ever saw. She lived in a gentleman's house as a
sort of nurse or governess, where all were very fond of her, and she
might have lived on in the house to the end of her days; but she was
courted by a fine-looking fellow, who passed as the captain of a
merchant vessel. A captain he was, though not of an honest trader, as
he pretended, but of a smuggling craft, of which there were not a few in
those days off this coast. The match was thought a good one for Nancy
Trewinham when she married Captain Brewhard. They lived in good style
and she was made much of, and looked upon as a lady, but before long she
found out her husband's calling, and right-thinking and good as she was
she could not enjoy her riches. She tried to persuade her husband to
abandon his calling, but he laughed at her, and told her that if it was
not for that he should be a beggar.

"He moved away from Penzance, where he had a house, and after going to
two or three other places, came to live near here. They had at this
time two children, a fine lad of fifteen or sixteen years old, and your
mother Judith.

"The captain was constantly away from home, and, to the grief of his
wife, insisted on taking his boy with him. She well knew the hazardous
work he was engaged in; so did most of the people on the coast, though
he still passed where he lived for the master of a regular merchantman.

"There are some I have known engaged in smuggling for years, who have
died quietly in their beds, but many, too, have been drowned at sea or
killed in action with the king's cruisers, or shot landing their goods.

"There used to be some desperate work going on along this coast in my
younger days.

"At last the captain, taking his boy with him, went away in his lugger,
the `Lively Nancy,' over to France. She was a fine craft, carrying
eight guns, and a crew of thirty men or more. The king's cruisers had
long been on the watch for her. As you know, smugglers always choose a
dark and stormy night for running their cargoes. There was a cutter at
the time off the coast commanded by an officer who had made up his mind
to take the `Lively Nancy,' let her fight ever so desperately. Her
captain laughed at his threats, and declared that he would send her to
the bottom first.

"I lived at that time with my husband and Nelly's mother, our only
child, at Landewednach. It was blowing hard from the south-west with a
cloudy sky, when just before daybreak a sound of firing at