He was only child to Elzevir Block, who kept the Why Not?
inn at the bottom of the village, and was with the contrabandiers, when their ketch was boarded that June night by the Government schooner.

People said that it was Magistrate Maskew of Moonfleet Manor who had put the Revenue men on the track, and anyway he was on board the _Elector_ as she overhauled the ketch.

There was some show of fighting when the vessels first came alongside, of one another, and Maskew drew a pistol and fired it off in young David's face, with only the two gunwales between them.

In the afternoon of Midsummer's Day the _Elector_ brought the ketch into Moonfleet, and there was a posse of constables to march the smugglers off to Dorchester Jail.

The prisoners trudged up through the village ironed two and two together, while people stood at their doors or followed them, the men greeting them with a kindly word, for we knew most of them as Ringstave and Monkbury men, and the women sorrowing for their wives.