Page:Quiller-Couch--Old fires and profitable ghosts.djvu/125

Rh north were between us favoured with no fewer than fourteen; the most of them vessels of good burden. Of any hand in bringing them ashore I know our gentry to have been innocent. Still, there were pickings; and finding that my Master held aloof from all share in such and (as far as could be) held his servants aloof, our neighbours, though not accepting this for quittance, forbore to press the affair of the Saint Andrew further than by spreading injurious tales and whispers.

The marvel was that we of Pengersick (who reaped nothing of this harvest) fell none the less under suspicion of decoying the vessels ashore. More than once in my dealings with the fishermen and tradesmen of Market Jew, I happened on hints of this; but nothing which could be taken hold of until one day a certain Peter Chynoweth of that town, coming drunk to Pengersick with a basket of fish, blurted out the tale. Said he, after I had beaten him down to a reasonable price, "’Twould be easy enough, one would think, to spare an honest man a groat of the fortune Pengersick makes on these dark nights."

"Thou lying thief!" said I. "What new slander is this?"

"Come, come," says he, looking roguish; "that won't do for me that have seen the false light on Cuddan Point more times than I can count; and so has every fisherman in the bay."

Well, I kicked him through the gate for it, and