A very different man this from the submissive, almost cringing, creature of a few minutes back! Now, there stood a man with set mouth and eyes that blazed evilly; the pistol that covered the gauger was steady as a rock, and a dirk in the Highlander's left hand gleamed ominously as it reflected the glow from the fire in the middle of the room.
The exciseman had jumped to his feet at Donald's first outburst. But he had underrated his man, and now it was too late. To attempt to draw a pistol now would be fatal—that was a movement with which he should have opened the affair. The exciseman was disposed to try bluster; but bluster does not always win a trick in the game, more especially when the ace of trumps, in the shape of a pistol, is held by the adversary. In this instance, after a long glance at the Highlander, the gauger's eyes wavered and fell; he swallowed hard in his throat once or twice, and lost colour; and finally he sat down in the seat from which a minute ago he had sprung full of fight. Then slowly, and almost as it seemed, against his own volition, his hand went out and closed on the whisky bottle. He helped himself largely, drank copiously, without diluting too much with water, but still said never a word. Now his colour came back a little, and he nibbled at the oatcake and cheese. Then more whisky. Gradually the man became talkative—even laughed now and then a trifle unsteadily. And all the time Donald kept on him a watchful eye, and had him covered, giving him no opportunity to turn the tables. For here the Highlander saw his chance. He had no wish to murder the gauger, but, at any price, he was not going to be taken. If, however, he kept the man a little longer in his present frame of mind, it was very evident that presently the exciseman would be too tipsy to do anything but go to sleep. And so it proved. From being merely merry—in a fashion somewhat tempered by the ugly, threatening muzzle of a pistol, he became almost friendly; from friendly he became aggrieved, moaning over the insult that a breekless Highlander had put on him; then the sentimental mood seized him, and he wept maudlin tears over the ingratitude and neglect shown to him by his superior officers; finally, in the attempt to sing a most dolorous song, he rolled off his seat and lay on his back, snorting.
As soon as he had satisfied himself that the enemy was genuinely helpless and not shamming, Donald promptly set about saving his own property. The exciseman's horse still stood where his master had left him, hitched to a rowan tree a few yards from the door. Him Donald impressed into his service, and long before morning everything in the hut had been removed to a safe hiding-place, and scarcely a trace was left to show that the law had ever been broken here, or that illicit whisky had been distilled.
Before daylight came, however, the exciseman had awakened in torment—a racking headache, deadly thirst, a mouth suggestive of a bird-cage, all, in fact, that a man might expect who had partaken too freely of raw and fiery whisky. He felt, indeed, extremely and overpoweringly unwell, as, with an infinity of trouble, he groped his devious way to the open air, and to the burn that went singing by. Here, after drinking copiously, he lay till grey dawn, groaning, the thundering of the linn incessantly jarring his splitting head. Then, when there was light enough, the unhappy man rose on unsteady feet, and started looking for his horse. A fruitless search; no sign of a horse could be seen, beyond the trampled space where he had stood the previous night, and a few hoof-prints in the soft, peaty soil elsewhere. There was no help for it; he must tramp; and with throbbing temples he pursued a tottering and uncertain course homewards. Next day he returned, full of schemes of revenge, and with help sufficient to overcome any resistance that Donald and his friends could possibly make, even if they thought it wise to attempt any resistance whatever, which was unlikely.
It was a crestfallen gauger that reached Donald's bothy on this second visit. He found his horse, it is true, pinched and miserable, and with staring coat, and without saddle or bridle. But of Donald or of the Still, or the products of that Still, not a sign—only a few taunting, ill-spelled words traced in chalk, with evident care and much painful toil, on the knocked-out head of an old cask.
In another part of this volume mention has already been made of Frank Stokoe, who, after being "out" in the '15 with Lord Derwentwater, died in great poverty. His family never again rose to anything like affluence, nor even to a status much above that of the ordinary labouring classes, but his descendants were always big, powerful men, perhaps slow of brain, but ready with their hands, and there was at least one of them who was afterwards well known in Northumberland. This was Jack Stokoe, a noted and very daring smuggler.
Jack lived in a curious kind of a den of a house far up one of the wild glens that are to be found in that moorland country which lies between the North and the South Tyne. It could scarcely be claimed that he was a farmer—indeed, in those days there was nothing to farm away up among those desolate hills—and therefore Stokoe made no attempt to pose as anything in the bucolic line; it was a pretty open secret that his real occupation was neither more nor less than smuggling. But he had never yet been caught while engaged in running a contraband cargo, and, whatever reason there may have been for suspicion, no revenue officer had ever had courage to make a raid on his house. There came, however, to that district a new officer, one plagued with an abnormally strong sense of duty, a "new broom," in fact, an altogether too energetic enthusiast who could by no means let well alone, but must ever be poking into other people's affairs in a way that began at length to create extreme annoyance in the minds of those honest gentlemen, the smugglers.
Now it chanced that this officious person had lately received sure information of the safe landing of an unusually valuable cargo, large part of which was reported to be stowed somewhere on Stokoe's premises, and he resolved to pay Jack a surprise visit. Accordingly, the Preventive man went to the nearest magistrate, demanding a warrant to search. The magistrate hummed and hawed. "Did the officer think it necessary to disturb Stokoe, who was really a very honest, douce lad? Well, well, if he must, he must, and there was an end of it! He should have the warrant. But Jack Stokoe was a man, he'd heard say, who had no liking to have his private affairs too closely inquired into, and if ill came of it—well, the officer must not forget that he had been cautioned. A nod was as good as a wink."
Notwithstanding these well-meant hints, the gauger made his way across the hills to Stokoe's house. He was alone, but then he was a powerful man, well armed and brave enough, and never in all his experience had a bold front, backed by the majesty of the law, failed to effect its end. If he found anything contraband there was no doubt in his mind as to the result. Stokoe should accompany him back as a prisoner.
There was no one at Stokoe's when the officer arrived, except Jack himself and a little girl, and when the gauger showed his warrant and began his search, Stokoe made no remark whatever, merely sat where he was, smoking. The gauger's search was very thorough; everything was topsy-turvy before many minutes had passed, but nothing could he find. There remained the loft, to which access was given by a ladder somewhat frail and dilapidated. Up went the gauger, and began tossing down into the room below the hay with which the place was filled. Quite a good place in which to hide contraband articles, thought he. And still Stokoe said never a word. Then, when all the hay was on the floor below and the loft bare, and still nothing compromising had been found, down came the gauger, preparing to depart.