Page:Joan, the curate.djvu/83

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A Load Of Hay.
77

off-side of the cart with every motion of the vehicle.

They went so slowly, and the cart was so uncomfortable from the lack of springs, that the journey would have been miserably tedious but for the interest Tregenna felt in the woman herself, an interest which increased tenfold as he listened to her conversation.

She was very frank, very straightforward, and made no more pretense than she had done to the brigadier of being shocked by the doings of the smugglers.

"They've been brought up to it like to a trade," said she, "and it's passed from father to son. And when duties be high, so I've heard say, the free-traders start up from the ground like to mushrooms. And look, sir, be they so much to blame as the folks that buy their goods from them, and that think no harm of getting goods cheap, seeing that, after all, defrauding a Government never seems like the same thing as defrauding a man? Governments doan't seem to be flesh and blood like to ourselves, do they, sir?"

"Well, maybe not. But still——"

"Still, it brings it home to us that 'tis a crime