clever, to escape from all those cowardly coast-riders shooting right
and left at him! Such a man steal that paltry skirt that her mother
made such a fuss about! She was much more likely to find it in her
clothes-press filled with golden guineas.

Before she was as certain as she wished to be of this (by reason of
shrewd nativity), and while she believed that the fugitive must have
seized such a chance and made good his escape toward North Sea or
Flamborough, a quick shadow glanced across the long shafts of the sun,
and a bodily form sped after it. To the middle of the Dike leaped a
young man, smiling, and forth from the gully which had saved his life.
To look at him, nobody ever could have guessed how fast he had fled, and
how close he had lain hid. For he stood there as clean and spruce and
careless as even a sailor can be wished to be. Limber yet stalwart,
agile though substantial, and as quick as a dart while as strong as a
pike, he seemed cut out by nature for a true blue-jacket; but condition
had made him a smuggler, or, to put it more gently, a free-trader.
Britannia, being then at war with all the world, and alone in the right
(as usual), had need of such lads, and produced them accordingly, and
sometimes one too many. But Mary did not understand these laws.

This made her look at him with great surprise, and almost doubt whether
he could be the man, until she saw her skirt neatly folded in his hand,
and then she said, "How do you do, Sir?"

The free-trader looked at her with equal surprise. He had been in such
a hurry, and his breath so short, and the chance of a fatal bullet after
him so sharp, that his mind had been astray from any sense of beauty,
and of every thing else except the safety of the body. But now he looked
at Mary, and his breath again went from him.