’I know it, father, and bear no grudge.  But if you think that you owe me anything, pay it by holding back my brother from working wrong to me and Lily Bozard while I am absent.’

’I will do my best, son, though were it not that you and she have grown so dear to each other, the match would have pleased me well.  But as I have said, I shall not be long here to watch your welfare in this or any other matter, and when I am gone things must follow their own fate.  Do not forget your God or your home wherever you chance to wander, Thomas:  keep yourself from brawling, beware of women that are the snare of youth, and set a watch upon your tongue and your temper which is not of the best.  Moreover, wherever you may be do not speak ill of the religion of the land, or make a mock of it by your way of life, lest you should learn how cruel men can be when they think that it is pleasing to their gods, as I have learnt already.’

I said that I would bear his counsel in mind, and indeed it saved me from many a sorrow.  Then he embraced me and called on the Almighty to take me in His care, and we parted.

I never saw him more, for though he was but middle-aged, within a year of my going my father died suddenly of a distemper of the heart in the nave of Ditchingham church, as he stood there, near the rood screen, musing by my mother’s grave one Sunday after mass, and my brother took his lands and place.  God rest him also!  He was a true-hearted man, but more wrapped up in his love for my mother than it is well for any man to be who would look at life largely and do right by all.  For such love, though natural to women, is apt to turn to something that partakes of selfishness, and to cause him who bears it to think all else of small account.  His children were nothing to my father when compared to my mother, and he would have been content to lose them every one if thereby he might have purchased back her life.  But after all it was a noble infirmity, for he thought little of himself and had gone through much to win her.

Of my voyage to Cadiz, to which port I had learned that de Garcia’s ship was bound, there is little to be told.  We met with contrary winds in the Bay of Biscay and were driven into the harbour of Lisbon, where we refitted.  But at last we came safely to Cadiz, having been forty days at sea.

CHAPTER VII

ANDRES DE FONSECA

Now I shall dwell but briefly on all the adventures which befell me during the year or so that I remained in Spain, for were I to set out everything at length, this history would have no end, or at least mine would find me before I came to it.