"There was no time to lose, and Dolly rose to the occasion. Up the chimney she popped the man; then, taking an armful of dried furze, she made a fire in the wide open grate, and filled the crock with water. Into the middle of the kitchen she pulled a 'keeve,' which she used for washing, and when the naval officer and his men burst into the kitchen, Dolly was sitting on a stool, with her legs bare, and her feet dangling over the 'keeve.' This was the situation.
DOLLY PENTREATH.
"'A man, indeed!' quoth Dolly; 'and me washing my feet!' She was only waiting for the water to 'het,' and they might all wash their own, if they liked. Search? Of 'coose' they might, and be sugared. (This was old Cornish, of course.) Would they like to look into the crock, and see if a man was boiling there?
"Search they did, and found no man; but Dolly found her tongue, and let them have it; and then she found her thick shoes and let them fly; and then she made for the chopper, and that cleared the house. Dolly made the most noise when she heard the poor man cough in his hiding-place. The aromatic smoke from the burning furze tickled his throat, and though life depended on silence, he could not keep it. Then Dolly gave tongue, and old Cornish—the genuine article—rattled amongst the rafters, like notes from brazen trumpets blown by tempests. She threw wide her door, and, with bare legs and feet, proclaimed to all the world the mission of the young lieutenant and his men, who now saw anger in all eyes, and made good their retreat whilst in whole skins. Then Dolly liberated the man in the chimney. In the dark night a fishing lugger stole out of Mousehole with the deserter on board, and made for Guernsey, which, in those days, was a sort of dumping-ground for all who were unable to pay their debts at home, or were 'wanted' for the hangman."
The old man, with true blue eyes, turned a quid in his mouth, and said, with the simplicity of a child, "And that man was my mother's father."
Guy was preparing to cross-examine the man of truth, but we would not have it. It was his own witness. He had found him sitting on an iron stump, and was bound to treat him as a witness of truth. Why shouldn't his own mother's father have been a deserter from the king's ship, and been saved by Dolly Pentreath? Guy agreed; but, said he, it was suspicious that that man should have been sitting on that very stump, at the very right moment, and have the right story on the tip of his tongue for the right people to listen to. There was too much "coincidence." We let it go at that.
The Bookworm had the old man with the truthful blue eyes all to himself for a time, and discovered the very room in the Keigwin Arms in which Dolly was wont to take her pint and her pipe at her ease, and the window out of which she would thrust her hard old face and shout to the fishers when they came to the landing-place. The old lady was keen on her bargains, and when she had bought her "cate," she trudged into Penzance with "creel" on back, and spoiled the Egyptians, according to the rules of art. The costume of the fishwife is the same now as then—the short skirt, the turned-up sleeves, the pad for resting the creel. Newhaven fishwives, but with less colour.