sometimes the smugglers, when closely pressed and seeing no hope of rescue
if taken, as their last resort, drew their dirks and pistols; and wo to the
official who then persisted in attempting a seizure.

But the system of tactics more generally practiced by the smugglers was
that of craft and concealment, carried out by some ingenious measure to
prevent all suspicion of the times and places of their movements, by
travelling in the night or in stormy weather, or in the most unfrequented
routes, and, when pursued, by putting the pursuers on false scents, or by
feints of running away with loads of empty boxes to mislead pursuit, till
the goods, which had been previously taken to some place of temporary
concealment, could be removed from the vicinity of the search and sent on
their destination.

Such were the general features of the illicit traffic which characterized
the period of which we are treating,--a traffic which laid the foundations
of many a village fortune, whose dashing heirs would not probably be very
willing to acknowledge the true source from which the wealth and position
they may now be enjoying was derived,--and finally a traffic which, in its
attending homicides and desperate affrays, its hot pursuits and marvellous
escapes, its curious concealments and artful subterfuges, and, lastly, in
the family and neighborhood feuds which it left behind, would furnish
materials for a series of tales as wild and romantic, if not always as
creditable to the actors, as any thing ever yet spread before the public.

It was this questionable business which was then occupying the thoughts of
Gaut Gurley, and in which it was his aim to involve Mark Elwood, whom he
had pitched on for the purpose, as not only a man of sufficient means, with
no scruples which could not be overcome, but a man whom he believed he
could make dependent on him, when once enlisted, and to whom he could