The uncommon personal strength, the daring spirit, and great
adroitness of Peter Connell, rendered him a very valuable acquisition
to his master in the course of his illicit occupations. Peter was,
in addition to his other qualities, sober and ready-witted, so that
whenever the gauger made his appearance, his expedients to baffle him
were often inimitable. Those expedients did not, however, always arise
from the exigency of the moment; they were often deliberately, and with
much exertion of ingenuity, planned by the proprietors and friends
of such establishments, perhaps for weeks before the gauger's visit
occurred. But, on the other hand, as the gauger's object was to
take them, if possible, by surprise, it frequently happened that his
appearance was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. It was then that the
prompt ingenuity of the people was fully seen, felt, and understood
by the baffled exciseman, who too often had just grounds for bitterly
cursing their talent at outwitting him.
Peter served his master as a kind of superintendent in such places,
until he gained the full knowledge of distilling, according to the
processes used by the most popular adepts in the art. Having acquired
this, he set up as a professor, and had excellent business. In the
meantime, he had put together by degrees a small purse of money, to
the amount of about twenty guineas--no inconsiderable sum for a
young Irishman who intends to begin the world on his own account.
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