e in my Master's
possession. On the other, I had never known him lie or deceive, or
engage me to further any deceit; his word was his bond, and by practice
my word was his bond also. Further, of this affair I had already begun
to wonder if a man's plain senses could be trusted, as you will hear
reason by-and-by. As for Mr. Saint Aubyn and Mr. Godolphin, they had no
doubt at all that my Master was lying, and that I had come wittingly to
further his lie. They would have drawn on him (I make no doubt) had he
brought the tale in person. From me, his intermediate, they took it as
the best to suit with the known truth and present to the Commissioner.
All Cornishmen are cousins, you may say. It comes to this, rather:
these gentlemen chose to accept my master's lie, and settle with him
afterwards, rather than make a clean breast and be forced to wring their
small shares out of the Exchequer. A neighbour can be persuaded,
terrified, forced; but London is always a long way off, and London
lawyers are the devil. I say freely that (knowing no more than they
did, or I) these two gentlemen followed a reasonable policy.

But, after we had fitted Sir Nicholas with our common story, and as I
was mounting my horse in Clowance courtyard, Mr. Saint Aubyn came close
to my stirrup and said this by way of parting:

"You will understand, Mr. Tonkin, that to-day's tale is for to-day.
But by God I will come and take my share--you may tell your master--and
a trifle over! And the next time I overtake you I promise to put a
bullet in the back of your scrag neck."

For answer to this--seeing that Master Porson stood at an easy distance
with his eye on us--I saluted him gravely and rode out of the courtyard.

Now the manner of the wreck was this, and our concern with it.
So nearly as I can learn, the _Saint Andrew_ came ashore at two hours
after noon: the date, the 20th of January, 1526, and the weather at the
time coarse and foggy with a gale yet blowing from the south-west or a
good west of south, but sensibly abating, and the tide wanting an hour
before low water.

It happened that Mr. Saint Aubyn was riding, with twenty men at his
back, homeward from Gweek, where he had spent three days on some private
business, when he heard news of the wreck at a farmhouse on the road to
Helleston: and so turning aside, he, whose dwelling lay farthest from
it, came first to the cove. The news reached us at Pengersick a little
after three o'cloc