Little more was needed to bring Madison to a seat on a wooden bench beside Fitzjocelyn, answering his anxious inquiries.  The first tidings were a shock—­Mr. Ponsonby was dead.  He had long been declining, and the last thing Tom had heard from Lima was, that he was dead; but of the daughter there was no intelligence; Tom had been too much occupied with his own affairs to know anything of her.  Robson had returned from Guayaquil some weeks previously, and in the settlement of accounts consequent on Mr. Ponsonby’s death, Tom had demurred giving up all the valuable property at the mines under his charge, until he should have direct orders from Mr. Dynevor or Miss Ponsonby.  A hot dispute ensued, and Robson became aware that Tom was informed of his nefarious practices, and had threatened him violently; but a few hours after he had returned, affecting to have learnt from the new clerk, Ford, that Madison’s peculations required to be winked at with equal forbearance, and giving him the alternative of sharing the spoil, or of being denounced to the authorities.  He took a night to consider; and, as Louis started at hearing of any deliberation, he said, sadly, ’You would not believe me, my Lord, but I had almost a mind.  They would take away my character, any way; and what advantage was my honesty without that?  And as to hurting my employers, they would only take what I did not; and such as that is thought nothing of by very many.  I’d got no faith in man nor woman left, and I’d got nothing but suspicion by my honesty; so why should I not give in to the way of the world, and try if it would serve me.  But then, my Lord, it struck me that if I had nothing else, I had still my God left.’

Louis grasped his hand.

’Yes, I’m thankful that Miss Ponsonby asked me to read to the Cornish miners,’ said Madison.  ’One gets soon heathenish in a heathenish place; and but for that I don’t believe I should ever have stood it out.  But Joseph’s words, ’How can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God,’ kept ringing in my ears like a peal of bells, all night, and by morning I sent in a note to Mr. Robson, to say No to what he proposed.’

Every other principle would have cracked in such a conflict, and Louis looked up at Tom with intense admiration, while the young man spoke on, not conscious that it had been noble, but ashamed of owning himself to have been brought to a pass where mere integrity had been an effort.

He had gone back at once to his mines, in some hopes that the threats might yet prove nothing but blustering; but he had scarcely arrived there when an Indian muleteer, to whom he had shown some kindness, brought him intelligence that la justida was in quest of him, but in difficulties how to get up the mountains.  The poor Indians guided his escape, conducting him down wonderful paths only known to themselves, hiding him in strange sequestered huts, and finally guiding him safely to Callao, where