rled them all through the open window into the garden. He
then took a chair, planted it in the middle of the room, and sat down.
The sadness of his deep voice did not change during the remainder of
that interview. The bold look which usually characterised this peculiar
man had given place to a grave expression of humility, which was
occasionally varied by a troubled look.

"Before stating what I have come for," said Gascoyne, "I mean to make a
confession. You have been right in your suspicions--_I am Durward the
pirate_! Nay, do not shrink from me in that way, Mary. I have kept
this secret from you long, because I feared to lose the old friendship
that has existed between us since we were children. I have deceived you
in _this thing only_. I have taken advantage of your ignorance to make
you suppose that I was merely a smuggler, and that, in consequence of
being an outlaw, it was necessary for me to conceal my name and my
movements. You have kept my secret, Mary, and have tried to win me back
to honest ways, but you little knew the strength of the net I had
wrapped around me. You did not know that I was a pirate!"

Gascoyne paused, and bent his head as if in thought. The widow sat with
clasped hands, gazing at him with a look of despair on her pale face.
But she did not move or speak. The three listeners sat in perfect
silence until the pirate chose to continue his confession.

"Yes, I have been a pirate," said he, "but I have not been the villain
that men have painted me." He looked steadily in the widow's face as he
said these words deliberately.

"Do not try to palliate your conduct, Gascoyne," said Mr Mason,
earnestly. "The blackness of your sin is too great to be deepened or
lightened by what men may have said of you. You are a pirate. Every
_pirate is a murderer_."

"I am not a murderer," said Gascoyne, slowly, in reply, but still fixing
his gaze on the widow's face, as if he addressed himself solely to her.

"You may not have committed murder with your own hand," said Mr Mason,
"but the man who leads on others to commit the crime is a murderer in
the eye of God's law as well as in that of man."

"I never led on men to commit murder," said Gascoyne, in the same tone
and with the same steadfast gaze. "This hand is free from the stain of
human blood. Do you believe me, Mary?"

The widow did not answer. She sat like one bereft of all power of
speech or motion.

"I will explain," resumed th