whispering low,—­or at least as low as a throat rendered husky by much gin can whisper,—­intimates that he can put the “Captain” (he’d promote you to be “Admiral” on the spot if he thought that thereby he might flatter you into buying) on to the “lay” of some cigars—­“smuggled,” he breathes from behind a black and horny paw, whose condition alone would taint the finest Havanna that ever graced the lips of king or duke—­the like of which may be found in no tobacconist’s establishment in the United Kingdom.  There have been young men, greatly daring, who have been known to traffic with this hoary ruffian, and who have lived to be sadder and wiser men.  Of the flavour of those weeds the writer cannot speak, but the reek is as the reek which belches from the Pit of Tophet.  However, in the eighteenth century our forefathers, for a variety of reasons, greatly preferred the smuggled goods, and many a squire or wealthy landowner, many a magistrate even, found it by no means to his disadvantage if on occasion he should be a little blind; a still tongue might not unlikely be rewarded by the mysterious arrival of an anker of good French brandy, or by something in the silk, or lace, or tea line for the ladies of his household.  People saw no harm in such doings in those good old days; defrauding the revenue was fair game.  And if a “gauger” lost his life in some one or other of the bloody encounters that frequently took place between the smugglers and the revenue officers, why, so much the worse for the “gauger.”  He was an unnecessarily officious sort of a person, who had better have kept out of the way.  In fact, popular sentiment was entirely with the smugglers, who by the bulk of the population were regarded with the greatest admiration.  Smuggling, indeed, was so much a recognised trade or profession that there was actually a fixed rate at which smuggled goods were conveyed from place to place; for instance, for tea or tobacco from the Solway to Edinburgh the tariff was fifteen shillings per box or bale.  A man, therefore, owning three or four horses could, with luck, make a very tidy profit on the carriage, for each horse would carry two packages, and the distances were not great.  There was certainly a good sporting chance of the convoy being captured in transit, but the smugglers were daring, determined men, and the possibility of a brush with the preventive officers merely added zest to the affair.

Of the other, the distilling branch of the smugglers’ business, a great deal was no doubt done in those lonely hills of Northumberland and Roxburgh and the other Border counties.  There they had wealth of fuel, abundance of water, and a plentiful choice of solitary places admirably adapted to their purpose; it was easy to rig up a bothy, or hut of turf thatched with heather, in some secluded spot far from the haunts of inconvenient revenue officers, and a Still that would turn out excellent spirit was not difficult to construct.  With reasonable care the thing