Then, as Archy stood in the dark, literally aghast with astonishment, he
heard the faint rustling once more, and again all was silent.

"Well!" he exclaimed; "and I felt sorry for her as one might for one's
sister at home, and hung back from getting her people into trouble. Of
all the fierce little tartars! Oh, it's beyond anything! Why, she has
locked me up!"

He laughed, but it was a curious kind of laugh, full of vexation,
injured _amour propre_, as the French call our love of our own dignity,
of which Archibald Raystoke, in the full flush of his young belief in
his importance as a British officer, had a pretty good stock.

"I never did!" he exclaimed, after standing listening for a few minutes
to see if the girl would repent and return. "It all comes of dressing
up in this stupid way, like a rough fisher-lad. If I had been in
uniform, she would not have dared."

Cold water came on this idea directly, as he recalled the fact that the
darkness was intense, and Celia could not have seen him.

"And I meant to save them from trouble if I could, out of respect for
them all, and did not believe that such people could stoop to be mixed
up with rogues and smugglers. But, all right! I've got my duty to do,
and I'll do it. I'll soon show them that I am not going to be played
with. Looked such a nice, lady-like girl, and all the time she's a
female smuggler, and must have been sitting up to let them in, and lock
up after the rascals had done."

Rather hard measure, by the way, to deal out to the anxious girl, who
could not rest while Shackle's gang were busy about the place, and had
come stealthily down to open the little corner room window, and watch
from time to time until they had gone.

"Well," said Archy, as there was no further sound heard, "I'm not going
to put up with this. I'll soon rattle some one up;" and he went sharply
to the door, felt for the handle, tried it, and was about to shake it
and bang at the panels, when discretion got the better of valour.

For it suddenly occurred to him that he was not only a prisoner, but a
prisoner in the power of a very reckless set of people, who would stop
at nothing. They had a valuable cargo hidden in the cellar beneath
where he stood, and themselves to save, and naturally they would not
hesitate to deal hardly with him, when quite a young, apparently gentle
girl treated him as she had done.

"No," he thought to himself, "I don't believe they would kill