'twas in Trafalgar's Bay Author:Walter Besant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII. OUT OF THE GOLDEN MIST. WE were back again at Ronsdon—Dan G ulliver and Job and I—to begin again such portion of the old life as was possible... more ». " We will go on," said Dan sadly, "just as we used to go on before ever he came. We will forget that he ever came. You will forget that you are a yonng lady." Alas! not only was the old time gone, but nothing like it could ever come again. Will had torn up the old time and thrown it away. It was dead. But the memory was left. One could sit and think till day after day that summer of 1803 unrolled itself again, and I could remember every word he said, even the lightest, with every gesture and every look. The people at Lyme welcomed us all with a cordiality which meant not only gratitude for the past, but hope for the future. Since that dreadful day of rebuke when Joshua's delivery of goods was discovered to be so much sea-water and nothing else, the town had been without brandy. Campion's fine old Jamaica rum, well enough in its way, was a poor substitute for the right good Nantes which Dan had provided. A taste had been developed which was doomed to disappointment, for no one succeeded Dan. A man cannot suddenly become a smuggler. Relations have to be established on the opposite shore, a connection to be formed at home; it is a business which is the growth of years. Now Dan represented the third, and his sons the fourth generation, of a long career in the trade, during which the whole business for this part of the coast had dropped into the hands of Gulliver and Company, smugglers to the nobility, gentry, and clergy of Lyme Regis and the surrounding country. Imagine, therefore, what a blow it was to the district when the fatal arrest happened, followed by the dreadful discovery of the sea- water ! So that, when we ...« less