The rider dismounted, and tying his horse to the gate-post, went up the gravel path to the cottage door.
Daniel followed, and set a chair by the table, at which an old woman sat making lace. Her eyes were blind, as you might see by their wide dimness, and by the extreme serenity of her face. This is a quality that accompanies blindness. All signs of anxiety, of transient expression, are smoothed away, and all fretful activity; the features are set in the beauty of a great repose.
But her hands plied with swiftness the work on a lace pillow, with a pleasant recurrency of sound the wooden bobbins flew round, and about the shining pins.
“If your mother is deaf as well as blind,” recommenced the stranger, in a tone fitted to reach the deafest ears, “there is no reason at all why we should disturb her, my good fellow; but my business is of a private nature, and it would perhaps be better if we were alone.”
He stood with his hands under his coat-tails, and waved a high and foolish nose over the chimney ornaments as he investigated the spotted spaniels, the china paladins on white and gold chargers, and the pretty shell boxes that ornamented the mantelpiece. But when he turned he found the old woman had softly risen, and passed out.
“If you will kindly state your business with me, sir,” said Daniel, “I shall be pleased to attend.”
The stranger cleared his throat, and began importantly:—
“I am commissioned by the authorities serving under his most gracious Majesty the king, to investigate this district thoroughly with a view to checking the illicit trading that is carried on. Time and again the hand of the law has been held, and its object baffled by the collusion of the villagers with the smuggling trade. It is only possible for us to secure an advantage if we are helped by those on the spot.
“It is an open secret that the landlord of the ‘Mariner’s Rest’ keeps a receiving house; but such is the organised system of signals and alarms that hitherto we have found it impossible to surprise their vigilance. Your character, Mr. Maidment, I find on inquiry is unblemished as regards this matter as yet. I repeat, as yet—I have no desire to go into the past. Your trade as a fisherman enables you to know this coast, and the people who live along it, more thoroughly than any one coming as a stranger upon the scene. Will you work with the law? May we look upon you for such service as will conform to a better governing of the country’s trading? Will you help in abolishing an evil that is growing more and more flagrant and unbridled, every year?”
Daniel understood very well what was wanted of him. He had lived for years on the outskirts of smuggling, fully aware of his neighbours’ activity in the trade. Was he to turn spy upon them? It is true he had no near friends concerned in it, but it was hardly the kind of part he would choose, to watch and tell.