wise we Lees was all
honest cottager folk--at Warminghurst under Washington--Bramber way--on
the old Penn estate.'

'Ah!' said Puck, squatted by the windlass. 'I remember a piece about the
Lees at Warminghurst, I do:

'There was never a Lee to Warminghurst
That wasn't a gipsy last and first.

I reckon that's truth, Pharaoh.'

Pharaoh laughed. 'Admettin' that's true,' he said, 'my gipsy blood must
be wore pretty thin, for I've made and kept a worldly fortune.'

'By smuggling?' Dan asked.

'No, in the tobacco trade.'

'You don't mean to say you gave up smuggling just to go and be a
tobacconist!' Dan looked so disappointed they all had to laugh.

'I'm sorry; but there's all sorts of tobacconists,' Pharaoh replied.
'How far out, now, would you call that smack with the patch on her
foresail?' He pointed to the fishing-boats.

'A scant mile,' said Puck after a quick look.

'Just about. It's seven fathom under her--clean sand. That was where
Uncle Aurette used to sink his brandy kegs from Boulogne, and we fished
'em up and rowed 'em into The Gap here for the ponies to run inland. One
thickish night in January of '93, Dad and Uncle Lot and me came over
from Shoreham in the smack, and we found Uncle Aurette and the
L'Estranges, my cousins, waiting for us in their lugger with New Year's
presents from mother's folk in Boulogne. I remember Aunt Cecile she'd
sent me a fine new red knitted cap, which I put on then and there, for
the French was having their Revolution in those days, and red caps was
all the fashion. Uncle Aurette tells us that they had cut off their King
Louis' head, and, moreover, the Brest forts had fired on an English
man-o'-war. The news wasn't a week old.

'"That means war again, when we was only just getting used to the
peace," says Dad. "Why can't King George's men and King Louis' men do on
their uniforms and fight it out over our heads?"

'"Me too, I wish that," says Uncle Aurette. "But they'll be pressing
better men than themselves to fight for 'em. The press-gangs are out
already on our side: you look out for yours."

'"I'll have to bide ashore and grow cabbages for a while, after I've run
this cargo; but I do wish"--Dad says, going over the lugger's side with
our New Year presents under his arm and young L'Estrange holding the
lantern--"I just do wish that those folk which make war so easy had to
run one cargo a month all this winter. It 'ud show 'em what honest work
means."

'"We