find it piteous; but unseemly, unpermissible somehow, yet marvellously
sweet, startling him out of all preconceived light diplomatic plans,
plucking shrewdly at his complacently unawakened heart.

He came close to her, and putting his hand under her elbow gently held
it.

"Pray, pray be careful," he said. "I don't trust this crazy little pier
of yours one atom. Any one of these boards looks capable of crumbling and
letting one through.--And, Damaris, please don't be cross with me or I
shall be quite miserable. Forgive my having asked you stupid questions. I
was a blundering idiot. Of course, what I heard last night was just some
echo, some trick of wind or of the river and tide. I was half asleep and
imagined the whole thing most likely, magnified sounds as one does,
don't you know, sometimes at night. Your father talked wonderfully, and I
went to bed dazzled, such imagination as I possess all aflame"--

But Damaris shook her head, while her elbow rested rigid upon the palm
of his hand.

"No--what you heard was real," she answered. "I heard once myself--and
the people here know about it. They say the dead smugglers still drive
their ponies up from the beach, across the lawn where the old road was,
and, as it sounds, through the round rooms downstairs, in which my father
lives, on their way up into the forest.--You cannot help seeing--although
you see nothing--how the ponies are ill-used, hounded and flogged. The
last of the drove are lame and utterly worn out. They stumble along
anyhow and one falls. Oh! it is cruel, wicked. And it is--was, really
true, cousin Tom. It must have happened scores of times before old Mr.
Verity, your namesake, put a stop to the iniquity by buying The Hard--I
have only heard the ponies driven once, about this time in September last
year--just before something very sad, quite of my own, happened"--

Damaris stopped, her lips quivering again and too much for speech.

"Don't tell me any more. I can't bear you to be distressed. Pray, pray
don't"--the young man urged incoherently while his grasp on her elbow
tightened somewhat.

For he felt curiously flurried and put about; near cursing himself
moreover for having helped to break up her high serenity thus. The whole
thing was manifestly impossible as he told himself, outside every
recognized law of Nature and sound science. Even during the mistrustful
phantasy-breeding watches of the night, when reason inclines to drag
anchor setting mind