school, to Hythe market, to Romney market. Our farm nestled down under
the steep, brown downs, just beside the Roman road to Canterbury; Stone
Street--the Street--we called it. Ralph's land was just on the other
side of the Street, and the shepherds on the downs used to see of nights
a dead-and-gone Rooksby, Sir Peter that was, ride upon it past the
quarry with his head under his arm. I don't think I believed in him, but
I believed in the smugglers who shared the highway with that horrible
ghost. It is impossible for any one nowadays-to conceive the effect
these smugglers had upon life thereabouts and then. They were the power
to which everything else deferred. They used to overrun the country in
great bands, and brooked no interference with their business. Not long
before they had defeated regular troops in a pitched battle on the
Marsh, and on the very day I went away I remember we couldn't do our
carting because the smugglers had given us notice they would need our
horses in the evening. They were a power in the land where there was
violence enough without them, God knows! Our position on that Street put
us in the midst of it all. At dusk we shut our doors, pulled down our
blinds, sat round the fire, and knew pretty well what was going on
outside. There would be long whistles in the dark, and when we found men
lurking in our barns we feigned not to see them--it was safer so.
The smugglers--the Free Traders, they called themselves--were as well
organized for helping malefactors out of the country as for running
goods in; so it came about that we used to have comers and forgers,
murderers and French spies--all sorts of malefactors--hiding in our
straw throughout the day, wait-for the whistle to blow from the Street
at dusk. I, born with my century, was familiar with these things; but
my mother forbade my meddling with them. I expect she knew enough
herself--all the resident gentry did. But Ralph--though he was to some
extent of the new school, and used to boast that, if applied to, he
"would grant a warrant against any Free Trader"--never did, as a matter