be. But that young chap was too sharp. He says to himself,
'If I don't he'll nail me, and if I do--well, there's just a chance.'

"So he hands over the bundle, and the coastguard he thinks it must be
all right, and he carries it all the way up to his mother's for him,
feeling sorry for the mean suspicions he'd had about the poor old chap.
But that didn't happen near here. No, no."

I think Dora was going to say, "_Old_ chap--but I thought he was young
with blue eyes?" but just at that minute a coastguard came along and
ordered us quite harshly not to lean on the boat. He was quite
disagreeable about it--how different from our own coastguards! He was
from a different station to theirs. The old man got off very slowly.
And all the time he was arranging his long legs so as to stand on them,
the coastguard went on being disagreeable as hard as he could, in a loud
voice.

[Illustration: A COASTGUARD ORDERED US QUITE HARSHLY NOT TO LEAN ON THE
BOAT.]

When our old man had told the coastguard that no one ever lost anything
by keeping a civil tongue in his head, we all went away feeling very
angry.

Alice took the old man's hand as we went back to the village, and asked
him why the coastguard was so horrid.

"They gets notions into their heads," replied the old man; "the most
innocentest people they comes to think things about. It's along of there
being no smuggling in these ere parts now. The coastguards ain't got
nothing to do except think things about honest people."

We parted from the old man very warmly, all shaking hands. He lives at a
cottage not quite in the village, and keeps pigs. We did not say goodbye
till we had seen all the pigs.

I daresay we should not have gone on disliking that disagreeable
coastguard so much if he had not come along one day when we were talking
to our own coastguards, and asked why they allowed a pack of young
shavers in the boat-house. We went away in silent dignity, but we did
not forget, and when we were in bed that night Oswald said--

"Don't you think it would be a good thing if the coastguards had
something to do?"

Dicky yawned and said he didn't know.

"I should like to be a smuggler," said Oswald. "Oh, yes, go to sleep if
you like; but I've got an idea, and if you'd rather be out of it I'll
have Alice instead."

"Fire away!" said Dicky, now full of attention, and leaning on his
elbow.

"Well, then," said Oswald, "I think we _might_ be smugglers."

"We've played al