Then again I thought of Jenny. I began to wonder how I should break the news to her. How was I to tell her the story? For I mustn't wound her love for her father, yet I must be just to my own. The picture of the lonely little girl cast out upon the world with none to protect her took violent hold upon my pity. I yearned towards her, yet knew deep in my heart that to speak to her of love would be to stab her afresh in her still-bleeding wound. I was utterly weary in body, utterly dejected in spirit, when I reached the sea. I found Dirk waiting me in a shore-side tavern. I told him my story. The night was falling as we rowed out to the brig. I retired to my bunk, where I lay a long while sorrowfully tossing, and at last fell into a troubled sleep. With the chill of the morning I was up again, cheered at heart as always at the sight of the good day. I ran out on deck. And there before me was Jenny. I stopped short, thinking my eyes were deceiving me. But she walked gravely up to me and said, "Dirk brought me, Tommy. He has told me everything." "Everything?" I repeated. "Yes," she said. "And yesterday ..." I began. "Yesterday, too," she said. For a minute or two we faced each other in silence. Then I began again. "I have your father's will," I told her. "Dirk showed it me," she replied. "But, Jenny," I went on, "you mustn't touch the gold. It's evil." "I don't want the gold," she declared, breaking from her coldness and speaking with a sudden passion. I looked at her keenly, for there was something unspoken behind her emotion. "Then we must say good-bye, I suppose?" I announced, not supposing any such thing, yet half turning from her. At that she spoke with something of her old imperiousness. "You're very stupid, Tommy," she cried. "My father killed your father, and your father killed my father." "No," I contradicted. "Yes," she insisted, "it was so. And so that's all finished. We must try and begin again. Daddy wants us to. He says so in the will." At that I flung my arms about her. And in the flush of that wonderful moment I seemed to steer suddenly free of the dark shadow of Fear that had closed my life around ever since I could remember, and sailed out into the clean sweet air, with the breaking dawn about me. * * * * * Of the rest what need I say? For how we sailed away to the sun and the south; and how for three years I increased in knowledge of seamanship, and put on bulk and muscle, while Jenny grew in sweetness and beauty and grace; and how Dirk taught me the ways of traffic and barter, till at length I sailed back to England with a neat little fortune of my own; and how Dirk retired and bought an inn, and the _Revenge_ was bequeathed to me and became the _Jenny_ brig; all this and much more that followed belongs to another story which I may tell some later day.