a sum of money—­about fifty pounds—­scraped together by thrifty self-denial during a dozen years of servitude, amply compensated in the eyes of several idle and needy young fellows for the unlovely outline of her person; and Anne, with an infatuation too common with persons of her class and condition, and in spite of repeated warning, and the secret misgivings, one would suppose, of her own mind, married the best-looking, but most worthless and dissipated of them all.  This man, Henry Ransome by name, was, I have been informed, constantly intoxicated during the first three months of wedlock, and then the ill-assorted couple disappeared from the neighbourhood of Itchen, and took up their abode in one of the hamlets of the New Forest.  Many years afterwards, when I joined the Preventive Service, I frequently heard mention of his name as that of a man singularly skilful in defrauding the revenue, as well as in avoiding the penalties which surround that dangerous vocation.  One day, he was pointed out to me when standing by the Cross-House near the Ferry, in company with a comparatively youthful desperado, whose real name was John Wyatt, though generally known amongst the smuggling fraternity and other personal intimates, by the sobriquet of Black Jack—­on account, I suppose, of his dark, heavy-browed, scowling figure-head, one of the most repulsive, I think, I have ever seen.  Anne’s husband, Henry Ransome, seemed, so far as very brief observation enabled me to judge, quite a different person from his much younger, as well as much bigger and brawnier associate.  I did not doubt that, before excessive indulgence had wasted his now pallid features, and sapped the vigour of his thin and shaking frame, he had been a smart, good-looking chap enough; and there was, it struck me, spite of his reputation as ’a knowing one,’ considerably more of the dupe than the knave, of the fool than the villain, in the dreary, downcast, skulking expression that flitted over his features as his eye caught mine intently regarding him.  I noticed also that he had a dry, hard cough, and I set down in my own mind as certain that he would, ere many months passed away, be consigned, like scores of his fellows, to a brandy-hastened grave.  He indicated my presence—­proximity, rather—­to Wyatt, by a nudge on the elbow, whereupon that respectable personage swung sharply round, and returned my scrutinising gaze by one of insolent defiance and bravado, which he contrived to render still more emphatic by thrusting his tongue into his cheek.  This done, he gathered up a coil of rope from one of the seats of the Cross-House, and said:  ’Come, Harry, let’s be off.  That gentleman seems to want to take our pictures—­on account that our mugs are such handsome ones, no doubt; and if it was a mildish afternoon, I shouldn’t mind having mine done; but as the weather’s rather nippy like, we’d better be toddling, I think.’  They then swaggered off, and crossed the Ferry.