"Never again," murmured Anna. "I must never again speak to him about his home--unless it be of what the whole world knows. How I wish this dreadful state of things could terminate! I have heard of secrets--concealments--wearing the life away; I believe it now."
The former resident superintendent of the coastguard, Mr. Dangerfield, had left Coastdown, and been replaced by Mr. Kyne. Private opinion ran that Coastdown had not changed for the best; Mr. Supervisor Dangerfield (the official title awarded him by Coastdown) having been an easy, good-tempered, jolly kind of man, while Mr. Supervisor Kyne was turning out to be strict and fussy on the score of "duty." Justice Thornycroft, the great man of the place, had received him well, and the new officer evidently liked the good cheer he was made welcome to at the Red Court Farm.
On this same morning Mr. Thornycroft, strolling out from his home, saw the supervisor on the plateau, and crossed the rails to join him. Mr. Kyne, a spare man of middle age, with a greyish sort of face and hair cut close to his head, stood on the extreme edge of the plateau, attentively scanning the sea. He slowly turned as Mr. Thornycroft approached.
"Looking out for smugglers?" demanded the justice, jestingly. For this new superintendent had started the subject of smuggling soon after he came to Coastdown, avowing a suspicion that it was carried on; the justice had received it with a fit of laughter, and lost no opportunity since of throwing ridicule on it.
"Shall I tell him, or not?" mentally debated Mr. Kyne. "Better not, perhaps, until we can get hold of something more positive. He would never believe it; he would resent it as a libel on Coastdown."
The fact was, Mr. Kyne had received information some short while before, from what he considered a reliable source, that smuggling to a great extent was carried on at Coastdown, or on some part of the coast lying nearly contiguous to it. He was redoubling his own watchfulness and his preventive precautions: to find out such a thing would be a great feather in his cap.
"You won't ridicule me out of my conviction, sir."
"Not I," said the justice; "I don't want to."
"I shall put a man on this plateau at night."
Mr. Thornycroft opened his eyes. "What on earth for?"