an of fifty, who had been a
famous tracker of bear and boar in the Austrian Alps, and in his youth
an expert in contraband of no mean fame, and of large experience both on
mountain and on sea.

The thought of Julian's danger threw the Princess into a flurry of
nervous fever, so that she could get no rest till she saw their boxes
packed--each being allowed but one because of the difficulties of a
secret landing. The others were to be sent to the care of Eelen Young at
Ladykirk.

At first it was not clear to the Princess what they would do to help the
besieged when they got there, but Miss Aline assured her that if any one
could possibly raise the country and save the situation, that person was
Patsy and no other.

Old Silent Wolf took with him a couple of great jaeger "ruk-sacks" full
of sausages, together with much ammunition for rifle and pistol. These
he nursed as he waited in the hall with a grim expression on his
countenance, but as composedly as if he had only come in to report on
the possible game for the day's shooting.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE NIGHT LANDING

It was the gloaming of a late March day when the reefed top-sails of the
_Good Intent_ showed up against the horizon of bleak slate-grey which
was the Irish Sea. The North Channel foamed boisterously to the left,
heaping many waters together, a perpetual cave of the winds, a
play-ground for errant tides, or rather, as the folk on its shores say,
the meeting-place of all the Seven Seas.

From early morning they had been standing off, not daring to approach
nearer till assisted by the westward rush of the Solway tides and the
darkness which would hide everything. Captain Penman was a man of few
words, and these few he did not waste. Inwardly he was boiling over at
the ill-luck of his first spring run. He cursed Stair Garland and Julian
Wemyss for mixing private quarrels with so sacred a mission as that of
hoodwinking his Majesty's Customs.

"As good a cargo as ever came past the Point of Ayre," he grumbled, "and
if young Garland had been attending to his business, we might have run
it at the Mays Water as easy as changing money from one trousers pocket
to the other. But now I must put these people on shore with the whole
countryside humming with Preventives, and as like as not a brig-o'-war
hovering about. There always is, when soldiers take a hand. The
authorities get into a flurry and order up everything that can carry a
gun. I shall have to mak