One winter’s night, however, when a great gale was blowing in the Channel, and sweeping across the land from the Atlantic, a stranger came to their door and asked for food and shelter. The old couple allowed him to come in, and gave him food; and whilst he was refreshing himself and warming his chilled bones by their fireside he entertained them with wonderful stories of his adventures amongst pirates and in foreign lands, for he was a sailor man. At last he fetched out of his pocket a piece of gold with which to pay them, and asked them to give him a bed. The old woman, surprised at such wealth, after a time persuaded her husband to permit the strange traveller to remain the night, and showed the sailor upstairs to a room. She remained chatting with him for some time, and during their talk he showed so much money, jewels, trinkets, etc., that she was perfectly dazzled at the sight. The old woman, whose greed had been awakened, left him to his slumbers, and the tired wanderer lay down to rest, well content thus to have obtained shelter from the storm. Next morning the daughter--who now lived at Penryn,--appeared on the scene, and after the usual greetings she said, “Did not a sailor man come to see you last night?” “What do you mean, my child?” asked her mother, adding hastily, “A sailor man! What could have put such a thought into your head?” “Because,” answered the girl, “one asked his way here last night, and said he wanted to see you.” “No, no,” continued the old woman. “No sailor came _here_.” But all the while the girl’s father was fidgeting and looking as though the subject and the questioning was unpleasing to him. “Father, do you, too, say no one came?” inquired the daughter, anxiously. “Because it was our Dickon who came to see me, and told me he had come back from foreign lands, where he had found a gold mine, and had got as rich as the Grand Mogul himself.” “Dickon!” screamed the mother. “Impossible. I should know my Dickon anywhere.” “Then a sailor did come here!” exclaimed the girl. “Oh, mother, where is he? Has he gone away again? There was a scar on his left arm that he got at sea.” The old man had disappeared during the last few words, and suddenly there was a thud of some falling body overhead. The wretched old woman hurried up the narrow staircase, and entered the bedroom the sailor had occupied. The daughter followed her, but was only in time to see her mother fall in a pool of blood and expire. There in one room lay three dead bodies. The sailor son concealed temporarily under the bed; the father who, at the instigation of his wife, had killed him so that they might become possessed of his wealth; and the old mother herself.