A few
clothes, a brush and comb and a small wooden trunk was all he left behind
him. Joe Noy purchased four stamps for his letters and posted them. They
were written as though the murder of John Barron had been already
accomplished, and he thus completed and dispatched them before the event,
because he imagined that, afterward, the power of communicating with his
parents or friends would be denied him. That they might be spared the
horror of learning the news through a public source he wrote it thus, and
knew, as he did so, that to two of his correspondents the intelligence
would come without the full force of a novelty. Thomasin Tregenza and Mary
Chirgwin alike were familiar with his intention at the time of his
departure, and to them he therefore wrote but briefly; his parents, on the
other hand, for all Joe knew to the contrary, might still be ignorant of
the fact that he had come off his cruise. His letters to them were
accordingly of great length; and he set forth therein with the nervous
lucidity of a meager vocabulary the nature of his wrongs and the action
which he had taken under Heaven's guidance to revenge them. He stated
plainly in all four of his missives to Newlyn, Drift and Mousehole that the
artist, John Barron, was shot dead by his hand and that he himself intended
suffering the consequent punishment as became a brave man and the weapon of
the Lord. These notes then he posted, and so went upon his way that he
might fulfill to the letter his written words.
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