t any time, he had let the moment pass. The nearest
Justice lived twelve Irish miles away, and had he been on the spot he
would, since he was of necessity a Protestant, have been as
helpless--unless he brought the garrison of Tralee at his back--as a
churchwarden in a Synod of Cardinals. The skipper hesitated, and while
he hesitated the hatches were off, and the Sullivans swarmed down like
monkeys. Before the sloop could be made fast, the smaller kegs were
being tossed up, and passed over the side, a line was formed on land,
and the cargo, which had last seen the sun on the banks of the Garonne,
was swiftly vanishing in the maw of the stone house on the shore.

The skipper's rage was great, but he could only swear, and O'Sullivan
Og, the man in the frieze coat, who bore him an old grudge, grinned in
mockery. "For better custody, Captain!" he said. "For better custody!
Under my roof, _bien_! And when you will to go again there will be the
dues to be paid, the little dues over which we quarrelled last time!
And all will be rendered to a stave!"

"You villain!" the Captain muttered under his breath. "I understand!"
Turning--for the sight was more than he could bear--he found his
passenger at his elbow.

The Colonel, if his face went for anything, liked the proceedings
almost as little as the skipper. His lips were tightly closed, and he
frowned.

"Ay," Augustin cried bitterly--for the first instinct of the man who is
hurt is to hurt another--"now you see what it is you've come back to!
It's rob, or be robbed, this side of Tralee, and as far as the devil
could kick you beyond it! I wish you well out of it! But I suppose it
would take more than this to make you draw that long hanger of yours?"

The Colonel cast a troubled eye on him. "Beyond doubt," he said, "it is
the duty of a man to assist in defending the house of his host. And in
a sense and measure, the goods of his host"--with an uneasy look at the
fast-vanishing cargo, which was leaping from hand to hand so swiftly
that the progress of a tub from the hold to the house was as the flight
of a swallow--"are the house of his host. I do not deny that," he
continued precisely, "but----"

"But in this instance," the sea-captain struck in with a sneer,
contempt for the first time mastering wonder, "in this instance?"

"In this instance," the Colonel repeated with an unmistakable blush, "I
am not very free to act. The truth is, Captain Augustin, these folk are
of my k