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252 would leave the service, and promised to settle down with his wife at no very great distance from Hurst Parsonage.

And although Parson Langney shook his head very lugubriously, and grumbled at the folly of a woman's marrying before she was thirty, his jolly face soon grew brighter when Joan came in, and, putting her arms round his neck under her lover's very nose, assured him that he was the nicest and handsomest man in the whole world, and that, if she were driven to get married, it should only be on compulsion, and on receiving her future husband's assurance that she was her father's girl still, and might be with him as much as she liked.

So they had a happy evening together, and when the young lieutenant bade them good night, and started on his way back to his boat, it was with never a thought of smugglers, or wreckers, builders of secret boats, or treacherous farmers' daughters, to damp his spirits.

There was a lull in the contraband traffic after these events, and Tregenna and the brigadier began to flatter themselves that their energy had at last awed the smugglers into submission, when one day the news was