“Yes.”
“Well, Rodney, as I cast my eyes down into the hold I caught sight of two or three boxes, iron-bound, bearing the name and marks we sometimes see on boxes of merchandise brought over by American vessels. What are they doing in the Staghound’s hold? What are they? Will you tell me?”
The old man was terribly perplexed. His two hard, brown hands were clasped on his knees, and his head was bent.
“Donald, can’t you look me in the face, as of old?”
Upon that the poor man broke down. He could contain himself no longer.
“No, Percy! I can’t!”
“Poor old Donald! What is it? How much have you—suffered them to lead you into doing?”
“Percy! I swear to you—I swear, on my Bible oath, that I’ve never lifted a hand to help in any of their mean, dirty work! The most I’ve done has been to let others do it, and wink at it. And yet, if we’d been taken to day by the king’s ship I should have been strung up with the rest of ’em! I tell you truly, dear boy, I never thought how dreadful it would be till it was all over.
“Oh! when we were honest smugglers, only bringing over the goods honestly bought in France, or Holland, or Germany, payin’ hard gold for everything we took, and simply runnin’ it in without stoppin’ to ask the king’s permission, and sellin’ it to them as would buy—why, then, my boy, I could look an honest man in the face anywhere. Then, Percy, some o’ the first men in the land were our friends. Bless ye, boy, your father had friends everywhere. There was scarcely a lord or a lady anywhere along the coast that didn’t bid him welcome. Ah! it’s different now.”
“In short, Donald, the Staghound has become a pirate?”