cheap. It may here be stated that on that wooded, broken country, where
the meadows are surrounded by brushwood, and the lanes are dark and
narrow, smuggling is chiefly carried on by means of sporting dogs, who
are broken in to become smuggling dogs. Scarcely an evening passes
without some of them being seen, loaded with contraband, trotting
silently along, pushing their noses through a hole in a hedge, with
furtive and uneasy looks, and sniffing the air to scent the custom-house
officers and their dogs. These dogs also are specially trained, and are
very ferocious, and easily rip up their unfortunate congeners, who
become the game instead of hunting for it.

Now, nobody was capable of imparting this unnatural education to them so
well as "the man with his dogs," whose business consisted in breaking in
dogs for the custom-house authorities, and everybody looked upon it as
a dirty business, a business which could only be performed by a man
without any proper feeling.

"He is a men's robber," the women said, "to take honest dogs into nurse,
and to make a lot of Judas's out of them."

While the boys shouted insulting verses behind his back, the men and the
women abused him, but no one ventured to do it to his face, for he was
not very patient, and was always accompanied by one of his huge dogs,
and that served to make him respected.

Certainly, without that bodyguard, he would have had a bad time of it,
especially at the hands of the smugglers, who had a deadly hatred for
him. By himself, and in spite of his quarrelsome looks, he did not
appear very formidable, for he was short and thin, his back was round,
his legs were bandy, and his arms were as long and as thin as spiders'
legs, and he could easily have been knocked down by a back-handed blow
or a kick. But then, he had those confounded dogs which interfered with
the bravest smugglers. How could they risk even a thrust when he had
those huge brutes, with their fierce and bloodshot eyes, and their
square heads, whose jaws were like a vise, with enormous white teeth,
that were as sharp as daggers, and whose huge molars crunched up
beef-bones to a pulp with them? They were wonderfully broken in, were
always by him, obeyed him by signs, and were taught, not only to worry
the smugglers' dogs, but also to fly at the throats of the smugglers
themselves.

The consequence was that both he and his dogs were left alone, and
people were satisfied in calling them names and s