"Well--I suspect that place below."
"Suspect that place below!" repeated the justice, advancing to the edge and looking down. "What is there on it to suspect?"
"Nothing--that's the truth. But if contraband things are landed, that's the most likely spot about. There is no other at all that I see where it could be done."
"And so you look at it on the negative principle," cried the justice, curling his lip. "Don't be afraid, Kyne. If the Half-moon had but a bale of smuggled goods on it, there it must be until you seized it. Is there a corner to hide it in, or facility for carrying it away?"
"That's what I say to myself," rejoined Mr. Kyne. "It's the only thing that makes me easy."
"Don't, for humanity's sake, leave your poor men here on a winter's night; it would be simply superfluous in the teeth of this impossibility! The cold on this bleak place might do for some of them before morning, or a false step in the dark send them over the cliff. Not to speak of the ghost," added the justice, with a grim smile.
The supervisor gave an impromptu grunt, as if the latter sentence had jarred on his nerves.
"That ghost tale is the worst part of it!" cried he. "Cold they are used to, danger they don't mind; but there's not one of them but shudders at the thought of seeing the ghost. I changed the men when I found how it was; sent the old ones away, and brought fresh ones here; well, will you believe me, justice, that in two days after they came they were as bad as the old ones? That fellow, Tomlett, with two or three more that congregate at the Mermaid, have told them the whole tale. I can hardly get 'em on here since, after nightfall--though it's only to walk along the plateau and back again."
Mr. Thornycroft looked straight out before him. The supervisor noticed the grave change that had come to his face; and remembered that this, or some other superstitious fear, was said to have killed the late Mrs. Thornycroft. What with this story, what with the other deaths spoken of, taking their rise remotely or unremotely in the ghost, what with the uncomfortable feeling altogether that these things left on the mind in dark and lonely moments, Mr. Supervisor Kyne might have confessed, had he been honest enough, to not caring to stay himself on the plateau at night. But for this fact, the place would have been better guarded, since his men, in spite of the ghost, must have remained on duty.
"Do you happen to know a little inlet of a spot lying near to Jutpoint?" asked Mr. Thornycroft. "They say that used to be famous for smuggling in the old days. If any is carried on still--a thing to be doubted--there's where you must look for it."