oneliest part of
the street, where no house showed a light, he came up behind and tripped
him; and as the captain essayed to get again on his feet, Hall had
struck him a violent blow on the head with a cudgel, stunning him. The
man told, too, how a little later he had gone into a public-house to get
a drink, and that there he found some men playing at cards; he had
joined them, and had lost money, and one of the men (Hislop, as he
afterwards understood) had changed for him a guinea which he had a
little time before taken from the pocket of the man he had stunned.

Thus were Wallace and Hislop added to the long list of the victims of
circumstantial evidence.

ILLICIT DISTILLING AND SMUGGLING

From about the close of the seventeenth until well on in the nineteenth
century, smuggling was carried on to a large extent in the Border
counties of England and Scotland, not only as regards the evasion of
customs duties on imported articles, but as well in the form of illicit
distillation.

In the good old times, better than half-way through the eighteenth
century, cargoes consisting of ankers of French brandy, bales of lace,
cases of tobacco, boxes of tea, and what not, were "run" almost nightly
on certain parts of the coasts of Berwick, Northumberland, and Galloway,
borne inland by long strings of pack-horses, and securely hid away in
some snug retreat, perhaps far up among the Border hills. Few of the
inhabitants but looked with lenient eye on the doings of the
"free-traders"; few, very few, deemed it any crime to take advantage of
their opportunities for getting liquor, tea, and tobacco at a cheaper
rate than they could buy the same articles after they had paid toll to
the King. Smuggled goods, too, were thought to possess quality and
flavour better than any belonging to those that had come ashore in
legitimate fashion; the smuggler's touch, perhaps, in this respect was--

"... sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath";

it imparted to the brandy, apparently, a vague, unnameable something
that tickled the palate of the drinker, to the tobacco an extra aroma
that was grateful to the nostrils of those who smoked it. Nay, the very
term "smuggled" raised the standard of those goods in the estimation of
some very honest folk, and caused them to smack their lips in
anticipation. Perhaps this superstition as to the supreme quality of
things smuggled is not even yet wholly dead. Who has not me