"The tongues of dying men
Enforce attention like deep harmony;
Where words are scarce, they are seldom spent in vain,
For they breathe truth, that breathe their words in pain.
He, that no more must say, is listened more
Than they, whom youth and ease have taught to glose;
More are men’s ends marked than their lives before:
The setting sun, and music at the close,
At the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last;
Writ in remembrance, more than things long past."

- Shakespeare, Richard III

On a slightly rising ground to the west of the little village of Sennen Cove, near the Land’s End, there stood, towards the close of the last century, a small cottage, roughly built of granite blocks, with a thatched roof, on which rested several huge stones. Its situation exposed it to the violence of all the gales which swept over the Atlantic; the winds, from whatever point of the compass they blew, howled and whistled round its walls; the noise of the breakers, as they dashed on the iron-bound coast below, was ever present to the ears of its inhabitants, who had grown so accustomed to their dull, monotonous roar, that they would almost have been startled by its absence. A neat little garden surrounded the cottage; here, in spring and summer, a few hardy flowers might be seen, but it was for the most part planted with potatoes and turnips. Not a tree or a shrub grew anywhere near, but several immense granite boulders were strewn here and there on the ground, within a short distance of the humble dwelling.

It was a wild and tempestuous night at the beginning of November. With more than usual fierceness did the wind roar round the cottage walls. Rain and spray beat against the windows, which shook and rattled with every fresh gust. There was no moon, and not a star was to be seen in the cloudy sky. The scene within the cottage was in complete harmony with the gloom without. On a bed in the corner of a small and neatly-furnished room a poor woman is lying. Her faced is pale, wan, and wasted; it is evident that her last hour is approaching; her thin hands are clasped over her breast, and her eyes wander with sad but affectionate gaze from one to the other of the three remaining occupants of the room, from whom she knows she must so soon be parted. These are a tall, weather-beaten man of sailor-like appearance, between forty and fifty years of age, who is standing close to the head of the bed, and, evidently, is the husband of the dying woman. Every now and then he bends over her with loving tenderness; with his rough hand he smooths her pillow, raises her head that he may put some refreshing drink to her parched lips, while all the time the tears roll down his cheeks. On the other side of the bed stands a little girl, whose acute grief is plainly depicted in her countenance; she from time to time takes her mother’s hand and kisses it, covering it with her tears. At the foot of the bed a young lad, of about fifteen, is kneeling; his whole frame is convulsed with sorrow, his face cannot be seen, for it is buried in his hands; but his deep sobs, which he is utterly unable to suppress, may be heard amid the howling of the wind, and the splashing of the rain and spray against the windows.

"Owen," said the dying woman, in a very faint voice, "Owen, the end is near now, I feel sure. I am so weak and faint. I must say farewell to you and little Mary and poor Philip. May God bless you and keep you all when I am gone."

The husband bent over and kissed her forehead, but he could not say a word; fresh sobs and bursts of tears proceeded from the son and daughter.

"Owen," she began again, "you have been a good, kind husband to me, and now we must part; but I have one thing to say before I go."

"Mother! Mother! Will you really leave us?" sobbed the little girl.

"Yes,, my child; it is God’s will. Owen," she said, in a still fainter voice, looking lovingly up into her husband’s face, "For my sake, when I am gone, don’t be led astray again – do not join those bad men – do not go down to the grave with"-

"Stop, Ellen, dearest," exclaimed the man, trying to master his grief, "do not let such thoughts trouble you now. No, no, I promise you, solemnly I promise you, I will never join the wreckers again. I have seen enough of their wicked, murderous ways. O Ellen! You know it was not of my own will. I was to blame, indeed, for I was easy and weak – but I was drawn into it. I have not led a wrecker’s life. Only twice"-

"Alas! Owen, yes. I know you are too easily persuaded. You say only twice, but even then, you may have helped to cause the death of some poor fellow-creature just within sight of home. Oh! that wild, wicked way of life – the curse of this land!"

"O Ellen, Ellen! forgive me," sobbed the man; "be assured it will never happen again. You know how sorry I was afterwards; and then we were so poor at that time, and you looked so pale and ill after nursing Philip in the fever."

"Owen! Owen! Money earned in such a way can only bring a curse."

"I know that," said the husband; "may God forgive me the wickedness I joined in then. They shall never force me to go with them any more – they may kill me first."

"Don’t be over-confident, Owen. Yet I feel happier now; I know you won’t deceive me, nor forget your promise to your dying wife; but pray God to give you strength to resist temptation if it comes."

"I will, indeed, Ellen – I will, indeed," he said earnestly.

"Mary, dearest child," said the poor mother, "I am going to leave you. Try and be a comfort to your poor father when I am gone. He will have troubles enough – don’t add to them. And Philip, dear, come and give me a last kiss too." The lad got up and bent over his mother to kiss her. Thick and fast did his tears fall upon her pale face. "Poor boy," she said, "you have been a good son to me. May God bless and protect you. Help your father; don’t have him to run away to sea, as many do; and read your Bible, Phil, and go to church on Sundays regular, and go on teaching Mary as I used to do."

"Yes, mother, I’ll try and do all you wish; but what shall we do without you?"

"God will take care of you, my boy. May He guide you to do what is right," said the mother.

Philip could not utter a word. In a paroxysm of grief he threw himself on the bed and buried his head in his hands.

The little girl held her mother’s cold hand in hers, and gazed lovingly into her face; she did not speak, for she could not, but the tears streamed down her cheeks.

The husband put his head down on the pillow close to his wife’s face, and she whispered to him a few words of affectionate farewell. She was rapidly sinking. The silence in the room seemed only intensified by the roar of the tempest without.

All at once voices were heard outside the cottage. Wild shouts of "Come on, men! come on, a wreck! a wreck!" Lights passed the window, and there was a clatter of many feet along the path close by.

The dying woman shuddered, an expression of horror passed over her face, and she looked up at her husband.

"Never, Ellen, never again," he said, firmly and solemnly. "I would rather starve than do it."

"Thank God for those words. Alas! Owen, that I should hear such sounds now!" whispered his wife.

The wreckers, hastening to their wicked work, had just passed by.

"They are gone now, mother," said the little girl. "They won’t come back till the morning; do not think about them."

"No, my child … I am trying to think of the blessed place above to which may God bring you all at last, when the wicked cease from troubling" –

She said no more, she was quite exhausted. A few minutes after the good wife and mother breathed her last, and Owen Tresilian was alone with his son and little daughter.

The good couple were humble fisher folk, who had lived a simple life in that remote nook of old England. They had been married well night twenty years, and in that period had experienced as much of the joys and sorrows of life, as is the ordinary lot of most mortals in their lowly spheres. Owen, a native of Sennen, had, when quite a boy, gone to sea, joined his Majesty’s navy, and after some ten years’ service, returned to, and settled down in, his old home. He married Ellen whom he had known and loved since they were children together, and, taking up abode in the little cottage above the Cove, Owen gained his livelihood principally by fishing, but he also made some profits by cultivating a bit of ground which he rented a sort distance from his cottage. Ellen was skilful at her needle, and worked for the squire’s family, and for some of the more well-to-do among the villagers. They had five children; of these the boy and girl above-mentioned were the only ones that remained to them. Two had died, when infants; one boy had been drowned at sea, - a calamity from which his mother never recovered.

The inhabitants of the few scattered cottages on the seashore, which formed the hamlet of Sennen Cove, were in those days a rude, and almost savage, set of people. They professed, indeed, to gain their livelihood by fishing, but in reality smuggling and wrecking were their chief employments. The wreckers of Cornwall have gained an unenviable notoriety. The men of Sennen had, owing to the fringe of rocks which surrounded their coast, to the violence of the tempests which raged there, and to the absence, in those days, of any lighthouses or light-ships on the shore, full opportunity for carrying on their cruel and nefarious occupation. Many a gallant ship, when within sight of home, was, by false lights and signals, ensnared into the very midst of that maze of rocks which bristle round the Land’s End, there to be dashed to pieces, while its crew found a watery grave in the angry surf, or more luckless still, succeeded in reaching land, only to be put to death by the inhuman hands of those, who should have been the first to rescue them.

It was but natural that men who were accustomed to partake in such deeds of infamy, should be little removed from barbarians, and that any among them who tried to lead a more humane or respectable life, should be exposed to jeers, mockery, or even persecution.

Such was the case with Owen Tresilian. He had served many years in the fleet, had seen much hard service, and been engaged in several naval battles with the French; he held very different ideas of honour and honesty from those entertained by his fellow villagers. He was a brave man, who would not suffer any act of cruelty or meanness to be done in his presence; his undaunted pluck was recognised by all. Bad as the Sennen men were, yet the better ones could not but respect Owen, while the worst feared him. Still there had, alas! been occasions when even so upright a man as Tresilian had yielded to temptation, and joined in that which in his inmost soul he abhorred.

Twice, indeed, when his wife’s health had been failing, when his children had been crying for bread, when fishing had failed, and there seemed no means to provide for the wants of his family, Owen, unknown to his wife, had joined in the plunder of vessels, which foundered on the rocks close by. He had shared in no attempt on either occasion to lure these ships to destruction, in fact, there was considerable doubt, whether the Sennen people had caused these wrecks, and Owen had been persuaded to go down late at night, and help to pick up the plunder which was washed on the shore, by one of his companions, to whom he had shown considerable kindness, and who was in many respects superior to the rest of the villagers, but not above joining occasionally in their dishonest enterprises.

It was only by increased comforts that his wife discovered what Owen had done, and very bitter was her grief. She implored him with tears never to act thus again. She knew it had been done for her sake, which almost made her feel as if she had been an accessory in this sin. It was the remembrance of this which had made her so anxious, during her last hours, to induce her husband to promise her never to consort with wreckers again.

Ellen Tresilian was a good woman, living up to the light she possessed. The last century was notoriously dark and profane. Religion was openly disregarded by all classes. There never was a period in England of lower morality. All vices abounded, drinking to excess, profligacy, riot, cruelty, neglect of the poor, oppression of the weak. But there were, as always, even in the darkest ages of the Church, exceptions to this rule; bright spots here and there; men and women sometimes in obscure towns and villages, sometimes amid all the vice of the great metropolis, might be found leading a holy and a godly life, shining forth like stars on this dark night of iniquity. Though the Church of England was almost lifeless, her clergy for the most part idle or devoted to pleasure, neglecting their holy functions, and only performing those duties which the law demanded of them, yet there were exceptions also among them. Good men and true, who led lives of holy self-denial and earnest prayer, who were not content with preaching to their flocks every Sunday, a mere dry morality; but who in burning words placed before them the old, old story of the Gospel, and pointed to the cross of Jesus, as the only refuge for the weary and sin-burdened soul.

Not many years before our story commences, the great apostle of the eighteenth century, the saintly John Wesley, had made England ring, from north to south and from east to west, with the glorious sound of the gospel of Christ, proclaimed in such a way as that age had never heard before. The holy man had passed into Cornwall; he had gathered around him the rough miners of the interior, and the wild fishermen and wreckers of the coast. In spite of every opposition he preached to them of Jesus. He told them that God loved them, steeped in every crime as many of them were; he assured them that God was their Father, and they His children, far as they had wandered from His fold. Many hearts were touched by his earnest words, tears trickled down hard and weather-beaten faces which had never been moistened by a tear before, and hands, once stained in crime, were now uplifted in prayer. In no part of England was the preaching of John Wesley more crowned with success than in Cornwall; men who had been eminent for fighting, drinking, and all manner of wickedness, now became eminent for sobriety, piety, and all manner of goodness. The wreckers,, who had become such a scandal to humanity, and given the country so evil a repute, were everywhere now on the decrease; only the worst characters indulged in this cruel business; neither was smuggling so universal as before.

Ellen Tresilian was only a child when she first heard Mr. Wesley preach at St. Sennen. His words sank deep into her heart, the impression they made was never effaced. Owen’s mother was also among the number of those whose hearts and lives were changed by listening to the gospel message so plainly delivered, and it was owing to her earnest admonitions, and to the good seed which she planted early in her son’s heart, that though he was not what in those days was called a Methodist, yet he was honest, upright and well-conducted, in comparison to most of the men in the village.

At that period neither national or Sunday schools existed. Only here and there could a man or woman be found, who was able to read, and no shame was felt on account of such ignorance. Children were allowed to grow up without any education, except what their parents were able to give them, or what they learned from dames, who in some villages set up schools on their own account. To teach reading was generally the extent of their knowledge. Those who were able to write and cypher, were regarded as very learned and superior persons.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that Owen Tresilian could neither read nor write. Ellen had learned to read out of an old Family bible, which was an heirloom in the family. Her father, who was a clever man in his way, for he not only could read but write a little too, and taught her in his leisure hours. She was his only child; so when he died, very soon after her marriage, she inherited the old Bible; every evening she would read out of it to her husband, who listened reverently and attentively to the sacred words. And when her children grew up, she taught them to read too. Little Mary would often sit before the fire with the large volume on a chair beside her, poring over the pages; sometimes she would read stories from it aloud, while her mother worked, and her father and brother mended their nets. Thus the whole family were quite familiar with sacred history – perhaps more so than poor folk are in our own days – for the Bible, a Prayerbook, and a selection of Wesley’s hymns, were the only books they possessed, and over and over again was the sacred volume, and especially the Gospels, read through.

Ellen Tresilian, never strong, had sunk into a consumption, which had carried her off rapidly at the last, leaving her husband and children overwhelmed with grief in their cheerless and desolate abode.

The body of the good wife and mother was committed to the grave in the little churchyard at St. Sennen, a bleak, dreary spot indeed, very different from the neat, well-kept churchyards nowadays happily so common. In those times a cross was never seen above a grave; at St. Sennen the headstones were mostly of the coarse granite peculiar to the district.. Here and there an urn or a broken column surmounted a tomb, but these belonged to the more wealthy of the parishioners. The churchyard was as ill-kept and untended as the church, presenting no symbol of hope or comfort to mourning hearts. But the beautiful and cheering words of the service, with which, in sure and certain hope of the blessed resurrection, the Church of England commits her children to the earth, then, as now, spoke of peace and joy, and of a happy life beyond the grave.

The three mourners had returned to their cottage. They sat silently round the fire. Owen’s head rested on his hand; his eyes stared vacantly before him. Philip was mending a net in a very mechanical way; his hands moved, but his heart was not in his work. He was thinking of his loved and lost mother. Little Mary had reached down the big Bible from its shelf, and was poring with tearful eyes over its sacred pages.

The father was the first to break the silence.

"We have a hard life before us, children," he said; "it has been bad enough indeed hitherto, but now without your good mother, who helped and cheered us so, it’s a sorry look out for us all."

"Yes, father," said little Mary, "but mother used often to say when she was ill, and knew that she was going to die, that we were not to fret when she was gone, but do all we could to cheer and help one another."

"I know she did, child, but how can we help fretting? How can I alone do everything for you both? and what’s to become of you, Molly, when Philip and I are out fishing all day, and sometimes of a night too? You can’t be left all alone here; you would be frightened, I know; and who’s to get your meals for you?"

"Oh, never mind about me, father!" said Mary. "I’m not afraid to be alone, neither by day nor by night; there’s no one would do me any harm, I’m sure. Mother taught me how to sweep out the room, and showed me how to cook the dinner for you and Phil, so don’t trouble yourself about me, father."

"Yes, child, but there are other things to think of. Your mother used to earn a good bit of money with her needle. Often when fishing failed, and I could make nothing either by that or by the garden, she would scrape enough together to keep us honestly afloat. Now she’s taken, and there’s only Phil and me to depend on. Why, we may be nigh starving before long, Molly, and I don’t see who’s to help us."

"I do, father," said Mary, firmly. "God will. Mother often told me so. Our Heavenly Father feels the fowls of the air, and He loves us better than them. It’s here, in the Bible. I’ll find it for you," and then she read the whole passage from the sixth chapter of St. Matthew.

"You are a good girl, Molly, and take after your mother," said the poor man sorrowfully. "That’s all true, I know, and I’ll try and trust God to provide for our wants, but it’s hard to do so at times like these, when all seems to go against one."

"Yes, father," remarked Philip, "and with winter coming on too; if it had only been spring, instead of November, it wouldn’t be so bad."

"But it’s all the same to God, Phil," said Mary, solemnly.

"You teach us both a lesson, my child," said Owen, as he got up and bent over his little daughter to kiss her. "You have done me good already, and I know your mother is gone to a happier place, and that I ought not to grieve for her. She often said that God would never forsake her motherless children, so I shall try and trust Him, and do the best I can for you myself, as well."

"And I’ll work hard, that I will, father," said Philip. "I’ll dig at our piece of ground, and plant the potatoes for you, and try and get a job now and then up at the squire’s."

They all seemed a little more cheerful now, and were able to talk more calmly about the future – desolate as it appeared to them.

Owen tried all he could to persuade his little daughter to let him send her for a year or two to her aunt at Truro. He said she was too young to live without womanly care, and he could not bear the thought of her being left alone, as she often would be, for days, and perhaps at nights, in that lonely cottage, but he soon saw that it would well nigh break the child’s heart to be separated from him and her brother. She implored him to let her stay. Philip, too, espoused her cause, so that the father at last yielded, and consented that she should remain.