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Rh already, on arriving on board, sent a trusty messenger to Rye, to beg the brigadier to lose no time in making a second expedition against Rede Hall; he promised to meet him there, and to put him in possession of some facts he had learnt concerning its hiding-places.

But although it was no later than nine o'clock in the morning when he and General Hambledon met at the farmyard gates, they found that the smugglers had been beforehand with them.

Not a man or a woman was to be found on the premises; not a cow or a horse; not a pig or a hen. And though the trap-door to the celler had been flung wide to assist them in their search, it was in vain they sought for the bales among which Tregenna had stood on the previous night.

Not a keg or a bale was there in the whole place, though they searched it from garret to cellar!

The brigadier was ferociously facetious, tauntingly jocose.

"Hey-day, Tregenna, I fear they gave thee too much of their contraband aqua vitæ, and that it has bred visions in thy brain!" said he, with an ugly smile on his red face, and a vicious