Day the _Elector_ brought the ketch into Moonfleet, and there was a posse
of constables to march the smugglers off to Dorchester Jail. The
prisoners trudged up through the village ironed two and two together,
while people stood at their doors or followed them, the men greeting them
with a kindly word, for we knew most of them as Ringstave and Monkbury
men, and the women sorrowing for their wives. But they left David's body
in the ketch, so the boy paid dear for his night's frolic.

'Ay, 'twas a cruel, cruel thing to fire on so young a lad,' Ratsey said,
as he stepped back a pace to study the effect of a flag that he was
chiselling on the Revenue schooner, 'and trouble is likely to come to
the other poor fellows taken, for Lawyer Empson says three of them will
surely hang at next Assize. I recollect', he went on, 'thirty years ago,
when there was a bit of a scuffle between the _Royal Sophy_ and the
_Marnhull_, they hanged four of the contrabandiers, and my old father
caught his death of cold what with going to see the poor chaps turned off
at Dorchester, and standing up to his knees in the river Frome to get a
sight of them, for all the countryside was there, and such a press there
was no place on land. There, that's enough,' he said, turning again to
the gravestone. 'On Monday I'll line the ports in black, and get a brush
of red to pick out the flag; and now, my son, you've helped with the
lantern, so come down to the Why Not? and there I'll have a word with
Elzevir, who sadly needs the talk of kindly friends to cheer him, and
we'll find you a glass of Hollands to keep out autumn chills.'

I was but a lad, and thought it a vast honour to be asked to the Why
Not?--for did not such an invitation raise me at once to the dignity of
manhood. Ah, sweet boyhood, how eager are we as boys to be quit of thee,
with what regret do we look back on thee before our man's race is
half-way run! Yet was not my pleasure without alloy, for I feared even to