Her thoughts ran off to Mr. Superintendent Nettleby, and to the poor fishermen, whom it was that officer's mission to suspect of possessing drams of unlawful brandy and pouches of contraband tobacco. She certainly believed the sick brain had lost its balance.
"We've run a cargo to-night," he whispered; "a good one too. The rest had cleared off, and there was only me left to lock the doors. When I see the glimmer of your light, ma'am, and somebody moving, I thought it was one of the men left behind, but when I got up and found it was a woman's garments, I feared it was a spy of the preventive officers come to betray us."
"What cargo did you run?" she inquired, putting the one question from amid her mind's general chaos.
"I fancy 'twas lace. It generally is lace, father thinks. Nothing pays like that."
Curious ideas were crowding on her, as she remembered the boats putting backwards and forwards that night from the two-masted vessel, lying at anchor. Of what strange secret was she being made cognisant? Could it be that some of the mystery attaching to the Friar's Keep was about to be thus strangely and most unexpectedly cleared to her?
"Walter, let me understand. Do you mean to say that smuggling is carried on in connection with the Friar's Keep?"
"Yes, it is. It have been for years. Once a month, or so, there's a cargo run: sometimes it's oftener. An underground passage leads from the Keep to the Hutt, and the goods are stowed away in the cellar there till the Commodore can take 'em away to the receivers in his spring cart."
"And who knows of all this?" she asked, after a pause. "I mean in Greylands."
"Only father and me," he faintly said, for he was getting exhausted. "They've not dared to trust anybody else. That's quite enough to know it--us. The sailors bring in the goods, and we wheel 'em up the passage: Teague, and me, and father. I've seen Mr. Harry put his hand to the barrow afore now. George Hallet--Jane's brother--he knew of it, and helped too. We had to be trusted with it, him and me, being on father's boat."
In the midst of her compassion and pity for this young man, a feeling of resentment at his words arose in Mary's heart. There might be truth in the tale he told in regard to the smuggling--nay, the manoeuvres of the boats that night and the unsuspected door she had seen open to the narrow beach, seemed to confirm it: but that this nefarious work was countenanced by, or even known to, the Master of Greylands, she rejected utterly. If there was, in her belief, one man more honourable than any other on the face of the earth, more proudly conscious of his own rectitude, it was her Uncle James. Pride had always been his failing. Walter Dance must be either partially wandering in mind to say it; or else must have taken up a fallacious fancy: perhaps been imposed upon by his father from some private motive. The work must be Teague's, and his only.