whether Cap'n Jack had not returned.

CHAPTER XXV

HOW WE WENT TO PENNINGTON, AND HOW THE TRESIDDERS WON THE VICTORY

On looking over what I have just written, it has struck me that I have
told this part of my story hastily, scarcely relating enough to tell how
matters stood. I ought to have said that it took us fifteen hours to
sail from St. Agnes Island to Hayle. Thus having left the island at
daybreak--that is, about eight o'clock in the morning--we did not arrive
at Hayle till the following midnight, and such was our difficulty in
getting horses at Hayle, that we did not leave there until morning, thus
arriving at Mullion just before noon. We were there, I should imagine,
something over an hour, and as Porth Mullion is only some seven or eight
miles from Kynance, I had hopes of getting to Captain Jack's house an
hour or two before dark. I discovered, too, that Tamsin had ridden from
Kynance to Mullion on horseback. She had, in a fit of jealousy, betrayed
our secret to Israel Barnicoat, and this had led to Naomi being taken
away; and anxious, so she said, to atone, she had come to Mullion to
tell her story.

It may seem foolish in me to have trusted her again after she had once
betrayed me, but I have always been one who yielded to the promptings of
the heart rather than to the conclusions of reason, so I rode toward
Kynance without demur, and even Mr. Penryn made no objection. Eli,
however, grumbled greatly, and said we were going to a nest of adders;
but indeed our horses were useless, and I knew not how we could get
fresh ones, except through Tamsin's offer of money.

There was no sign of life at Captain Jack's house when we came to it, so
I concluded that he had not yet returned from the Scilly Isles. I was
very thankful for this, because I knew his presence would mean great
danger to me. He fancied that I was dead, and but for the mercy of God I
should have been--murdered, as it were, by his hand, and by that of
Israel Barnicoat. I knew he was as cunning as Satan himself, and when he
found out that I was alive would, I believed, stop at no means to end my
life. And thus nothing but sore necessity would have taken me to Kynance
at that time. But as Mr. Penryn had said, the horses we rode, which were
but little better than farm beasts, were sore spent with a ride of
twenty miles or so, and as it was fully fifty to Padstow--nay, nearer
sixty, taking into consideration the nature of the road--it was usel