practice. We ought to have rehearsed this before we started. It's
embarrassing to do it here, with the eyes of the world upon us, so
to speak. Now try again."

We tried again, and our leader said we had done much better.

"Ed," he said, "walk with more of a roll in your gait,--a deep-sea
roll. See--this way. And pull your hats down low over your eyes,
and glance furtively from right to left."

"I can't roll, nor anything else," Ed remarked, "until I get this
pebble out of my shoe."

And he sat down on the door-step of a house, and took off one
shoe. As he did so, the clock in a church belfry struck eleven.

"Eleven," reflected Mr. Daddles. "I mean: 'tis the signal, men! If
the Cap'n has not failed us the lugger should be in the cove at
this hour,--and we coves should be in the lugger, too. Ha! how
like ye the pleasantry? 'Tis a pretty wit I have, as no less a man
than Mr. Pope himself told me at the Coca Tree--No; I don't
believe Mr. Pope would know the mate of a gang of smugglers,--do
you?"

Jimmy Toppan and I assured him that the only Mr. Pope we knew was
librarian of the Sunday School at home, and that if he knew any
smugglers he had kept it a secret. Ed Mason had got rid of his
pebble, and he now joined us again.

"Are you ready, men?"