'Or will you take the lantern while I move them ?' 'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon- wheel.
When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered what he would say.
'You know what they are ?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.
'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply.

He was an inland man, the son of highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such articles were there.
'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone of candour that was not without a touch of irony.
Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving.

'Not smugglers' liquor ?' he said.
'Yes,' said she.

'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come over in the dark from France.' In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as turnips.

So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she wished to produce upon him.
'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a gentle, apologetic voice.