an
open space of some yards square, so clean that it looked as if it had
been recently swept.

Beyond this again and quite in the corner, there was a step or two
downwards, as if it were into the bowels of the earth. This was stopped
with a door of stone accurately arranged and fitted with uncommon skill.
And I could see at a glance that it was probably one of the same kind
that the men whom Agnes Anne had seen were engaged in bursting by stroke
of crow. I understood more than that. For there was all the winter in
Eden Valley scarce any other subject of talk than the Free Trade (which
is to say, plainly, smuggling), and concerning the various "ventures" or
boats and crews attached to some famous leader engaged in it.

There was, in fact, no particular moral wrong attaching to the business
in Eden Valley or along the Solway shore high and low--rather a sort of
piety, since the common folk remembered that the excise had first been
instituted by that perjured persecutor of the Church, Charles II. Even
the Doctor, though he denounced the practice from the pulpit in
befitting words, did so chiefly on the ground that the attractions of
Free Trade, its dangers even, carried so many promising young men forth
of the parish, and a goodly proportion of them to return no more.

But for all that, I never heard that he refused to partake of the anker
of Guernsey which his lady found by chance in the milk-house among the
creaming-pans, or by the tombstones of his predecessors in the
"Ministers' Corner" of the kirkyard.

I looked at the means of defence, and hidden among the packages at the
back I found two good muskets and one or two very worn ones--yet all
bearing the marks of recent attention. So, since the smuggled casks
formed a kind of breastwork right round the steps--up from the passage
that was blocked by the stone door--it came into my head that I could
there set up a kind of battery and run from one to the other of them,
firing--that is, if the worst came to the worst and the passage were
forced. So, having plenty of powder and shot and the wrappings of the
lace packages making excellent wads, I set about loading all the
muskets. I knew that Agnes Anne would be afraid of what I was doing,
having had a horror of firearms ever since, as a child, she had seen
Florrie, our old dun cow, shot dead by Boyd Connoway to be our "mart" of
the year, and salted down for the winter's food in the big beef barrel.
Agnes Anne would never