“Let’s stalk him an’ catch him,” he said excitedly.  “Come on.  Let’s take some weapons.”  He seized his pop-gun from a corner.  “You take—­” he looked round the room—­“You take the wastepaper basket to put over his head an’—­an’ pin down his arms an’ somethin’ to tie him up!—­I know—­the skin I—­he—­shot in Africa.  You can tie its paws in front of him.  Come on!  Let’s catch him smugglin’.”

He stepped out boldly into the dusk with his pop-gun, followed by the blindly obedient Peggy carrying the wastepaper basket in one hand and the skin in the other.

Mr. Percival Jones was making quite a little ceremony of consigning his brandy and cigars to the waves.  He had composed “a little effort” upon it which began,

    “O deeps, receive these objects vile,
     Which nevermore mine eyes shall soil.”

He went down to the edge of the sea and, taking a bottle in each hand, held them out at arms’ length, while he began in his high-pitched voice,

     “O deeps, receive these——­”

He stopped.  A small boy stood beside him, holding out at him the point of what in the semi-darkness Mr. Jones took to be a loaded rifle.  William mistook his action in holding out the bottles.

“It’s no good tryin’ to drink it up,” he said severely.  “We’ve caught you smugglin’.”

Mr. Percival Jones laughed nervously.

“My little man!” he said, “that’s a very dangerous—­er—­thing for you to have!  Suppose you hand it over to me, now, like a good little chap.”

William recognised his voice.

[Illustration:  “WE’VE CAUGHT YOU SMUGGLING!” WILLIAM SAID SEVERELY.]

“Fancy you bein’ a smuggler all the time!” he said with righteous indignation in his voice.

“Take away that—­er—­nasty gun, little boy,” pleaded his captive plaintively.

“You—­ah—­don’t understand it.  It—­er—­might go off.”

William was not a boy to indulge in half measures.  He meant to carry the matter off with a high hand.

“I’ll shoot you dead,” he said dramatically, “if you don’t do jus’ what I tell you.”

Mr. Percival Jones wiped the perspiration from his brow.

“Where did you get that rifle, little boy?” he asked in a voice he strove to make playful.  “Is it—­ah—­is it loaded?  It’s—­ah—­unwise, little boy.  Most unwise.  Er—­give it to me to—­er—­take care of.  It—­er—­might go off, you know.”

William moved the muzzle of his weapon, and Mr. Percival Jones shuddered from head to foot.  William was a brave boy, but he had experienced a moment of cold terror when first he had approached his captive.  The first note of the quavering high-pitched voice had, however, reassured him.  He instantly knew himself to be the better man.  His captive’s obvious terror of his pop-gun almost persuaded him that he held in his hand some formidable death-dealing instrument.  As a matter of fact Mr. Percival Jones was temperamentally an abject coward.