"What is it?" I asked; "anything to do with your uncle Nicholas?"
"No; it's about old Lewis," he answered. Then, after scanning the letter rapidly to the end of the page, he let it fall and raised his head. "I say," he began, "what d'you think's happened? Why, there's been a fight down at Rockymouth between the smugglers and the preventive men; quite a serious affair—two fellows badly injured."
"Was old Lewis one of them—that man whom we saw hiding in your copse, and in whose boat we went fishing?"
"Yes, rather: he seems to have been the leading spirit, and has got into worse trouble than the rest, poor beggar! As far as I can understand from my mother's account, it must have happened in this way. One of the land gang was bribed, and turned informer, so by that means the coastguard knew the exact time and place of the run. It happened in that same little cove where we used to go and bathe. The spirit was landed, and the carriers were just shouldering their tubs to make off inland, when an armed party appeared on the beach and ordered them to surrender. Then there was a pretty how-de-do! Some of the gang threw down their loads and tried to bolt. Most of these got away in the darkness. But the old hands, enraged at the thought of losing the stuff just as it had come into their possession, showed fight. One of the preventive men was knocked down with a bludgeon, the rest drew their cutlasses, and blood was shed on both sides. Lewis, raging like a madman, whipped out a pistol and fired it, though fortunately without doing any harm, and the next moment he was stretched senseless on the shingle with a blow on the head given with the flat of a steel blade. In the end, of course, the coastguard got the best of it. Some of the smugglers made off when they saw the day was going against them, but the rest were overpowered, handcuffed, and dragged off to the watchhouse. Some of them have already been sent to jail, but Lewis has been sent to Welmington to await trial at the assizes. He was recognized as the leader of the party, and as the man who fired the pistol; and to use weapons like that against the king's men is a serious offence. Mother says she thinks he will be transported. It's a crying shame," concluded the speaker, after a moment's pause. "What difference can it make to the king, or to anybody else, if those men buy and sell a few ankers of brandy? They don't injure or rob anybody, and the men who come meddling and interfering with them deserve to be roughly handled. I believe I should have shot at them myself if I'd been in Lewis's place."
Knowing the peculiar views of the coast-bred boy on the subject of defrauding the revenue, and the little likelihood of inducing him to change them, I made no attempt to argue the matter, but stood for a moment recalling to my mind the sight I had witnessed of the two stooping figures crossing the field in the gray twilight of the summer dawn.
"It's dreadful to think of his being transported to the other side of the world," I said. "It must be sad for him to think that he may never see Rockymouth again, where he has lived so long—ever since he was a boy, except the time he spent away as a sailor in the navy."
"Well, it's fortunate that he didn't shoot straighter, or he would have swung for it," remarked Miles bluntly; "though I believe some of those fellows would as soon be hung as transported. I'm glad none of our Coverthorne men appear to have been in it," he added. "It's a wonder they weren't; but perhaps if any of them did lend a hand, they were among those who escaped."
He laughed as though it were more of a prank than a crime; then picking up the sheets of paper which had fallen from his hand, he went on reading his letter.
Boys may remain always much the same in their tastes and dispositions, but, as I have said before, school life and customs have undergone great changes since my day. In consequence of having no properly organized outdoor sports, we found methods of our own for letting off steam, some of which were about as sensible as the antics of a kitten or the mad gallop of a young colt. Boys who wished to establish and keep up a reputation for hardihood and daring were prone to perform some reckless feat, and then dare others to follow their example. Ben Liddle, the acknowledged chief of the "Eagles," was much given to this sort of thing, and a dozen or more of his escapades occur to my mind as I write.
It so happened that this term Miles and I slept in a dormitory of which Liddle was "cock;" an arrangement which might have been unpleasant for us had it not been for the fact that the majority of the boys were "Foxes," and formed a mutual defensive alliance, so that Liddle stopped short of actual violence, knowing that anything of the kind would raise a hornet's nest about his ears. Nevertheless, he was always passing slighting remarks about us, and hinting that we were lacking in pluck and daring; which taunts on one or two occasions nearly brought about a free fight between the rival parties.