in here
deal in spirits, I have no doubt, for they are smugglers, and pretty
stupid ones too, if they fancy that by such mummeries they can frighten
officers and gentlemen as we are."

"You don't mean to say, Mr Dugong, that those are not ghosts which we
have been seeing to-night," exclaimed Stephen.

"I wish as how I thought they weren't," cried Becky, "for it's awful to
think that the old Tower where we've lived so long in peace should be
haunted."

"Fiddlestick, woman, with your haunted Tower!" said the magistrate, who
was apt soon to lose his patience; "I suspect that you and your
one-armed companion there, who looks as scared as if he had a real
goblin at his heels, have been leaving some door or window open by which
these ghosts, as you call them, have found an entrance, and if they have
not got out by the same way they came in they must still be somewhere
about the building, and you must be held responsible for any mischief
they may commit--you hear me, sirrah!"

"Beg pardon, sir, and no offence, I do hear you," said Tom, stepping
forward and giving a pull to his red nightcap, and a hitch to his wide
trousers: "but I've served his Majesty--that's three on 'em and her
Majesty, that's Queen Victoria--man and boy for better than forty years,
afloat in all seas, and all climes, and never once have I been told that
I wasn't attending to my duty, and doing the work I was set to do as
well as I could. Now I know it's my duty to see that all the doors and
windows are fast at night, not to keep out robbers, because we've no
reason to fear such gentry down here, but to prevent Mister Wind from
making an entrance, and I say it, and again I begs pardon, I did close
the doors and windows as securely as I ever did in my life."

"Oh! very well, very well, my good man, I do not doubt your honest
intentions, but assertions are not proofs; if you were to set about it,
and find the ghost, I should be better pleased," said the magistrate.

"I really think, Mr Ludlow, that you are somewhat hard upon Tom,"
interposed Captain Askew; "I can answer for his doing his best to find
the ghost if he is to be found, and if not I will leave him in charge of
the deck while we turn in again; and you may depend on it no ghost will
dare to show his nose while he is on duty."

This proposal was agreed to, and, as after a further search no trace of
the nocturnal visitors was discovered, the family once more retired to
rest, and Tom, with Mr