.

Another stone trickled and fell. Like the woman of spirit she was, she
jumped out of bed, crept downstairs to the kitchen, picked up the broom,
and listened, with her hand on the latch of the back-door.

She heard the scrape of a toe-plate on the wall outside.

This was too much. "You mean, sneakin', snivellin', pilferin',
egg-stealin' highwayman!" cries she, and lets fly.

Well, sir, the sugar basin was scat to atoms, but the teapot, as you
see, didn' suffer more than a chip. The wonder was, she stayed her hand
at the second stroke, old Jacka being in no position to defend himself
or explain. In later days when she invited her friends to tea, she used
to put it down to instinct. "Something _warned_ me," she'd say.
But that's how the teapot came into our family.

KING O' PRUSSIA.

REPORTED TALE OF A SMUGGLER, A REVENUE CUTTER, AND AN OFFICIOUS
MINISTER.

You have heard tell, of course, of Captain John Carter, the famous
smuggler of Prussia Cove, and his brothers Harry, Francis, and Charles,
and Captain Will Richards, "Tummels," Carpenter Hosking, Uncle Billy,
and the rest of the Cove boys; likewise of old Nan Leggo and Bessie
Bussow that kept the Kiddlywink[1] there? Well, well, I see our
youngsters going to school nowadays with their hair brushed, and I hear
them singing away inside the classroom for all the world as if they were
glad to grow up and pay taxes; and it makes me wonder if they can be the
children of that old-fangled race. Sometimes I think it's high time for
me to go. There was a newspaper fellow down here when the _General
Walker_ came ashore, and, after asking a lot of questions, he put the
case in a nutshell. "You're a link with the past," he said; "that's
what you are." I don't know if he invented the expression, or if he
picked it up somewhere and used it on me, but it's a terrible clever
one.

You mustn't think I'm boasting. I never knew Captain John; he died in
the year 'seven, and I wasn't born for twelve months after. But I've
shaken hands with Captain Harry--the one who was taken prisoner by the
French, and came near to losing his head. He spent his latter years
farming at Rinsey and local preaching; a very earnest man. He gave me
my first-class ticket--that was in the late twenties, and not long
before his death. And Captain Will Richards I knew well; he took over
the business after Captain John, and lasted down to the Crimea year.
I carried the coffin; eighty-