“‘Fool!’ she said again, after a while, ’I will waste no words upon you.  I would have driven a dagger to your heart months ago, but that I was loath to set you free so soon from your gout and your rheumatism.  Selfish and stupid, know when you bought my body from my parents, you did not buy my soul!  Farewell, my love, my life! and farewell, senors!  May you be more merciful to your daughters than my parents were to me!’ And so, catching a dagger from the girdle of one of the soldiers, smote herself to the heart, and fell dead before them all.

“At which Mr. Oxenham smiled, and said, ’That was worthy of us both.  If you will unbind my hands, senors, I shall be most happy to copy so fair a schoolmistress.’

“But Don Diego shook his head, and said—­

“’It were well for you, valiant senor, were I at liberty to do so; but on questioning those of your sailors whom I have already taken, I cannot hear that you have any letters of license, either from the queen of England, or any other potentate.  I am compelled, therefore, to ask you whether this is so; for it is a matter of life and death.’

“To which Mr. Oxenham answered merrily, that so it was:  but that he was not aware that any potentate’s license was required to permit a gentleman’s meeting his lady love; and that as for the gold which they had taken, if they had never allowed that fresh and fair young May to be forced into marrying that old January, he should never have meddled with their gold; so that was rather their fault than his.  And added, that if he was to be hanged, as he supposed, the only favor which he asked for was a long drop and no priests.  And all the while, gentlemen, he still kept his eyes fixed on the lady’s corpse, till he was led away with me, while all that stood by, God reward them for it, lamented openly the tragical end of those two sinful lovers.

“And now, sirs, what befell me after that matters little; for I never saw Captain Oxenham again, nor ever shall in this life.”

“He was hanged, then?”

“So I heard for certain the next year, and with him the gunner and sundry more:  but some were given away for slaves to the Spaniards, and may be alive now, unless, like me, they have fallen into the cruel clutches of the Inquisition.  For the Inquisition now, gentlemen, claims the bodies and souls of all heretics all over the world (as the devils told me with their own lips, when I pleaded that I was no Spanish subject); and none that it catches, whether peaceable merchants or shipwrecked mariners, but must turn or burn.”

“But how did you get into the Inquisition?”