"Yes," said my father, wondering all the time why he should give the promise. And that was all the conversation they had together at that time, for my father told me, and he was always a truthful man. But his cattle got better from that time, and as Mr. Quethiock, of Falmouth, lent him £300 he was able to tide over his difficulty.
A little while later my father married Margaret Quethiock, and the fortune that her father gave her was £200, besides the £300 he had borrowed, and Elmwater Barton rent free during her lifetime. If she died before my father, the question of rent was to be considered. They had been married about two years when I was born; but my mother died at my birth, so I never knew a mother's care and love.
My grandfather Quethiock said nothing about rent after my mother's death, but my father did not become a rich man. Somehow things were constantly going wrong with him, and he was in endless trouble about money matters. It was his stepmother, he told me, who was constantly persecuting him, because she feared his getting rich, while her son, who enjoyed my father's wealth, had all sorts of people ready to do his will. Only for him to hint at a thing, and his satellites would do it. Thus, one day a herd of cattle would get into a cornfield and destroy it; and on another, without any apparent reason, a corn-mow would catch fire. We could never trace it to them, but we always knew by the jeering laugh on Tresidder's face when he passed us who was the cause of our trouble.
All this shortened my father's life. When I was nineteen, at the time when he should have been in his prime, he was a worn-out old man; and so, when sickness overtook him, he had no strength to fight against it. It was during this sickness that he told me some of the things I have written, and also informed me of other matters which will be related later.
I was with him shortly before he died, and then he said to me very earnestly, "I leave you Elmwater Barton, Jasper, for I don't think your grandfather Quethiock will ever charge you rent, and he told me it should be yours completely at his death; but your real property is Pennington, my boy. Now I want you to make me a promise."
"I will promise anything in my power, father," I said.
"Then," he replied, quietly, "I want you to promise me that you will never rest until you get back your own. Never rest until you are back at Pennington as master and owner. You have been robbed, my son. I have tried to get your rights and have failed, but you must not fail."
"No, father, I will not fail," I replied. "I will never rest until I have got back Pennington."
"And never trust a Tresidder, Jasper; they are all as deep as the bottomless pit, and as cruel as the fiend who rules there."
"I hear, father," was my reply, "and you shall be obeyed."