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Rh It was a difficult matter to recognize faces and figures so much foreshortened as they were from the lofty perch he occupied: but he presently perceived that the speaker was the little mean-looking man with the pimply face, who had taken part in the last fray, and who was known as "Bill Plunder."

"Ods rabbit it! What matters the eyes?" sang out the burly giant, Robin Cursemother, as he dealt a sounding blow on the head of the bolt he was driving in. "There's but one pair to signify, and we mean to close them, don't we, lads, so as they shan't see naught to hurt no more!"

Then up spoke a third man, who was seated on a barrel in a corner, with a pipe between his lips, and holding a torch in one hand. He limped when he moved, and Tregenna guessed that this was the "Gardener Tom" whom he had himself wounded, and whom the parson and his daughter had sheltered under their roof. He was a young fellow of not more than five or six and twenty, well made and handsome, with an open, honest face and manly voice: a man too good for a smuggler, Tregenna decided.