compensating disadvantage of being
able to inflict none. This seemed to him a grave engineering
blunder: but to impart his misgivings to an officer so sensitive as
Captain Aeneas Pond of the East and West Looe Volunteer Artillery was
a delicate matter, and cost him much anxious thought.

At length he hit on a plan at once tactful and so bold that it
concealed his tact. Between Looe and Troy, but much nearer to Looe,
lies Talland Cove, a pretty recess of the coast much favoured in
those days by smugglers as being lonely and well sheltered, with a
nicely shelving beach on which, at almost any state of the tide, an
ordinary small boat could be run and her cargo discharged with the
greatest ease. A shelving ridge on the eastern side of the cove had
only to be known to be avoided, and the run of sea upon the beach
could be disregarded in any but a strong southerly wind.

Now, where the free-traders could so easily land a cargo, it stood to
reason that Bonaparte (were he so minded) could land an invading
force. Nay, once on a time the French had actually forced this very
spot. A short way up the valley behind the cove stood a mill; and of
that mill this story was told. About the time of the Wars of the
Roses, the miller there gave entertainment to a fellow-miller from
the Breton coast opposite, who had crossed over--or so he pretended--
to learn by what art the English ground finer corn than the French.
Coming by hazard to this mill above Talland, he was well entertained
for a month or more And dismissed with a blessing; but only to return
to his own country, collect a band of men and cross to Talland Cove,
where on a Christmas Eve he surprised his late host at supper, bound
him, haled him down to the shore, carried him off to Brittany, and
there held him at ransom. The ransom was paid, and our Cornish
miller, returning, built himself a secret cupboard behind the chimney
for a hiding-place against another such mishap. That hiding-place
yet existed, and formed (as the Major well knew) a capital
store-chamber for the free-traders.

The Major, then, having carefully studied Talland Cove, with its
approaches, and the lie of the land to the east and west and
immediately behind it, sat down and indited the following letter:

"Dear Pond,--I have been thinking over the military situation,
and am of opinion that if the enemy once effected a lodgment in
Looe, we in Troy might have difficulty in dislodging him