urious, like a wild beast in a pit, he set
before me in secret earnestly the sweet promises of God in Christ,--who
says, 'Come to me, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will refresh
you; and though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as
snow,--till all that past sinful life of mine looked like a dream when
one awaketh, and I forgot all my bodily miseries in the misery of my
soul, so did I loathe and hate myself for my rebellion against that
loving God who had chosen me before the foundation of the world, and
come to seek and save me when I was lost; and falling into very despair
at the burden of my heinous sins, knew no peace until I gained sweet
assurance that my Lord had hanged my burden upon His cross, and washed
my sinful soul in His most sinless blood, Amen!"

And Sir Richard Grenville said Amen also.

"But, gentlemen, if that sweet youth won a soul to Christ, he paid
as dearly for it as ever did saint of God. For after a three or four
months, when I had been all that while in sweet converse with him, and
I may say in heaven in the midst of hell, there came one night to the
barranco at Lima, where we were kept when on shore, three black devils
of the Holy Office, and carried him off without a word, only saying to
me, 'Look that your turn come not next, for we hear that you have had
much talk with the villain.' And at these words I was so struck cold
with terror that I swooned right away, and verily, if they had taken me
there and then, I should have denied my God again, for my faith was but
young and weak: but instead, they left me aboard the galley for a few
months more (that was a whole voyage to Panama and back), in daily dread
lest I should find myself in their cruel claws again--and then nothing
for me, but to burn as a relapsed heretic. But when we came back to
Lima, the officers came on board again, and said to me, 'That heretic
has confessed naught against you, so we will leave you for this time:
but because you have been seen talking with him so much, and the Holy
Office suspects your conversion to be but a rotten one, you are adjudged
to the galleys for the rest of your life in perpetual servitude.'"

"But what became of him?" asked Amyas.

"He was burned, sir, a day or two before we got to Lima, and five others
with him at the same stake, of whom two were Englishmen; old comrades of
mine, as I guess."

"Ah!" said Amyas, "we heard of that when we were off Lima; and they
said, too, that th