"Well, well, my good friend," replied Beauchamp, whose object was not to alarm him too much on his own account, "at all events you have nothing to do with it, and I can bear witness to the conversation which took place between you and the young sailor last night, and which would at any time establish your ignorance of the whole facts."
"Thank your honor! thank your honor!" cried the old man, with evident heartfelt satisfaction. "Your honor's a gentleman--that you are; and I am sure that I would do any thing your honor tells me--that's to say, I wouldn't like to peach, d'ye see--but any thing else."
"All that can be required of you," replied Beauchamp, "is not to obstruct the course of justice; and, therefore, I shall trust to you to set out as early as possible to-morrow to get me some conveyance; and farther, should you be called upon hereafter to give evidence in this business, take my advice, and tell the whole truth boldly and straightforwardly; for depend upon it, to tell a falsehood, or to prevaricate, is the most dishonorable thing a man can do, whether his station be high or low."
"That it is, sir, surely--that it is!" replied the smuggler; "and I will tell the truth when I am asked. But that is different, your honor knows, from going and telling without any one asking me."
"Certainly it is," said Beauchamp; "and I do not ask you to do more than tell it when it is asked; but now, my good sir, can I get dinner, or breakfast as it is to me; for I begin to feel that I have not eaten any thing for several hours?"
"Now, that's what I call being d--d stupid!" cried Willy Small, much to Beauchamp's surprise, who at first concluded that the smuggler's censure was addressed to him. "If my old woman did not send me up on purpose to tell your honor that she had done you three mackerel, and that, with a rasher of pickled pork, and some fried--"
"Good Heaven!" cried Beauchamp, "I trust that she does not intend me to eat three mackerel, pickled pork, and fried any thing! But never mind--let me see them, by all means. I will eat what I can, and she must excuse me the rest."
Beauchamp's dinner was accordingly placed before him; and, with his usual perversity of disposition, it must be acknowledged that, in a smuggler's cottage, with a lame leg, and disappointed in love, he ate a better dinner of mackerel in October, salted pork, and fried eggs, than he had done since he left the Grand St. Bernard. There's a hero! Ulysses was nothing to him, though, dressed, in a dishclout, the hero of the Odyssey did sit down with twenty fellows who were making love to his own wife, and supped heartily upon "the entrails fat, enriched with blood," by which Homer undoubtedly meant black puddings.
When he had concluded--as Beauchamp could, when he liked it, cast off his reserve, mingle freely with all classes, and examine nature wherever he found it--he declared that, as the evening was somewhat chilly, he would come down and spend the rest of it by the kitchen fire; and, getting to the bottom of the stairs the best way he could, by the help of the old man and his son, he soon rendered himself familiar with the whole family, winning their love, while he made them more and more inclined to declare that he was really a gentleman.
Nor did the time pass unpleasantly to himself. He had got a notion, in direct opposition to generally received opinions, that nature was to be found only in the highest and in the lowest classes--more especially, indeed, in the highest, because the persons of which it is constituted have little inducement to conceal their feelings or thoughts, and certainly no wish to affect the manners of any other caste. Nature, however, as modified by the education of the lower classes, was more interesting to him, from being less frequently before his eyes; and though he certainly liked the nature of his own rank best, yet he was not sorry occasionally to observe the other a little nearer. Thus the time wore imperceptibly away; and the more tranquil passing of the night was only interrupted by the smuggler's son showing his father a powder-flask which, he said, one of the gentlemen had dropped upon the beach that morning. Beauchamp took it carelessly in his hand, and returned it without observation; but a single glance had shown him that it was one which, from some fault in its construction, he had given to his servant, Harding, a few days before. The sight, though it but confirmed former suspicions, threw him into a fit of musing for several minutes; but he shook it off as fast as possible, and soon resumed the easy tone in which he had been previously conversing.