Ortho discovered himself a personage. It was a most agreeable sensation. Men in every walk of life rushed to shake his hand. He found himself sitting in Penzance taverns in the exalted company of magistrates and other notables telling the story of his adventures—with picturesque additions.
And the women. Even the fine ladies in Chapel Street turned their proud heads when he limped by. His limp was genuine to a point; but when he saw a pretty woman ahead he improved on it to draw sympathy and felt their softened eyes following him on his way, heard them whisper, “Ortho Penhale, my dear . . . general in Barbary . . . twelve times wounded. . . . How pale he looks and how handsome!”
To insure that he should not pass unnoticed he affected a slight eccentricity of attire. For him no more the buff breeches, the raffish black and silver coats; dressed thus he might have passed for any squire.
He wore instead the white trousers of a sailor, a marine’s scarlet tunic he had picked up in a junk shop, a colored kerchief loosely knotted about his throat, and on his bull curls the round fur cap of the sea. There was no mistaking him. Small boys followed him in packs, round-eyed, worshipful. . . . “Ortho Penhale, smuggler, Barbary lancer!”
If he had been popular once he was doubly popular now. The Monks Cove incident was forgiven but not forgotten; it went to swell his credit, in fact. To have arrested him on that old score would have been more than the Collector’s life was worth. The Collector, prudent man, publicly shook Penhale by the hand and congratulated him on his miraculous escape.
Ortho found his hoard of six hundred and seventy pounds intact in the hollow ash by Tumble Down and spent it freely. He gave fifty pounds to Anson’s widow (who had married a prosperous cousin some years before, forgotten poor Anson and did not need it) and put a further fifty in his pockets to give to Tamsin Eva.
Bohenna told him the story as a joke, but Ortho was smitten with what he imagined was remorse.
He remembered Tamsin—a slim, appealing little thing in blue, skin like milk and a cascade of red gold hair. He must make some honorable gesture—there were certain obligations attached to the rôle of local hero. It was undoubtedly somewhat late in the day. The Trevaskis lout had married the girl and accepted the paternity of the child (it was a boy six years old now, Bohenna reported), but that made no difference; he must make his gesture. Fifty pounds was a lot of money to a struggling farmer; besides he would like to see Tamsin again—that slender neck and marvelous hair! If Trevaskis wasn’t treating her properly he’d take her away from him, boy and all; b’God, he would!