I am afraid. I thought
that the job had been so well managed that it could never be traced to
me, but when I got up to the top of the hill I saw a fellow just
starting from the bottom. I did not think much of it at the time, but he
came up so quickly after me that he must have run all the way up. He has
chased me hard, and as he got nearer I could see that he had a gun too.
He was not more than a quarter of a mile away when I got to the
trap-door."

"Why didn't you hide yourself in the bushes and put a bullet into him,
Markham?"

"For several reasons. In the first place, the gun might have been heard
by some of those cussed revenue men. Then there would be an inquiry and
a search. They would have seen by the direction he had been going, that
he must have been shot from the bushes, and as no one would have been in
sight when they ran up, the thing would have been such a puzzle to them
that you may be sure they would have suspected there must be some hidden
way out of the clump. Besides, they would probably have hunted every
inch of the ground to see if they could find anything that would give
them a clue as to who had fired the shot. That is one reason."

"And quite good enough without any others," the Frenchman said.

"Well, there was another one that went for almost as much with me. I
shot down Faulkner because he was a curse to us all. He had imprisoned
several of my pals, and done a lot of damage to the trade, and was
likely to break it up altogether, besides which I had a big grudge
against him on my own account. But I should not have liked to shoot down
this fellow in cold blood. I had no feeling against him; he has done me
no harm; I did not even know who he was. If he had overtaken me in the
open, you may be sure that I should have made a fight of it, for it
would have been my life against his. I don't pretend to be soft; there
is little enough of that about me, and I have fought hard several times
in the old days when we were surprised; but I could not have shot down
that fellow without giving him a chance of his life. If there had not
been the trap-door to escape by I should have stood up, given him fair
warning, and fought it out man to man. As it was--" at this point the
conversation had been arrested by the sudden entrance of Julian.

"Who is he?" the chief of the smugglers asked Joe when he had finished
his conversation with the prisoner. "Is he a spy?"

"No; he is a young chap as lives down in the t