Page:Way to wealth, or, Poor Richard's maxims improved, &c..pdf/24

Rh way to the public-house. They sat for some time drinking freely. The spirits of the stranger became elevated at every draught to a fearful sort of desperation;— Anderson attempted to be gay, but a sigh occasionally escaped him, and he then seized the glass with a frantic haste. He at last became, what the landlord had never before seen, half intoxicated. A whistle was heard without. The stranger instantly grew collected; and in a minute threw off the influence of the liquor. He said, in a low but determined voice to Anderson, “It is time.”

They left the house. The landlord suspected that something would be wrong, and sat up till a late hour. It was near midnight when he heard firing. He rushed, with some country people, in the direction of the sound, and found on the beach a small party of revenue-officers engaged with a gang of smugglers. The officers being overpowered with numbers made a hasty retreat; and the smugglers speedily embarked. The landlord went to the beach when all was quiet, and he there found the unhappy Anderson mortally wounded.

The dying man had sufficient strength to declare, that he had been induced that fatal night, for the first time, to engage in the desperate career of a smuggler. “He had justly forfeited his life,” he said, “to his abandonment of the peaceful and virtuous course which a wise Providence had marked out for him. His wife”— death relieved him of his bitterest recollection. The scene that followed at the cottage I cannot attempt to describe. I saw the havoc which that scene had produced. I returned home, I hope, a wiser and a better man. “Let him who standeth takotake [sic] heed lest he fall.”