The wish for further information, however, which he believed the boy could give him, caused Morley to subdue his feelings, and to induce him, by the promise of a reward, to be a little more communicative than he had hitherto been. By degrees, the boy approached the bed cautiously, when Morley asked him, as mildly as he could, when and where he had received the letter, and if he knew where Alrina was at that moment confined, with many other questions too numerous for the boy to answer without a little time and consideration. Before he answered any of them, therefore, he gave that cunning smile, which had so annoyed Morley before, and which now irritated him beyond measure, when he was so anxious to hear something of her to whom he felt he had unwittingly given cause for complaint; but he soon saw that he should get nothing out of the boy by threats or angry expressions, so he changed his tactics, and extracted the information he wanted by asking one question at a time. That was certainly the oddest boy he had ever met with, he thought; for, although, judging from his diminutive stature, no one would have supposed him to be above eight or nine years of age, yet, from his shrewd knowledge of the world, and aged expression of countenance, he might have been eight- or nine-and-twenty. He was the same boy whom Mr. Brown formerly employed to look after his mare; and it was said, even then, and generally believed, that he was in constant attendance on Mr. Freeman, and knew a good many of his secrets.
He was found one night, when quite an infant, lying at the door of a farm-house in the neighbourhood of St. Just, wrapped up in coarse flannel; but it was never discovered who put him there, nor who the child's parents were. He was placed in the poor-house; and when he was old enough, he was apprenticed to one of the farmers of the district; but he would never settle down under one master,--and after trying to subdue him, without success, his master gave him up to his own inclinations, and so he got his living by doing odd jobs. From his constant intercourse with Mr. Freeman, he lost the broad Cornish dialect in a measure, and only spoke in that way when he was associating with the miners. He was fond of going into Penzance and mixing with the gentlemen's servants there occasionally, from whom he picked up many a slang expression, which he would retail to the frequenters of Mr. Brown's bar, very much to their amusement. He was an awkward individual to gain information from; so Morley was obliged to deal with him accordingly, and put his questions with caution:--