"'Oh! you misbelieving man,' cried she, turning round, and holding towards him her uplifted hands, 'if I like a drop of good liquor to cheer my heart, now and then, I never took so much as to do me harm in all my born days; and, leave me tell 'e, that with all your learning, and doubting, you know but little about the 'small people.' There es more taking place in the region of spirits, as I've heard the parson say, than you can learn from your books, and for want of faith, I fear me you will never be enlightened. Yet as sure as my name is Penelope Tregeer, I seed, heard, and what is more I felt, all that I now tell 'e.' "'Go in and sleep the spirits out of thy noddle, that thou mayest be in time to see about the feasten dinner,' said the Squire, as he turned away, and took his favourite morning's walk to the cove. "When he came in, after a turn round the cliff and up by the mill, he found the old woman, never the worse for her journey, busy preparing the feasten fare, and the ladies and gentlemen of his family, and numerous visitors, at an early breakfast that they might have time to proceed to church in grand state on the feasten day." Pendeen of Old. Capt. Peter, having taken a pull from the pewter pot, continued with—"Believe me, comrades, Pendeen didn't then look wisht at feasten tides nor at any other time, when one saw, (and smelt, too), the sweet scent of turf-smoke that curled up from chimney stacks, which now look down sorrowfully on cold hearths; and one saw fair faces peering through the casements, numbers of ladies and gentlemen walking about the garden alleys and courts of the old mansion, or when the cry of hounds and the winding of the horn echoeing through the house, called one and all to the hunt at early morn. And, I can but think," he continued, "how strangers visiting Pendeen for the first time, after riding over miles of open downs with scarce a dwelling in sight, must have been surprised when they caught the first glimpse of the noble old seat, which is only seen when close at hand, and the track of rich cultivated land between it and the sea; it must have appeared to them like a place raised by enchantment, as we hear of in old stories. And the old masons, who took pride in their art and did their work truly, were right to bestow such labour on the beautiful chimney stacks of the old mansion, because they are there first seen, and from parts where little else of the house is visible; and the first sight, like first love, is never forgotten, mates." [167] Capt. Peter paused, drained the pewter pot, which had stood foaming before him, handed it to the cheerful old landlady to be replenished, and took a smoke. A tinner, who sat by the fire knocking the ashes out of his pipe, said, whilst he cut up his roll-tobacco, rubbed it in the palm of his hand, and refilled:—