“Mayhap you recognise this hand, Mr. Knight.”

And I, seeing the signature Elizabeth Godwin, answers quickly enough:  “Aye, ’tis my dear cousin Bess, her own hand.”

“This,” says the Don, handing the other to Evans, “you may understand.”

“I can make out ’tis writ in the Moorish style,” says Evans, “but the meaning of it I know not, for I can’t tell great A from a bull’s foot though it be in printed English.”

“’Tis an undertaking on the part of Bare ben Moula,” says the Don, “to deliver up at Dellys in Barbary the persons of Mrs. Godwin and her daughter against the payment of five thousand gold ducats within one year.  The other writing tells its own story.”

Mr. Hopkins took the first sheet from me and read it aloud.  It was addressed to Mr. Richard Godwin, Hurst Court, Chislehurst in Kent, and after giving such particulars of her past as we had already heard from Don Sanchez, she writes thus:  “And now, my dear nephew, as I doubt not you (as the nearest of my kindred to my dear husband after us two poor relicts) have taken possession of his estate in the belief we were all lost in our voyage from Italy, I do pray you for the love of God and of mercy to deliver us from our bondage by sending hither a ship with the money for our ransoms forthwith, and be assured by this that I shall not dispossess you of your fortune (more than my bitter circumstances do now require), so that I but come home to die in a Christian country and have my sweet Judith where she may be less exposed to harm than in this infidel country.  I count upon your love,—­being ever a dear nephew,—­and am your most hopeful, trusting, and loving aunt, Elizabeth Godwin.”

“Very well, sir,” says Mr. Hopkins, returning the letter.  “You have been to Chislehurst.”

“I have,” answers the Don, “and there I find the estate in the hands of a most curious Puritanical steward, whose honesty is rather in the letter than the spirit.  For though I have reason to believe that not one penny’s value of the estate has been misemployed since it has been in his hands, yet will he give nothing—­no, not a maravedi to the redemption of his mistress, saying that the letter is addressed to Richard Godwin and not to him, etc., and that he hath no power to pay out monies for this purpose, even though he believed the facts I have laid before him—­which for his own ends doubtless he fains to misdoubt.”

“As a trader, sir,” says Mr. Hopkins, “I cannot blame his conduct in that respect.  For should the venture fall through, the next heir might call upon him to repay out of his own pocket all that he had put into this enterprise.  But this Mr. Richard Godwin, what of him?”

“He is nowhere to be found.  The only relatives I have been able to discover are these two gentlemen.”

“Who,” remarks Mr. Hopkins, with a shrewd glance at our soiled clothes, “are not, I venture to think, in a position to pay their cousin’s ransom.”