The kegs and tobacco were speedily carried down into a large cellar, the trapdoor was closed, and the boards placed securely in position and fastened by six long screws. Then they returned to the house. The teapot and cups were on the table, the kettle was boiling, and in two or three minutes they were taking tea. Scarcely had they begun their meal when there was a knock at the door. Bill got up and opened it, and two coastguards entered.

"We saw there was a light burning, and thought that you might be here, Bill. The wind is bitter cold."

"Come in and have a cup of tea or a gla.s.s of rum, whichever you like best. As you say, the wind is bitter cold, and I thought that I would land and have a cup of tea. I shall catch the barge up before she gets to Pitsea."

The coastguardsmen accepted the offer of a cup of tea, glancing furtively round the room as they drank it.

"It is good tea."

"'Tis that," Bill said, "and it has never paid duty. I got it from an Indiaman that was on the Nore three weeks ago. She transshipped part of her cargo on my barge and floated next tide. It was one of the best jobs I've had for some time, and stood me in fifty pounds and a pound or two of tea."

"Perhaps a chest of it!" one of the men said with a laugh.

"Well, well, I am not sure that it was not a chest. I like my cup of tea, and so does Betsy; and there is no getting tea like this at Stanford."

They chatted for about ten minutes, when Bill remarked, "I must be going," and they went out together, and taking his place in his boat he rowed up the creek, while the coastguards continued their walk along the bank.

"He is not a bad 'un, Tom," one of them said. "I guess he is like a good many of the others, runs a keg occasionally. However, his place has been searched half a dozen times, and nothing has been found. We have drunk many a gla.s.s of ale with him at the 'Lobster Smack' at Hole Haven, and I am sure I don't want to catch him unless there is some information to go on. The barge pa.s.sed us half an hour ago, and I knew that it was no use looking in her, but of course when the boatswain said this afternoon, 'Just follow that barge when she gets under way, and see if she goes on to Pitsea,' we had to do it; but the boat was late for us where the creek branches off round the island, and before we were across he must have got more than half an hour's start of us. And I am not sorry, Tom.

We have got to do our duty, but we don't want to be at war with every good fellow on the marshes."

"Right you are, d.i.c.k; besides, they are as slippery as eels. Who can tell what they have got under their lime or manure? Short of unloading it to the bottom there would be no finding it, if they had anything; and it is a job that I should not care for. Besides, there aint no place to empty it on; and we could not go and chuck a cargo overboard unless we were quite certain that we should find something underneath. As you say, I dare say Bill runs a keg or two now and then, but I don't suppose that he is worse than his neighbors; I have always suspected that it was he who left a keg of whisky at our door last Christmas."

In the meantime Bill had overtaken his barge, and they soon had her alongside of the little wharf at Pitsea.

"Tide is just turning. She will be aground in half an hour," he said.

"As soon as you have got these mooring ropes fastened, you had better fry that steak and have your supper. I shall be over by seven o'clock in the morning. If Harvey and Wilson come alongside before that, tell them they can have the job at the usual price, and can set to work without waiting for me. It will be pretty late before I am in bed to-night."

It was over a mile walk back to his cottage. As soon as he arrived he sat down to a hearty supper which his wife had prepared for him. He then got three pack-saddles out of the cellar, put them on the horses, and fastened four kegs on each horse. Tying one behind the other, he started, and in an hour the kegs were stowed in the cellars of four farmers near Stanford. It was midnight before he returned home. At half-past six he was down to breakfast.

"Well, uncle, how are you?" he asked the child, who was already up.

"I am not your uncle," the boy replied; "you are my uncle."

"Ah, well, it's a way of speaking down here. It does not mean that anyone is one's uncle; it is just a way of speaking."

The child nodded. He was learning many things.

"Then it is a way of speaking when I call you uncle?"

"No, no! That is different. A child like you would not call anyone uncle unless he was uncle; while a man my age calls anyone uncle."

"That is funny, isn't it?"

"Well, I suppose, when you think of it, it is; but, as I said, it is a way we have in this part of the country. Well, mother, have you got that fish nearly fried?"

"It will be ready in five minutes. This roker is a very thick one. I put it on as soon as I heard you stirring, and it is not quite ready yet.

That was a pretty near escape last night, Bill."

"Yes; but, you see, they can hardly catch us unless they send men down in the afternoon. They cannot get along from the station without pa.s.sing two or three creeks; and coming along with the tide, especially when there is a breath of wind to help her, we can do it in half the time.

You see, I always get the things out from under the cargo and into the boat as we come along, so that the barge shall not be stopped."

"But they might send down a boat from the Thames Haven station, Bill."

"Yes; but then they don't know when the barge is in, or when it is going to start. So we get the best of them in that way. Besides, they have a good bit to go along the river face, and they have to cross a dozen deep cuts to get there. No, I have no fear of them, nor of the others either, as far as that goes. I have more than once had a word dropped, meant to put me on my guard, and instead of landing the things here have dropped them in a deep hole in the creek, where I could pick them up the next night I came in. Things have changed with us for the better, la.s.s. Five years ago we had pretty hard work, with the farm and the old boat, to live at all comfortable; but since I have got into the swim things have changed with us, and I can tell you that I am making money hand over fist. I allow that there is a certain risk in it, but, after all, one likes it all the better for that. If the worst came to the worst they could but confiscate the old barge; if they gave me a heavy fine I could pay it, and if they gave me six months I could work it out, and buy a new barge and half a dozen farms like this on the day I came out."

"But the other would be more serious, Bill?"

"Well, yes; but I don't see any chance of that being found out. A gent comes to me at a spot we have settled on, say on the road halfway between Pitsea and Stanford; he hands me a box, sometimes two; I puts them on one of the horses, and rides over here with them; then I stows them away in that secret place off the store, where there aint a shadow of a chance of the sharpest-eyed coastguardsman ever finding them. They would be too delighted to light on the spirits and bacca to think of digging up the floor underneath. There they lie, till I take them down to the _Marden_. They put them into the eel tank, and next morning off she sails."

"But you have had heavy cases brought once or twice?"

"Only once--heavy enough to be troublesome. Ten cases there was then, each as heavy as a man could lift. It took me three journeys with three horses, and I had to dig a big hole in the garden to bury them till the _Marden_ had got rid of her eels, and was ready to sail again. Yes, that was a heavy job, and I got a couple of hundred pounds for my share of the business. I should not mind having such a job twice a week. A few months of that, and I could buy the biggest farm on this side of Ess.e.x--that is to say, if I could make up my mind to cut it and settle down as a farmer."

"You will never do that, Bill; but you might settle down in Rochester, and buy half a dozen barges, with a tip-top one you would sail yourself.

You might have a couple of men and a cabin forward, and a nice roomy place for yourself and me aft; and you could just steer when you liked, or sit down and smoke your pipe and watch her going through the fleet as we worked through the swatchway. That would be more your sort, Bill, and mine too. I know you have money enough laid by to get such a barge."

"That is so, Betsy. I allow that I could do that. I have been thinking of it for some time, but somehow or other one never works one's self up to the right point to give it all up of a sudden and cut the old place.

Well, I suppose one of these days I shall do it, if it is only to please you."

"It would please me, you know, Bill. I don't see no harm in running the kegs or the bacca--it's what the people about here have been doing for hundreds of years--but I don't like this other business. You don't know what is in the cases, and you don't ask, but there aint much difficulty in guessing. And I don't much like this business of the child. I did not like it at all at first; but when I found that he had no father nor mother as he knew of, and so it was certain that no one was breaking their heart about him, I did not mind it; and I have taken to him, and he has pretty nearly forgotten about his home, and is as contented as if he had been here all his life. I have nothing more to say about him, though it is as certain as eggs is eggs that it has been a bad business.

The boy has been cheated out of his money, and if his friends ever find him it is a nice row that we shall get into."

"You need not bother yourself about that," the man said; "he aint more likely to be found here than if he was across the seas in Ameriky. We have had him near nine months now, and in another three months, if you were to put him down in front of his own house, he would not know it.

Everyone about here believes as he is my nevvy, the son of a brother of yours who died down in the Midlands, and left him motherless. No one asks any questions about him now, no more than they does about Joshua.

No, no; we are all right there, missis; and the hundred pounds that we had down with him, and fifty pounds a year till he gets big enough to earn his own grub on the barge, all helps. Anyhow, if something should happen to me before I have made up my mind to quit this, you know where the pot of money is hidden. You can settle in Rochester, and get him some schooling, and then apprentice him to a barge-owner and start him with a barge of his own as soon as he is out of his time. You bear it in mind that is what I should like done."

"I will mind," she said quietly; "but I am as likely to be carried to the churchyard as you are, and you remember what I should like, and try, Bill, if you give up the water yourself, to see that he is with a man as doesn't drink. Most of the things we hears of--of barges being run down, and of men falling overboard on a dark night--are just drink, and nothing else. You are not a man as drinks yourself; you take your gla.s.s when the barge is in the creek, but I have never seen you the worse for liquor since you courted me fifteen years ago, and I tell you there is not a night when you are out on the barge as I don't thank G.o.d that it is so. I says to myself, when the wind is blowing on a dark night, 'He is anch.o.r.ed somewheres under a weather sh.o.r.e, and he is snug asleep in his cabin. There is no fear of his driving along through it and carrying on sail; there is no fear of his stumbling as he goes forward and pitching over'; and no one but myself knows what a comfort it is to me.

You bring him up in the same way, Bill. You teach him as it is always a good thing to keep from liquor, though a pint with an old mate aint neither here nor there, but that he might almost as well take poison as to drink down in the cabin."

"I will mind, missis; I like the child, and have got it in my mind to bring him up straight, so let us have no more words about it."

CHAPTER XIX.

A PARTIAL SUCCESS.

Netta had been away three weeks when one morning, just as they were sitting down to breakfast, she suddenly came into the room. With a cry of joy Hilda ran into her arms.

"You wicked, wicked girl!" she exclaimed. "I know that I ought not to speak to you. You don't deserve that I should even look at you, but I cannot help it."

Miss Purcell embraced her niece more soberly, but Hilda saw by the expression of her face that her niece's return relieved her of a burden of anxiety which at times she had had difficulty in concealing.

"In the first place, Netta, before I even give you a cup of tea, tell me if this is a final return, or whether you are going to disappear again."

"That we will decide after you have heard my story," Netta said quietly.