Thus he set his virtues against his vices, and struck an even balance between them.  When most unsteady upon his legs he most asserted his integrity, declaring that not a gill or a thread came into his port without paying its duty, and calling Heaven to witness that it had been his hand that had saved the life of a noble young gentleman.  Thereupon, perhaps, drawing forth the gleaming token of his prowess—­the gold snuffbox—­from his breeches-pocket, and holding it tight in his brown and hairy fist, he would first offer his interlocutor a pinch of rappee, and would then call upon him to read the inscription engraved upon the lid of the case, demanding to know whether it mattered a fig if a man did drink a drop too much now and then, provided he collected every farthing of the royal revenues, and had been the means of saving the son of the Earl of Clandennie.

Never for an instant upon such an occasion would he permit his precious box to quit his possession.  It was to him an emblem of those virtues that no one knew but himself, wherefore the more he misdoubted his own virtuousness the more valuable did the token of that rectitude become in his eyes.  “Yes, you may look at it,” he would say, “but damme if you shall handle it.  I would not,” he would cry, “let the Devil himself take it out of my hands.”

The talk concerning the impious possession of the Old Free Grace Meeting-House was at its height when the official consciousness of the Collector, who was just then laboring under his constitutional infirmity, became suddenly seized with an irrepressible alarm.  He declared that he smoked something worse than the Devil upon Pig and Sow Point, and protested that it was his opinion that Captain Obadiah was doing a bit of free-trade upon his own account, and that dutiable goods were being smuggled in at night under cover of these incredible stories.  He registered a vow, sealing it with the most solemn protestations, and with a multiplicity of ingenious oaths that only a mind stimulated by the heat of intoxication could have invented, that he would make it his business, upon the first occasion that offered, to go down to Pig and Sow Point and to discover for himself whether it was the Devil or smugglers that had taken possession of the Old Free Grace Meeting-House.  Thereupon, hauling out his precious snuffbox and rapping upon the lid, he offered a pinch around.  Then calling attention to the inscription, he demanded to know whether a man who had behaved so well upon that occasion had need to be afraid of a whole churchful of devils.  “I would,” he cried, “offer the Devil a pinch, as I have offered it to you.  Then I would bid him read this and tell me whether he dared to say that black was the white of my eye.”

Nor were those words a vain boast upon the Collector’s part, for, before a week had passed, it being reported that there had been a renewal of manifestations at the old church, the Collector, finding nobody with sufficient courage to accompany him, himself entered into a small boat and rowed down alone to Pig and Sow Point to investigate, for his own satisfaction, those appearances that so agitated the community.