DISCIPLINE ASSERTED As soon as his troublesome visitors were gone, the rector sat down in his deep arm-chair, laid aside his spectacles, and began to think.

His face, while he thought, lost more and more of the calm and cheerful expression which made it so pleasant a face to gaze upon; and he sighed, without knowing it, at some dark ideas, and gave a little shake of his grand old head.

The revenue officer had called his favorite pupil and cleverest parishioner "a felon outlaw;" and if that were so, Robin Lyth was no less than a convicted criminal, and must not be admitted within his doors.

Formerly the regular penalty for illicit importation had been the forfeiture of the goods when caught, and the smugglers (unless they made resistance or carried fire-arms) were allowed to escape and retrieve their bad luck, which they very soon contrived to do.

And as yet, upon this part of the coast, they had not been guilty of atrocious crimes, such as the smugglers of Sussex and Hampshire--who must have been utter fiends--committed, thereby raising all the land against them.