it.’  ‘Because,’ retorted the doctor, but gently, ’your smuggler lives in his own cottage, serves no master, and has public opinion—­by which I mean the only public opinion he knows, that of his neighbours—­to back him; whereas your poacher lives by day in affected subservience to the landowner he robs by night, and because you take good care that public opinion is against him.’  ‘To be sure I do,’ affirmed Mr Trelawny, and would have continued the argument, but here old Squire Morshead struck in and damned the Government for its new coastguard service.  ‘I don’t deny,’ he said, ’it’s an improvement on anything we’ve seen yet under the Customs, or would be, if there was any real smuggling left to grapple with.  But the “trade” has been dwindling now for these thirty years, and to invent this fire-new service to suppress what’s dying of its own accord is an infernal waste of public money.’  ‘I doubt,’ Sir John demurred, ’if smuggling be quite so near death’s door as you fancy.  Hey, doctor—­in Polpeor now?’ The doctor opined that very little smuggling survived nowadays; the profits were not worth the risk.  ‘Though, to be sure,’ he added, ’public opinion in Polpeor is still with the trade.  For an illustration, not a soul in the town will let the new coast-guardsmen a house to live in, and I hear the Government intends to send down a hulk from Plymouth Dock and moor it alongside the quay.’  He paused.  ‘But,’ he went on, with a glance over his spectacles at Sir John, ’our host, who owns two-thirds of the cottages in Polpeor, may correct me and say that Government never offered a fair rent?’ Sir John threw back his head and laughed.  ’My heir, when he succeeds me,’ he said, ’may start new industries in Polpeor; but I’ll not build new houses to worry my sitting tenants.’

It was now eleven o’clock, and by-and-by the company dispersed—­which they did almost simultaneously and from the stable-yard, amid a tremendous clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of stablemen, ‘gee’s’ and ‘woa’s,’ buttoning of overcoats, wrapping of throats in comforters, ‘good-nights,’ and invitations to meet again.  Sir John himself moved up and down in the throng, speeding his parting guests, criticising their horseflesh, offering an extra wrap to one, assuring himself that another had his pocket-flask charged for a long night ride.

In the press Doctor Unonius—­whether because he never stinted a vail to the grooms, or because they felt a natural kindness for one who had brought their wives through confinement and ushered their children into the world; and anyway there was sense in standing well with a man who might at any time in this transitory world have to decide the important question of your living or dying—­managed to get old Dapple harnessed in the gig, and the lamps lit, and to jog off with the earliest.  The drive of Penalune extends for a mile, and along it, ahead of him and behind him, the voices of his fellow-guests challenged one another in song, rising clear on the frosty air,—­