bound to confess that he always managed,
somehow or other, to remain master of
field. Indeed, what Chancellor of the
Exchequer could be prepared to encounter the
triumphant demand with which Tristram
smashed to atoms my suggestions of morality,
political economy, and finance? He would
listen with apparent patience to all my solemn
and secular pleas for the revenue, and then
down he came upon me with the unanswerable
argument—

"But why should the King tax good
liquor? If they must have taxes, why can't
they tax something else?"

My efforts, moreover, to soften and remove
his doctrinal prejudice as to the unimportance,
in a moral point of view, of putting the
officers of His Majesty's revenue to death,
were equally unavailing. Indeed, to my
infinite chagrin, I found that I had lowered
myself exceedingly in his estimation by what
he called standing up for the exciseman.

"There had been divers parsons," he
assured me, " in his time in the parish, and very
larned clargy they were; and some very
strict; and some would preach one doctrine,
and some another; and there was one that
had very mean notions about running goods,
and said 'twas a wrong thing to do; but even
he, and the rest, never took no part with the
gauger—never! And besides," said old Trim,
with another demolishing appeal, " Wasn't
the exciseman always ready to put us to
death when he could?"

With such a theory it was not very
astonishing—although it startled me at the time
—that I was once suddenly assailed, in a
pause of his spade, with the puzzling inquiry,
"Can you tell me the reason, sir, that no
grass will ever grow upon the grave of a
man that's hanged unjustly?"

"No, indeed, Tristram, I never heard of the
fact before."

"Well, I thought every man know'd that
from the Scripture; why, you can see it, sir,
every Sabbath day. That grave on the right
hand of the path as you go down to the
porch-door, that heap of airth with no growth,
not one blade of grass on it—that's Will
Pooly's grave that was hanged unjustly."

"Indeed! but how came such a shocking
deed to be done?"

"Why you see, sir, they got poor Will
down to Bodmin, all among strangers, and
there was bribery, and false swearing; and
an unjust judge came down—and the jury,
all bad rascals, tin-and-copper-men—and so
they all agreed together, and they hanged
poor Will. But his friends begged the body
and brought the corpse home here to his
own parish; and they turfed the grave, and
they sowed the grass twenty times over, but
'twas all no use, nothing would ever grow—
he was hanged unjustly."

'' Well but Tristram, you have not told me
all this while what this man Pooly was
accused of—what had he done?"

"Done, sir! Done? Nothing whatsoever
but killed the exciseman!"

The glee, the chuckle, the cunning glance
were inimitably characteristic of the hardened
old smuggler; and then down went the spade
with a plunge of defiance, and as I turned
away, a snatch of his favourite song came
carolling after me like the ballad of a victory.

On, through the ground-sea, shove!
Light on the larboard bow!
There's a nine knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!

Hush! for the beacon fails:
The skulking gauger's by.
Down with your studding sails,
Let jib and fore-sail fly!

Hurrah, for the light once more!
Point her for Shark's Nose Head,
Our friends can keep the shore,
Or the skulking gauger's dead.

On, through the ground-sea, shove!
Light on the larboard bow!
There's a nine-knot breeze above,
And a sucking tide below!

Among the " King's men," whose achievements
haunted the old man's memory with a
sense of mingled terror and dislike, a certain
Parminter and his dog occupied a principal
place. This officer appeared to have been a
kind of Frank Kennedy in his way. and to
have chosen for his watchword the old Irish
signal " Dare!"

"Sir," said old Tristram one day, with a
burst of indignant wrath, " Sir, that villain
Parminter and his dog murdered with their
shetting-irons no less than seven of our
people at divers times, and they peacefully
at work in their calling all the while!"

I found on further inquiry that this man
Parminter was a bold and determined officer,
whom no threats could deter and no money
bribe. He always went armed to the teeth,
and was followed by a large, fierce, and dauntless
dog, which he had thought fit to call
Satan. This animal he had trained to carry
in his mouth a carbine or a loaded club,
which, at a signal from his master, Satan
brought to the rescue. " Ay, they was bold
audacious rascals—that Parminter and his
dog—but he went rather too far one day, as I
suppose," was old Tristram's chuckling remark
as he leaned upon his spade, and I stood by.

"Did he, Trim, in what way?"

"Why, sir, the case was this. Our people
had a landing down at Mellnach, in Johnnie
Mathoy's hole; and Parminter and his dog
found it out. So they got into the cave at
ebb tide, and laid in wait, and when the first
boat-load came ashore, just as the keel took
the ground, down storms Parminter, shouting
for Satan to follow. But the dog knew better,
and held back, they said, for the first time in
all his life: so in leaps Parminter smack into
the boat, alone, with Ms cutlass drawn; but,"