aged to obtain intelligence of the day on which she was to sail
with a rich cargo, gave information of the fact to the commander of a
revenue-cutter then cruising upon the coast.

I have mentioned that Harry was in the habit of wandering along the
coast with a telescope under his arm. From the period of his wife's
death, he had not gone regularly to sea, but let others have a share
of his boats for a stipulated portion of the fish they caught. Now, it
was about daybreak, on a morning in the middle of September, that he
was on the beach as I have described him, and perceiving the figure of
the cutter on the water, he raised his glass to his eye, to examine it
more minutely. He expected the lugger on the following night, and the
cutter was an object of interest to Harry. As day began to brighten,
he knelt down behind a sand-bank, in order that he might take his
observations, without the chance of being discovered; and while he yet
knelt, he perceived a boat pulled from the side of the cutter towards
the shore. At the first glance, he descried it to be an Embleton
cobble, and before it proceeded far, he discovered to whom it
belonged. He knew that the owner was his enemy, though he had not the
courage openly to acknowledge it, and in a moment the nature of his
errand to the cutter flashed through Harry's brain.

"I see it! I see it all!" said the smuggler, dashing the telescope
back into its case; "the low, the skulking coward, to go blab upon a
neighbour! But Ise have the weather-gauge o' both o' them, or my
name's not Harry Teasdale."

So saying, he hastened home to his house--he examined his cutlass, his
pistols, the bullets, and the powder. "All's right," said the
smuggler, and he entered the room where his daughter slept. He laid
his rough hand gently upon hers.

"Fanny, love," said he, "thou knowest that I expect the lugger
to-night, and I don't think I shall be at home, and I mayn't be all
to-morrow; but you won't fret, like a good girl, I know you won't.
Keep all right, love, till I be back; and say nothing."

"Dear father," returned Fanny, who was now a lovely girl of eighteen,
"I tremble for this life which we lead--as my poor mother said, it
adds the punishment of the law to the dangers of the sea."

"Oh, don't mention thy mother, dearest!" said the smuggler, "or thou
wilt make a child of thy father, when he should be thinking of other
things. Ah, Fanny! when I lost thy mother, I lost everything that gave