suit the straight, plain, snuffy-brown coat, brown knee-breeches,
and broad-brimmed hat. His hair was tied 'in a short pigtail which
danced wickedly when he turned his head.

'Ha' done!' said Puck, laughing. 'Be one thing or t'other,
Pharaoh--French or English or German--no great odds which.'

'Oh, but it is, though,' said Una quickly. 'We haven't begun German yet,
and--and we're going back to our French next week.'

'Aren't you English?' said Dan. 'We heard you singing just now.'

'Aha! That was the Sussex side o' me. Dad he married a French girl
out o' Boulogne, and French she stayed till her dyin' day. She was an
Aurette, of course. We Lees mostly marry Aurettes. Haven't you ever come
across the saying:

'Aurettes and Lees,
Like as two peas.
What they can't smuggle,
They'll run over seas'?

'Then, are you a smuggler?' Una cried; and, 'Have you smuggled
much?'said Dan.

Mr Lee nodded solemnly.

'Mind you,' said he, 'I don't uphold smuggling for the generality o'
mankind--mostly they can't make a do of it--but I was brought up to the
trade, d'ye see, in a lawful line o' descent on'--he waved across the
Channel--'on both sides the water. 'Twas all in the families, same
as fiddling. The Aurettes used mostly to run the stuff across from
Boulogne, and we Lees landed it here and ran it up to London Town, by
the safest road.'

'Then where did you live?' said Una.

'You mustn't ever live too close to your business in our trade. We kept
our little fishing smack at Shoreham, but otherwise 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 fa