woke up with a scream, crying out:
"Prisoners or no prisoners, those men were up to no good: and I'll
say it if I live to be a hundred!"

That same afternoon they transhipped the parcels into a cart, and
drove ahead themselves in a light gig, and so came down, a little
before sunset, to the "Passage Inn" yonder. There, of course, they
had to unload again and wait for the ferry to bring them across to
their own parish. It surprised the Parson a bit to find the
ferry-boat lying ready by the shore and my grandfather standing there
head to head with old Arch'laus Spry, that was constable of Mawnan
parish.

"Hallo, Calvin!" the Parson sings out. "This looks bad--Mawnan and
Manaccan putting their heads together. I hope there's nothing gone
wrong since I've been away?"

"Aw, Parson dear," says my grandfather, "I'm glad you've come--yea,
glad sure 'nuff. We've a-been enjoying a terrible time!"

"Then something _has_ gone wrong?" says the Parson.

"As for that," my grandfather answers, "I only wish I could say yes
or no: for 'twould be a relief even to know the worst." He beckoned
very mysterious-like and led the Parson a couple of hundred yards up
the foreshore, with Arch'laus Spry following. And there they came to
a halt, all three, before a rock that someone had been daubing with
whitewash. On the top of the cliff, right above, was planted a stick
with a little white flag.

"Now, Sir, as a Justice of the Peace, what d'ee think of it?"

Parson Polwhele stared from the rock to the stick and couldn't say.
So he turns to Arch'laus Spry and asks: "Any person taken ill in your
parish?"

"No, Sir."

"You're sure Billy Johns hasn't been drinking again?" Billy Johns
was the landlord of the "Passage Inn," a very ordinary man by rule,
but given to breaking loose among his own liquors. "He seemed all
right yesterday when I hired the trap off him; but he does the most
unaccountable things when he's taken bad."

"He never did anything so far out of nature as this here; and I can
mind him in six outbreaks," answered my grandfather. "Besides, 'tis
not Billy Johns nor anyone like him."

"Then you know who did it?"

"I do and I don't, Sir. But take a look round, if you please."

The Parson looked up and down and across the river; and, sure,
enough, whichever way he turned, his eyes fell on splashes of
whitewash and little flags fluttering. They seemed to stretch right
away from Porthnavas down to the river's mou