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"No, that it ain't, my friend," said Coleman, rising and patting his foe on the back. "I can't tell ye how pleased I am to meet with ye. You're gettin' stouter, I think. Smugglin' seems to agree with ye! hey?" He said this with a leer, and Bax laughed as he inspected Long Orrick more narrowly.
Rendered somewhat desperate by his prying disposition, they had seized him on this particular night, during a scuffle, and were now about to dispose of him in a time-honoured way. Tommy also discovered that the coast-guard-man's captors were Long Orrick, Rodney Nick, and a few more of his boatmen acquaintances.
People said that Mr Burton, the missionary to seamen, had something to do with this improvement. It is not improbable that he had. But Long Orrick died as he had lived, a notorious and incorrigible smuggler.
His little brother David was drowned at sea. This Mary Bax was cousin to the father of John Bax, who figures so conspicuously in our tale. At the tomb of Mary Bax, then, as we have said, Long Orrick resolved to make a stand.
"It could n't have rolled far on this soft road," said Varney presently. "Just where do you think you dropped it?" Sam Orrick rose behind his stooping figure with upraised club, a blaze of triumph in his sodden old eyes. "There!" he cried with a senseless laugh. "It's there, Stanhope!" The club fell with a thud; and Varney, meeting it as he straightened up, toppled over like a log, face downward.
The fact was that the smuggler's clothing was so stuffed in all parts with tobacco that his lanky proportions had quite disappeared, and he had become so ludicrously rotund as to be visibly altered even in a dark night! "Well, it does agree with me, that's a fact," said Long Orrick, with a savage laugh; in the tone of which there was mingled however, quite as much bitterness as merriment.
To Tommy, who crouched behind the tomb, and Rodger and Orrick, who approached in front, it seemed as if the spirit of the murdered girl had leaped out of the grave. The effect on all three was electrical.
"Why, that 'un that killed that dog o' yours, and put you to sleep before the crowd, and that 'un that sent Mamie Orrick to Gawd knows where. But shucks! Drop it, Jim. I wouldn't have allooded to it, on'y I thought you'd see the fun of the thing." It takes a philosopher to perceive humor in taunts at his own personal courage, and Mr.
"Then I suppose old Sam Orrick," he said kindly, "is your father's father." "Nawser," he answered slowly. And he added presently, "He wuz me mudder's father." After that, the silence lengthened. Varney looked off down the river. Tommy Orrick, whose father was named something else, clapped his hand suddenly to his lip, because his cigar just then scorched it unbearably.
In Hunston, there followed next day a whirl of police activity, of which the net results were tame in the extreme. Of all the fierce band which had stormed the house of Mr. Stanhope, only poor old Orrick and Mr. British, the bookseller he who had been pulled out senseless from under the beams of the porch were identified. Mr.
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