind about people breaking the law?”
“How? Why, by just saying as he won’t.”
“A gentleman can’t, I tell you. There, I won’t promise anything.”
The man gave his rough head a vicious scratch, before saying, sharply:
“Then how’s a man to trust yer?”
“I don’t know,” said Aleck, carelessly, “but I’ll tell you this. If I’d wanted to I could have found out whether you’ve got a place to hide your stuff, as you call it, long enough ago.”
“I don’t know so much about that,” said the man, with a grin.
“Well, then, I could have told the Revenue cutter’s men where they had better look.”