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.