“There will be no occasion for vigorous action, at least as regards me, if you will agree to forget your suspicions for a few minutes and listen to what I have got to say.  Meanwhile, in order to show you how thoroughly in earnest I am, and how regardless of my personal safety, I render myself defenseless—­thus.”

Gascoyne pulled a brace of small pistols from their place of concealment beneath the breast of his shirt, and drawing the knife that hung at his girdle, hurled them all through the open window into the garden.  He then took a chair, planted it in the middle of the room, and sat down.  The sadness of his deep voice did not change during the remainder of that interview.  The bold look which usually characterized this peculiar man had given place to a grave expression of humility which was occasionally varied by a troubled look.

“Before stating what I have come for,” said Gascoyne, “I mean to make a confession.  You have been right in your suspicions,—­I am Durward the pirate! Nay, do not shrink from me in that way, Mary.  I have kept this secret from you long, because I feared to lose the old friendship that has existed between us since we were children.  I have deceived you in this thing only.  I have taken advantage of your ignorance to make you suppose that I was merely a smuggler, and that, in consequence of being an outlaw, it was necessary for me to conceal my name and my movements.  You have kept my secret, Mary, and have tried to win me back to honest ways; but you little knew the strength of the net I had wrapped around me.  You did not know that I was a pirate!”

Gascoyne paused, and bent his head as if in thought.  The widow sat with clasped hands, gazing at him with a look of despair on her pale face.  But she did not move or speak.  The three listeners sat in perfect silence, until the pirate chose to continue his confession.

“Yes, I have been a pirate,” said he; “but I have not been the villain that men have painted me.”  He looked steadily in the widow’s face as he said these words deliberately.

“Do not try to palliate your conduct, Gascoyne,” said Mr. Mason, earnestly.  “The blackness of your sin is too great to be deepened or lightened by what men may have said of you.  You are a pirate.  Every pirate is a murderer.”

“I am not a murderer,” said Gascoyne, slowly, in reply, but still fixing his gaze on the widow’s face, as if he addressed himself solely to her.

“You may not have committed murder with your own hand,” said Mr. Mason, “but the man who leads on others to commit the crime is a murderer, in the eye of God’s law as well as in that of man.”

“I never led on men to commit murder,” said Gascoyne, in the same tone, and with the same steadfast gaze.  “This hand is free from the stain of human blood.  Do you believe me, Mary?”

The widow did not answer.  She sat like one bereft of all power of speech or motion.