with all his
daring, he was the quietest, most inoffensive man in the trade, if only
you let him alone. Mr. Wearne, the collector, understood this, and it
was not by his fault either that the firing came about, but all through
an interfering woman and a preacher who couldn't mind his own business.

It began in this way. Bessie Bussow had a sister-in-law married and
living over here in Ardevora--Ann Geen was the name of her--a daughter
of Kitty Lemal. (You've heard tell of Kitty Lemal and her eight
daughters, and her stocking full of guineas? No? Well there's another
story for you one of these days.) This Ann was the youngest of the
eight, and married John Geen latish in life, just in time to bring him a
boy before he left her a widow; and after her mother Kitty died she and
the boy lived together in the old house at Carne Glaze--Ugnes House[2]
they used to call it. The boy, being the son of old parents, was a
lean, scrag-necked child, with a lollopping big head, too clever for his
years. He had the Lemals' pluck inside him though, for all his unhandy
looks; and, of course, his mother thought him a nonesuch.

Well, with all the country talking about John Carter and his doings, you
may fancy that every boy in Ardevora wanted to grow up in a hurry and be
off to Prussia Cove a-smuggling. It took young Phoby Geen (his real
name was Deiphobus) as bad as the rest. He had been over to the Cove
with his mother on a visit to Bessie Bussow, and there in the Kiddlywink
the King had patted him on his big head and given him a shilling.
After that the boy gave his mother no peace. She, poor soul, wanted to
make a preacher of him, and wouldn't hear of his going; but often, after
he had turned fifteen, she would be out of bed ten times of a night and
listening at his door to make sure he hadn't run off in the dark.

I told you the boy was clever; and this is how he gained his end.
There had always been a tale that the Ugnes House was haunted--the ghost
being old Reginald Bottrell, Kitty Lemal's father, a very respectable
sea-captain, who died in his bed with no reason whatever for being
uncomfortable in the next world. Still, "walk" he did, or was said to;
and one fine day the boy came to his mother with a pretty tale.
It went that, the evening before, he and his young cousin, Arch'laus
Bryant, had been lying stretched on their stomachs before the fire in
the big room--he reading the _Pilgrim's Progress_ by the light of the