“You see,” says Don Sanchez, when they were gone out of the room, “how impossible it is that Mrs. Godwin and her daughter shall be redeemed from captivity.  To-morrow I shall show you what kind of a fellow the steward is that he should have the handling of this fortune rather than we.”

Then presently, with an indifferent, careless air, as if ’twas nought, he gives us a purse and bids us go out in the town to furnish ourselves with what disguise was necessary to our purpose.  Therewith Dawson gets him some seaman’s old clothes at a Jew’s, and I a very neat, presentable suit of cloth, etc., and the rest of the money we take back to Don Sanchez without taking so much as a penny for our other uses; but he, doing all things very magnificent, would have none of it, but bade us keep it against our other necessities.  And now having his money in our pockets, we felt ’twould be more dishonest to go back from this business than to go forward with it, lead us whither it might.

Next morning off we go betimes, Jack more like Robert Evans than his mother’s son, and I a most seeming substantial man (so that the very stable lad took off his hat to me), and on very good horses a long ride to Chislehurst And there coming to a monstrous fine park, Don Sanchez stayed us before the gates, and bidding us look up a broad avenue of great oaks to a most surprising brave house, he told us this was Hurst Court, and we might have it for our own within a year if we were so minded.

Hence, at no great distance we reach a square plain house, the windows all barred with stout iron, and the most like a prison I did ever see.  Here Don Sanchez ringing a bell, a little grating in the door is opened, and after some parley we are admitted by a sturdy fellow carrying a cudgel in his hand.  So we into a cold room, with not a spark of fire on the hearth but a few ashes, no hangings to the windows, nor any ornament or comfort at all, but only a table and half a dozen wooden stools, and a number of shelves against the wall full of account books and papers protected by a grating of stout wire secured with sundry padlocks.  And here, behind a tableful of papers, sat our steward, Simon Stout-in-faith, a most withered, lean old man, clothed all in leather, wearing no wig but his own rusty grey hair falling lank on his shoulders, with a sour face of a very jaundiced complexion, and pale eyes that seemed to swim in a yellowish rheum, which he was for ever a-mopping with a rag.

“I am come, Mr. Steward,” says Don Sanchez, “to conclude the business we were upon last week.”

“Aye,” cries Dawson, for all the world in the manner of Evans, “but ere we get to this dry matter let’s have a bottle to ease the way, for this riding of horseback has parched up my vitals confoundedly.”

“If thou art athirst,” says Simon, “Peter shall fetch thee a jug of water from the well; but other liquor have we none in this house.”

“Let Peter drown in your well,” says Dawson, with an oath; “I’ll have none of it.  Let’s get this matter done and away, for I’d as lief sit in a leaky hold as in this here place for comfort.”