Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/84

78 to smuggle when the king sends down a troop of redcoats to shoot us down, sir. Ah, yes, sir, I'm not defending 'em, though there's many a good-hearted lad among them; ay, and some of my own kin too, I'm main sorry to tell."

"Surely they'll not be so foolhardy as to continue in these ways, now that they must do it at such fearsome risk!" urged Tregenna.

"Nay, sir, I know not. But 'twould be a fair day for Sussex if you could but get the men to give it up, and to take to honester work again."

The words were hardly out of her mouth when the cart sank down into a small morass with such a jerk that Tregenna, less used to this type of vehicle than his companions, was all but precipitated into the road. At the same moment a slight groan from the back part of the cart struck upon his ears, and startled him considerably.

All at once it flashed into his mind that it was not a load of contraband tobacco and spirits, laces and silks that the hay was concealing, but the wounded smuggler Tom, who had eluded the brigadier, escaping by the back way from the Parsonage on the approach of the soldiers. Almost at the same moment he realized why it