Summary

Ay, 'twas a cruel, cruel thing to fire on so young a lad, Ratsey said, as he stepped back a pace to study the effect of a Bag that he was chiselling on the Revenue schooner, "and trouble is likely to come to the other poor fellows taken, for Lawyer Empson says three of them will surely hang at next Assize.

Ay, 'twas a cruel, cruel thing to fire on so young a lad, Ratsey said, as he stepped back a pace to study the effect of a Bag that he was chiselling on the Revenue schooner, "and trouble is likely to come to the other poor fellows taken, for Lawyer Empson says three of them will surely hang at next Assize. I recollect," he went on, "thirty years ago, when there was a bit of a scuffle between the Royal Sophy and the Marnhull, they hanged four of the contrabandiers, and my old father caught his death of cold what with going to see the poor chaps turned off at Dorchester, and standing up to his knees in the river Frome to get a sight of them, for all the countryside was there, and such a press there was no place on land. There, that's enough," he said, turning again to the gravestone.