The former pirate-captain looked like a deserter from the churchyard (as we say); the face of this child-murderer was the colour of one long in the tomb; with but little signs of life except in the lurid glare of his sunken eyes.
William Penrose with much difficulty induced the 'wisht-looking' object to converse; and, after a while, led him to talk of the West Country, then of Sennen. From that the pilgrim spoke of Penrose, and asked him if he knew, in Penrose orchard, a certain apple-tree, which he pointly described. He had no sooner mentioned it than the inn-keeper exclaimed, "I am a dead man."
The miserable wretch begged the pilgrim to have mercy on him and listen to his confession, in which he declared he was driven to commit the murder by his evil spirit that made him dislike the child, because he had long hated his parents, more than from any love of gold given him by Jan of Penrose, to remove the only obstacle to his possession of the estate.
William Penrose—who was still unknown to the inn-keeper—wondered what cause of ill-will he could ever have had against the good old Squire or his wife, until the former pirate told how he was the prodigal son—long supposed dead—of an ancient, respectable, but poor family, whose ancestral seat was within a few miles of Penrose—how, almost from his childhood, he had long and truly loved, and as he trusted, had his love returned by the lady who became the wife of Squire Penrose,—how that he had left his home in St. Just on a desperate privateering expedition, in hopes of soon gaining sufficient riches to make the lady's parents regard him with favour,—how, whilst he was returning with gold enough to buy the parish, Penrose had wooed and won the lady—his first and only love, for whom he had toiled and suffered every hardship during many years.
He also related how when he came home so altered, by the burning suns of the Spanish Main, that his nearest relatives knew him not, and found out the ill return his lady-love had made him, that his only solace was the hope of revenge.
Some of the gold that he had sweat blood to gain, for the sake of the faithless fair, was laid out in a fast sailing craft, which might pass for a merchant-man, privateer, or pirate, as she was all in turn during a few years that he roamed the British seas.
The vessel was manned with a desperate crew, most of them his old comrades, who would do anything to please him. The design he had formed, more through hate than love, was to carry the lady off to some foreign land.
A year or so after his return he landed one night in Whitsand Bay, accompanied by a great part of his well-armed crew, who took their way towards Penrose, where he learned ere their arrival, that his design of carrying off the lady was frustrated by her having been laid in the grave a few days before.
After this he wandered over sea and land by turns, caring nothing what became of him, until cast on Gwenvor Sands—poor and naked, as his ship foundered in deep water, when all but himself were drowned; and, as bad luck would have it, he reached the shore on some loose part of the wreck.
The worst portion of his story from this time is already told; but no one can tell, as he related, how the desire of gold—to enable him to recommence his roving life, far away from the hated sight of the land and everything else that recalled a remembrance of his blighted youthful hopes—maddening drink, and a wicked heart, farther irritated by Jan Penrose, made him murder the child that he would have given a hundred lives to restore before he received the uncle's bloody gold.