"I thought the days of smuggling were over," observed Mr. Hunter: "except the more legitimate way of doing it through the very eyes and nose of the custom-house. Did you know anything personally of the great custom-house frauds, as they were called, when so many officers and merchants were implicated, some years ago?"
"I did. I held a subordinate post in the London office then, and was in the thick of the discoveries."
"You were not one of the implicated?" jestingly demanded Mr. Hunter.
"Why, no--or you would not see me here now. I was not sufficiently high in the service for it."
"Or else you might have been?"
"That's a home question," laughed Mr. Kyne. "I really cannot answer for what might have been. My betters were tempted to be."
He spoke without a cloud on his face; a different man now, from the one who had betrayed his family's past trouble to Justice Thornycroft. Not to this rising young engineer, attired in his fantastic coat, which the supervisor always believed must be the very height of ton and fashion in London; not to this handsome, careless, light-hearted girl, would he suffer aught of that past to escape. He could joke with them of the custom-house frauds, which had driven so many into exile, and one--at least, as he believed--to death. On the whole, it was somewhat singular that the topic should have been again started. Miss Thornycroft took up the thread with a laugh.
"There, Mr. Kyne! You acknowledge that you custom-house gentlemen are not proof against temptation, and yet you boast of looking so sharply after these wretched fishermen!"
"If the game be carried on here as I suspect, Miss Thornycroft, it is not wretched fishermen who have to do with it; except, perhaps, as subordinates."
"Let us go and explore the Half-moon beach below," again said Robert Hunter. Mr. Kyne turned to it at once: he had been waiting to do so. The engineer's experience might be valuable. He had had somewhat to do with rocks and land.