“I deny everything.  I protest against your jurisdiction.”

“The Assize Court will hear, but scarcely admit, your plea.  That tribunal and its president will deal you as you deserve.”

CHAPTER XV.

L’ENVOI.

The Burlington Castle made a short halt at Constantinople, and another, somewhat longer, at Malta; a third was to be made at Gibraltar, where two of our most important characters proposed to leave the ship.

The delay at Malta was to allow Miss Hidalgo to make her appearance in the Supreme Court as principal witness against the baker, Giuseppe Pisani, commonly called Valetta Joe.

The British military authorities in the Crimea had hesitated to deal summarily with the spy’s offence.  He might have been hanged out of hand under the Mutiny Act; but such swift retribution, however richly merited, was obnoxious to our general’s sense of justice.

He preferred to leave the criminal to the ordinary tribunals of his native island.  It could adjudge and carry out any punishment short of death, if so inclined.  In the Crimea the capital sentence only would have been possible.

The trial was short and summary.  Mariquita, dressed still in the sober, quaker-like garb of a hospital-nurse, said what she had to say in a few simple words.  Her sweet face and artless manner were the admiration of the whole court, and there was a little round of applause as it came out that she had ventured so far and braved so much out of love for the gallant soldier who was leaning on his crutches close by her side.

Valetta Joe was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for four years, and with his conviction the reader’s interest in him will probably cease.  It disposed of the last of McKay’s active enemies; Benito, as we have seen, had died in Balaclava hospital, and Cyprienne Vergette and her accomplice were in the grip of the French law.

The enemies had disappeared; friends only remained.  When he landed at Gibraltar numbers came to greet him, from the Governor himself to the Tio Pedro and the old crone his wife.  Letters had already assured them of Mariquita’s safety, and they wept crocodile tears of joy as they clasped her once more in their arms.

They were her only relatives, and as such McKay was compelled to surrender his love to them for a time.  But only for the very briefest time.  He measured their affections at its true value, and had no compunction in asserting his claim over theirs to protect and cherish her.

He easily persuaded them and Mariquita, but with some tender insistence, to hurry on the marriage, and it took place within a few short weeks of their return to the Rock.  Why should he wait?  He was his own master; the only relative whose consent and approval he coveted—­his mother—­had already promised gladly to accept the girl of his choice.

His great relatives, the Essendines, might question the propriety of the match, anxious that he should look higher, and find his future bride amongst the aristocracy to which he now rightly belonged.