, I'll keep a
bright look-out thereabouts, and I've a notion that some day I'll catch
the mole coming out of his hole."

The next day the inspecting commander of the coastguard, and another
magistrate and two more lieutenants arrived, and a grand consultation
was held. Plans were resolved on by which it was hoped that the
smugglers would be completely put down. It did not occur to them,
possibly, that while the temptation to smuggling was so great that would
be a very difficult matter.

Margery had never seen so many people at the lower before, but she acted
with as much propriety as if she were every day accustomed to receive
guests.

It was supposed at length that the anger of the smugglers against Blind
Peter would have passed away; and at all events, as he could not for
ever be kept a prisoner, he begged that he might be allowed to go out
again with his faithful dog Trusty. "There is One watches over me and
takes care of me, and He has sent that good dog and given him sense to
guide my steps, and so I trust in Him and do not fear what can happen to
me," he observed, when one morning, not without Captain and Mrs Askew
feeling some misgivings, he went forth from the Tower. He had, as
usual, his pack on his back and his staff in his hand, as he wound his
way down the hill to the hamlet on the seashore. As it was not his
custom to tell the people whence he had last come, they, naturally
supposing that he had been at a distance, asked him if he had heard of
the awful doings up at the Tower since he had last been there? "What
are they, Maggy Scuttle?" he inquired of the old woman who asked the
question.

"Terrible! Peter, terrible!" she answered, shaking her head; "not but
what the captain is a good man, and a charitable man, and a kind man;
that I'll allow. He comes down here and reads to us out of a book, and
preaches to us, and talks to us about our souls; but do all he can, he
can't keep the devil out of his house. It's haunted; no doubt about
that. They say that ghosts and hobgoblins, and all sorts of bad spirits
go wandering up and down night after night, and won't let the people in
the Tower sleep. It's believed that the captain is so vexed that he'll
give up the Tower and go away, and 'twill then soon turn back into the
ruin it was when he came to it."

"I hope not," said Peter, "he's a good customer of mine and a good
neighbour to you, and so we shall both be the losers; and as for the
ghosts, h