“Good-hevenin’, Eben Trezise; how are you?” said Mrs Maggot.
“Braave, thank ’ee,” said Trezise; “we’ve come for a drop o’ brandy, missus, havin’ heard that you’ve got some here, an’ sure us can smell it—eh?”
“Why, iss, we’ve got wan small drop,” said Mrs Maggot, gently arranging the clothes on the cradle, “that the doctor have order for the cheeld. You’re welcome to a taste of it, but plaise don’t make so much noise, for the poor cheeld’s slaipin’.”
“He’ll be smothered, I do think, if you don’t turn his head up a bit, missus,” said the man; “hows’ever you’ve no objection to let Jim and me have a look round the place, I dessay?”
Mrs Maggot said they were welcome to do as they pleased, if they would only do it quietly for the sake of the “cheeld;” so without more ado they commenced a thorough investigation of the premises, outside and in. Then they went to the smithy, where Mrs Maggot knew her husband had concealed two large kegs of smuggled liquor on the hearth under a heap of ashes and iron débris, but these had been so cleverly, yet carelessly, hidden that the men sat down on the heap under which they lay, to rest and wipe their heated brows after their fruitless search.
“Hast ’ee found the brandy?” inquired Mrs Maggot, with a look of innocence, when the two men returned.
“Not yet,” replied Eben Trezise; “but we’ve not done. There’s a certain shaft near by that has got a bad name for drinkin’, missus; p’raps you may have heard on it? Its breath do smell dreadful bad sometimes.”
Both men laughed at this, and winked to each other, while Mrs Maggot smiled, and, with a look of surprise, vowed that she had not heard of the disreputable shaft referred to.
Despite her unconcerned look, however, Mrs Maggot felt anxious, for she was aware that her husband had recently obtained an unusually large quantity of French brandy and tobacco from the Scilly Islands, between which and the coasts of Cornwall smuggling was carried on in a most daring and extensive manner at the time of our story, and she knew that the whole of the smuggled goods lay concealed in one of those numerous disused shafts of old mines which lie scattered thickly over that part of the country. Maggot’s absence rendered her position still more perplexing, but she was a woman of ready wit and self-reliance, and she comforted herself with the knowledge that the brandy lay buried far down in the shaft, and that it would take the boatsmen some time to dig to it—that possibly they might give up in despair before reaching it.
While the men went off to search for the shaft, and while Mrs Maggot was calmly nursing her spirited little baby, Maggot himself, in company with his bosom friend John Cock, was sauntering slowly homeward along the cliffs near Kenidjack Castle, the ruins of which occupy a bold promontory a little to the north of Cape Cornwall. They had just come in sight of the tin-mine and works which cover Nancharrow valley from the shore to a considerable distance inland, where stand the tall chimneys and engine-houses, the whims and varied machinery of the extensive and prolific old tin-mine named Wheal Owles.