Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/155

Rh "Stand back, my darlings," said the miscreant; "I'll show you a trick worth two of this; I'll teach you how we bring out a bonnie lass from a bolted chamber in little Ireland."

So saying, he proceeded to prime a pistol, having previously hammered the flint with a little steel cross, curiously chased and ornamented, which he took from his bosom. "Ah!" said he, "may the devil cork me up in a stone bottle, and send me to seek out the latitude of the lake of darkness, if I don't carve up that old he-goat into relics! Now, come on, my early boys—my souls of boys! the boy that won't do as I do deserves to be whipped through Purgatory with the tail of St. Patrick's ass. Thack and thunder! Hell's to hinder us when I snap my pistol under the thatch."

In a moment the door opened. Miles Colvine stood on the threshold, a cocked pistol in his right hand, his sword gleaming in his left, his eyes shooting from them a fierce dark light, but his manner perfectly calm and collected. Behind him came the beautiful form of his daughter, with a pistol in her hand, and shuddering from head to foot at the immediate peril which seemed to beset her father. These maritime desperadoes started back at this sudden apparition of an armed man; and even their miscreant leader, forward as he was, recoiled a pace or two. The mariner eyed him for a moment, and said, "Did my sword then do its work slovenly, and did the deep sea not devour thee, thou immeasurable villain? But God has given thee back to earth, to become a warning how sure and how certain just vengeance is." And leaping on him as he spoke, I saw the pistol flash, and the gleam of the descending sword, in almost the same instant. I instantly started up with my companions, and the smugglers, perceiving this reinforcement, carried off their companion, groaning and cursing, and praying; and pushing their boat from the shore, vanished along the misty bosom of the summer sea.

I found Miles Colvine standing on the threshold of his house, and his daughter on her knees beside him. He knew me, for we had often passed each other on the beach and on the sea, and he was aware that I was a friend, for I had endeavoured in vain to oblige him in his forlorn state with little acts of kindness.

"Come hither, sir," said the mariner; "I have to thank