I have never felt before as I feel in listening to you. You make me hate my own folk, with their villainies and their rough ways, kinswoman and confederate of theirs though I have been! Oh, sir, I feel, I know, that you are better than we, that we are but the nest of robbers and pirates you say, that we deserve no mercy at your hands!"
Passionate, earnest as she was, Tregenna kept his head sufficiently to be skeptical about this sudden appearance of conversion.
He drew back, almost imperceptibly, a little way, and said, in a cooler tone—
"And I fear 'tis little mercy some of you will get, when a stronger force is sent down to ferret your leaders out!"
"But you would make distinctions, sir, would you not?" said she, with tremulous eagerness. "You would not, for sure, deal with the lad Tom, poor Tom that you have lamed for life, as hardly as with some others?"
"Those that have done the worst will be the most harshly dealt with, certainly," said Tregenna.
"Ay, and none too harshly either, for some of them! villains, thieves, plunderers that they
