ay to the cove.

"I may just as well be moving," he said at last despondently. "Oh, if I
could only have followed them up!"

His heart gave a bound just then, for plainly on the night air came a
dull sound, as of footsteps on grass. Then there was a whisper, and
directly after he knew that a number of people were coming quickly
toward him.

A moment or two later he heard a rattling noise, which he recognised as
that made by a horse shaking his harness, and once more Archy's heart
beat high.

There had not been time for them--if those people coming were the
smugglers--to fetch the cargo, and they must be coming in his direction.

"What shall I do?" thought the watcher; "lie down and let them pass, or
go on?"

He decided on the latter course, and finding that he was in a lane
bounded by stone walls, he went on, pausing from time to time to make
sure that he was being followed.

This proved to be the case, the people getting nearer and nearer, and it
was a curious experience to hear the whispering of voices and trampling
of feet coming out of the darkness.

"Walking on the side turf," said Archy to himself, as he kept on, to
find after a few minutes that the stone wall on his left had ceased, but
he could feel that the road went on, and heard the people coming.

A minute or two later he realised that he was going up hill; then the
slope grew steeper, and he paused again to listen.

He was quite right. They were coming on steadily, and he knew that
there must be twenty or thirty people; but he could hear no horses now.

"They've stopped at the foot of this steep place," he thought, as he
went on and on, the people still advancing fast, and all at once, as he
went on, a sudden thought ran through him like a stab. For he had
guessed at least the direction in which he was going in the black
darkness; he was once more ascending the slope toward the patch of
woodland high up the hill, and the place of deposit of the smuggled
goods must be the Hoze.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

A feeling of misery that he could not have explained came over Archy
Raystoke as he grasped the position, and he wished that he had never
undertaken the task he had in hand.

For it seemed so shocking that the noble-looking lady and gentleman he
had seen that day should be in league with a gang of smugglers, and have
lent their out-of-the-way house to be a depository for the contraband
goods.

"Oh, it's impossible," he said to himself. "T