stretched out my hand and touched him,
there lay my school-fellow--the old smuggler's son.

"He must suspect him," I said to myself; and then, "What must he feel?"

And all the while there below us was the busy scene--the men coming and
going and the cargo being landed, till all at once there was a
cessation. Those who returned from the cave stayed about the vessel,
and seemed, as far as we could make out, to be climbing on board, and as
I suddenly seemed to be making out their figures a little more clearly,
my father whispered, "Lie down, boys, or you will be seen. The day is
beginning to dawn."

We obeyed him silently, and lay watching, seeing every minute more
clearly that the dark-looking vessel, which loomed up very big, was
being thrust out with long oars, and beginning to glide slowly away in a
thick mist which hung over the sea a hundred yards or so from shore.
Then as it reached and began to fade, as it were, into the mist, first
one then another dark patch rose from the deck.

"Hoisting sail," I said to myself. "Two big lug-sails. It is the
_Saucy Lass_--old Jonas's lugger, and it looks big through the fog."

Just then in the coming grey dawn I saw another patch rise up, following
a creaking noise, and I could make out that it was a third sail, when I
knew that it could not be the _Saucy Lass_, but must be a stranger.

I was so glad, for Bigley's sake, that my heart gave quite a heavy
throb; and, unless I was very much deceived, I heard my father draw a
long breath like a sigh of relief.

As we gazed at the sails and the dark hull in the increasing light,
everything looked so strange and indistinct that it seemed impossible
for it all to be real. The sails began to fill, and the vessel glided
silently away without a voice on board being heard, till it was so
far-off that my father said:

"I think we may begin to talk, my lads, now."

"I say, sir," cried Bob excitedly, "weren't those smugglers?"

"I cannot say," replied my father coldly.

"Let's get down now and look," said Bob.

"I think," said my father, "that we had better leave everything alone,
and, as soon as the tide will allow us, get home to breakfast. You, Bob
Chowne, if I were you, I should keep my own counsel about this, and you
too, Sep."

I noticed that he did not say anything to Bigley, who was kneeling down
gazing after the vessel in the mist which was dying away about the land,
and appeared to be going off with the vessel,