will, Charles; I heartily hope it will be. It would
serve you quite right to be snaring your own son, after snaring a poor
youth through his sweetheart."

"Well, well, time will show. Put me up the flat bottle, Tilly, and the
knuckle of pork that was left last night. Goodness knows when I shall be
back; and I never like to rack my mind upon an empty stomach."

The revenue officer had far to go, and was wise in providing provender.
And the weather being on the fall toward the equinox, and the tides
running strong and uncertain, he had made up his mind to fare inland,
instead of attempting the watery ways. He felt that he could ride, as
every sailor always feels; and he had a fine horse upon hire from his
butcher, which the king himself would pay for. The inferior men had been
sent ahead on foot, with orders to march along and hold their tongues.
And one of these men was John Cadman, the self-same man who had
descended the cliff without any footpath. They were all to be ready,
with hanger and pistol, in a hole toward Byrsa Cottage.

Lieutenant Carroway enjoyed his ride. There are men to whom excitement
is an elevation of the sad and slow mind, which otherwise seems to have
nothing to do. And what finer excitement can a good mind have than
in balancing the chances of its body tumbling out of the saddle, and
evicting its poor self?

The mind of Charles Carroway was wide awake to this, and tenderly
anxious about the bad foot in which its owner ended--because of the
importance of the stirrups--and all the sanguine vigor of the heart
(which seemed to like some thumping) conveyed to the seat of reason
little more than a wish to be well out of it. The brave lieutenant
holding place, and sticking to it through a sense of duty, and of the
difficulty of getting off, remembered to have heard, when quite a little
boy, that a man who gazes steadily between his horse's ears can not
possibly tumble off the back. The saying in its wisdom is akin to that
which describes the potency of salt upon a sparrow's tail.

While Carroway gloomily pounded the road, with reflection a dangerous
luxury, things of even deeper interest took their course at the goal of
his endeavors. Mary Anerley, still an exile in the house of the tanner,
by reason of her mother's strict coast-guard, had long been thinking
that more injustice is done in the world than ought to be; and
especially in the matter of free trade she had imbibed lax opinions,
which may no