Thereafter, he came and went as he would, unasked and unheeded. When he was ashore, the cottage by the fords of Widecomb was his home; and his increasing wealth—for he had prospered greatly in his adventurous career—added materially to the comforts of old Allan’s housekeeping. His life was, therefore, spent in strange alternations; now amid the wildest excitement—the storm, the chase, the fierce and frantic speculation, the perilous and desperate fight, the revelry, the triumph, and the booty; and now, in the calmest and most peaceful solitude, amid the sweetest pastoral scenery, and with the loveliest and most innocent companion that ever soothed the hot and eager spirit of erring and impetuous man, into almost woman’s softness. And hence it was, perhaps, that Durzil Bras-de-fer had, as it were, two different natures—one fierce, rash, bitter, scornful, heedless of human praise or human censure, pitiless to human sorrow, reckless of human life, merciless, almost cruel—the other generous, and soft, and sympathetic, and full of every good and gentle impulse. And it was in the latter of these only, that Theresa Allan knew him. It must not be supposed from what I have written, that Durzil was a pirate, or a buccaneer—far from it. For though, at times, he and his comrades assumed the initiative in warfare, and smote the Spaniards and the Dutchmen, and the French unsparingly, beyond the Line, and made but small distinction between the _meum_ and the _tuum_, especially if the _tuum_ pertained to the stranger and the papist, still neither public opinion, nor their own consciences condemned them—they were regarded, as Cavendish, and Raleigh, and Drake, and Frobisher and Hawkins had been, a reign or two before, as bold, headlong adventurers; perhaps a little lawless, but on the whole, noble and daring men, and were esteemed in general rather an ornament than a disgrace to their native land. As men are esteemed of men, such they are very apt to be or to become; and, having the repute of chivalrous spirit, of generosity and worth, no less than of dauntless courage, and rare seamanship, the adventurous free-traders of that day held themselves to be, in all respects, gentlemen, and men of honor; and holding themselves so, for the most part they became so. It was, therefore, by no means either wonderful or an exception to a rule, that Durzil Bras-de-fer should have been such as I have described him, awake to gentle impulses, alive to good impressions, easily subject to the influences of the finest female society, and in no respect a person either from his habits, his tastes, or his profession to be rejected by men of honor, or eschewed by women of refinement.