to me you deserve a
thrashing apiece for yesterday and a guinea apiece for to-day. Will you
take both, or shall we call it quits?"

Well, we called it quits for the time. But twenty years later, happening
upon me at Buckingham Palace at one of King William's last levees, he
shook hands and informed me that the balance sheet at the time had been
wrongly struck: for I had provided him with a story which had served him
faithfully through half his distinguished career. A week later a dray
rumbled up to the door of my lodgings in Jermyn Street, and two stout men
delivered from it a hogshead of the sherry you are now drinking.
He had inquired for Hartnoll's address, but Hartnoll, poor lad, had lain
for fifteen years in the British burial-ground at Port Royal.

THE BLACK JOKE.

A REPORTED TALE OF TWO SMUGGLERS.

I.

My mother's grandfather, Dan'l Leggo, was the piousest man that ever went
smuggling, and one of the peaceablest, and scrupulous to an extent you
wouldn't believe. He learnt his business among the Cove boys at
Porthleah--or Prussia Cove as it came to be called, after John Carter, the
head of the gang, that was nicknamed the King o' Prussia. Dan'l was John
Carter's own sister's son, trained under his eye; and when the Carters
retired he took over the business in partnership with young Phoby Geen,
a nephew by marriage to Bessie Bussow that still kept the Kiddlywink at
Porthleah, and had laid by a stockingful of money.

These two, Dan'l Leggo and Phoby Geen (which was short for Deiphobus),
lived together and worked the business for five years in boundless
harmony; until, as such things happen, they both fell in love with one
maid, which brought out the differences in their natures to a surprising
degree, converting Dan'l into an Early Christian for all to behold, while
Phoby turned to envy and spite, and to a disgraceful meanness of spirit.
The reason of this to some extent was that the girl--Amelia Sanders by
name--couldn't abide him because of the colour of his hair and his splay
feet: yet I believe she would have married him (her father being a
boat-builder in a small way at Porthleven, and beholden to the Cove for
most of his custom) if Dan'l hadn't come along first and cast eyes on her;
whereby she clave to Dan'l and liked him better and better as time brought
out the beautiful little odds-and-ends of his character; and when Phoby
made up, she took and told him, in all the boldness of affection,