the unlovely outline of her person; and Anne, with an infatuation too
common with persons of her class and condition, and in spite of
repeated warning, and the secret misgivings, one would suppose, of her
own mind, married the best-looking, but most worthless and dissipated
of them all. This man, Henry Ransome by name, was, I have been
informed, constantly intoxicated during the first three months of
wedlock, and then the ill-assorted couple disappeared from the
neighbourhood of Itchen, and took up their abode in one of the hamlets
of the New Forest. Many years afterwards, when I joined the Preventive
Service, I frequently heard mention of his name as that of a man
singularly skilful in defrauding the revenue, as well as in avoiding
the penalties which surround that dangerous vocation. One day, he was
pointed out to me when standing by the Cross-House near the Ferry, in
company with a comparatively youthful desperado, whose real name was
John Wyatt, though generally known amongst the smuggling fraternity
and other personal intimates, by the _sobriquet_ of Black Jack--on
account, I suppose, of his dark, heavy-browed, scowling figure-head,
one of the most repulsive, I think, I have ever seen. Anne's husband,
Henry Ransome, seemed, so far as very brief observation enabled me to
judge, quite a different person from his much younger, as well as much
bigger and brawnier associate. I did not doubt that, before excessive
indulgence had wasted his now pallid features, and sapped the vigour
of his thin and shaking frame, he had been a smart, good-looking chap
enough; and there was, it struck me, spite of his reputation as 'a
knowing one,' considerably more of the dupe than the knave, of the
fool than the villain, in the dreary, downcast, skulking expression
that flitted over his features as his eye caught mine intently
regarding him. I noticed also that he had a dry, hard cough, and I set
down in my own mind as certain that he would, ere many months passed
away, be consigned, like scores of his fellows, to a brandy-hastened