“’Tis true I have thrown in my lot with them, hating myself the while; but ’tis not true, sir, to say I have had aught but misery and wretchedness in the doing of these deeds. Does not your fine lady friend Miss Joan speak well of me? Come, now, has she spoke never a good word for me, in the discussions I doubt not you have had on these matters?” “Yes, she says you can be kind and womanly, when you please; that you are good to the poor and the sick; and that she has a kind of liking for you, besides that she feels for you as the daughter of one whom she remembers tender to her in her childhood.” Ann’s mobile face had grown, as she listened to this speech, as happy and soft as a child’s. “Ay, sir,” said she, “and ’tis the real Ann of whom she speaks, the natural woman that I would fain always be!” “Give up your dealings with these folk, then,” said Tregenna, eagerly, as he sat on the balustrade, and looked at her with earnest eyes. “Listen to the promptings of your better nature, and in yielding to your own good instincts you will be helping not only yourself, but your kinsfolk out of harm! Remember, you cannot fight forever such forces as will be brought against you and your lawless traffic. Yield then while there is a grace in yielding, and wait not for the strong hand of the law to get hold of you, and to mow you down!” While he spoke with fire and excitement, moved by her emotion and deeply interested in the wayward woman, Ann had drawn gradually nearer to him, until her strong hand touched his as it lay on the balustrade. Her eyes, still soft and dewy with tears, sought his for an instant from time to time, as if in shyness, all the more attractive from her reputed character for fierce disdain. When he ceased speaking, she sighed deeply, and then seemed to become suddenly possessed by a spirit of daring and desperation. Drawing herself up, and peering closely into his handsome face, she said quickly— “Sir, sir, you know not how you move me! I have never felt before as I feel in listening to you. You make me hate my own folk, with their villainies and their rough ways, kinswoman and confederate of theirs though I have been! Oh, sir, I feel, I know, that you are better than we, that we are but the nest of robbers and pirates you say, that we deserve no mercy at your hands!” Passionate, earnest as she was, Tregenna kept his head sufficiently to be skeptical about this sudden appearance of conversion. He drew back, almost imperceptibly, a little way, and said, in a cooler tone— “And I fear ’tis little mercy some of you will get, when a stronger force is sent down to ferret your leaders out!” “But you would make distinctions, sir, would you not?” said she, with tremulous eagerness. “You would not, for sure, deal with the lad Tom, poor Tom that you have lamed for life, as hardly as with some others?” “Those that have done the worst will be the most harshly dealt with, certainly,” said Tregenna.